You know HubSpot is the future of your business: it can save hours of effort each week, all while enhancing the performance of your sales and marketing teams. But how do you actually get your team using the platform?
The answer is through an effective onboarding process – and this article will help you choose the best approach to make that happen.
Expect to learn:
- How a HubSpot partner agency can help you accelerate and improve your onboarding process
- The most important differences between standard HubSpot onboarding and working with a partner agency
- What to consider when choosing an agency to support your HubSpot onboarding
HubSpot Partner Agencies 101
What is a HubSpot Partner?
A HubSpot partner agency is a company that has a direct relationship with HubSpot and offers expert support to businesses that want to get more value from the platform. They will typically have accreditation from HubSpot and boast a level of platform expertise few other companies can offer.
How Do They Support Onboarding?
Every HubSpot partner agency structures its onboarding offering differently, with varied timelines and levels of customization available. However, the vast majority of agencies will offer:
- Technical setup: From migrating your existing CRM to setting up your Marketing and Sales Hubs
- Strategic Alignment: Helping you determine how the platform will support your goals and growth
- Employee Training: Ensuring your teams understand precisely how to get the most value out of the new platform
What is the Alternative?
The “standard” HubSpot onboarding approach involves a combination of support from HubSpot and internal effort on the part of your company. Your internal team will handle most of the heavy lifting, but HubSpot does provide excellent resources and support to help you on your way.
The Benefits of HubSpot Partner Onboarding
Partner agencies can provide significant added value compared to basic HubSpot onboarding, including:
1. Deeper Knowledge of Your Needs
For your business to maximize the value of HubSpot, the onboarding process must be carefully tailored to your specific objectives. This ranges from mapping your sales funnels to creating dashboards that deliver the specific data you need. And in order to do any of that, your onboarding team must really understand how your business works and what you want to achieve.
A HubSpot partner is able to spend enough time and energy making sense of your needs. They will get to know your existing processes, evaluate your goals and work with you strategically to ensure your onboarding sets you up to get what you really want from the platform.
2. More Detailed Education
Your team needs to understand the various HubSpot features and tools they will use each day. That is why HubSpot created its extensive resource and training library: to equip users with the knowledge and skills they need to use the platform with confidence. However, these resources can be overwhelming, and chances are your team has very specific training needs.
A HubSpot agency can identify those needs and deliver more detailed education tailored to the specific requirements and interests of your team. They will pinpoint knowledge gaps and ensure the education your team receives is directly relevant to the tools they will use every day.
3. Outside the Box Solutions
The HubSpot onboarding process often throws up challenges, such as platform incompatibility. You may need to access data from a system that does not work with HubSpot, and that can seriously disrupt the migration and onboarding process.
The right HubSpot partner agency can develop novel solutions to this kind of problem. While they cannot change the rules of a platform, they will be able to devise a workaround that allows you to achieve your goal and overcome the hurdle - and maybe even eliminate unnecessary steps along the way.
4. Long-Term Support
The greatest benefits of partnering with a HubSpot agency emerge over time. With detailed knowledge of your business, goals and HubSpot setup, a partner agency can offer ongoing support and tailored guidance - from letting you know about relevant system updates and new features to solving technical problems faster.
A simple example is Revenue Operations (RevOps): a HubSpot partner with expertise in RevOps will help you align your sales and marketing teams, enhance your campaign performance and ultimately produce more revenue and profit – all based on a deeper understanding of how your company uses HubSpot.
The Challenges of Working with a HubSpot Partner Agency
Given the evident value a partner agency offers, it’s only natural to assume every company should opt for one. But there are several factors that lead some businesses to avoid the partner agency route, including:
1. Cost
Hiring a partner agency adds an extra cost to your HubSpot onboarding process. For companies that already find the time and resource commitment required to get the platform set up challenging, it may be hard to make a business case for working with an agency.
However, it is worth considering the overall return on investment (ROI) an agency is likely to produce. In most cases, the cost of hiring them will be offset (and then some!) by two factors:
- Time Savings: An agency will get you onboarded faster, which means many other costs associated with the process will be cut. A good example is discontinuing subscriptions for products that are being replaced by HubSpot, such as your CRM and marketing automation tools.
- Productivity Improvements: By more carefully tailoring the platform setup to your organization structure and business goals, an agency will increase overall productivity
2. Capacity and Availability
Not all partners have the dedicated capacity to be available at all times. They will typically work on a fixed schedule, which could mean slow responsiveness. For example, if your agency works on a weekly cadence, you could be forced to wait six days before a solution is presented to an urgent problem.
Of course, this is not a problem with all agencies. Many have extensive capacity and are able to be highly responsive and flexible with their engagement. Equally, some will build extra capacity into their contract to ensure you always have access to the right support.
How to Decide Which Approach Suits Your Needs
There are clearly good reasons for both working with a HubSpot partner agency and opting for standard onboarding. The following three factors will help you decide what’s right for your business:
1. Internal Expertise
Some companies have enough in-house skills to manage HubSpot onboarding without external support. Their team either boasts experience with HubSpot or a level of technical knowledge that will allow them to learn the platform fast. In these cases, an agency may be an unnecessary expense.
Note: There is an important distinction between a team that is capable and one that is optimal. You may have enough internal resources to complete onboarding, but it’s important to ask if your team really has the requisite expertise across specialist areas such as RevOps or HubSpot development.
2. Long-Term Requirements
Partnering with an agency pays dividends in the long term, but some companies may not want that level of ongoing support. While agencies still provide clear value in the short term, you may feel it is not worth the money if the relationship is going to be one-and-done.
Note: Agencies do not typically force companies to commit to long-term contracts up-front. You can dip your toe with an onboarding engagement and decide later whether a continuing partnership will benefit your business.
3. Time and Resources
Larger companies may have a lot of internal capacity to handle onboarding. Even if they don’t have existing expertise, they may be able to dedicate enough time and effort to train their staff to the point where they are capable of handling onboarding without external help.
Ultimately, this is the crux of the matter: if you do have enough in-house HubSpot expertise, time and resources, an agency partner probably doesn’t make sense for your company. However, in almost all other cases, partnering with an agency is the most rational path to take.
This begs the question: how should you find the right HubSpot partner for your onboarding?
3 Factors to Consider When Choosing a HubSpot Partner
There are three essential factors that determine the value a prospective HubSpot partner will offer:
1. Experience
Consider the agency’s credentials across two key areas:
- Platform expertise: The agency should offer expertise in multiple areas of HubSpot. Unless you have a very clear skill set in mind, look for an agency that is able to cover all bases, including knowledge of sales, marketing, development and RevOps.
- Industry Knowledge: They should also have worked with companies like yours. Industries like healthcare or finance use the platform very differently, which means prior experience will help you avoid the awkward process of teaching the partner about your industry.
2. Cultural Factors
Assess the agency’s culture in the following ways:
- Practical Considerations: Your agency does not need to live in the same county, but you do need to have shared time zones and languages. Communication and scheduling issues will quickly make onboarding far more stressful and less productive.
- Beliefs and Values: Your agency should also have a culture that aligns with your own. Many agencies are entirely self-interested and want to maximize their own ROI, but you need an agency that genuinely cares about results.
3. Pricing and Services
Finally, ask yourself whether the agency’s pricing and services fit with your budget and requirements. Many agencies are a great fit – until you get to the details of the contract. You should, therefore, assess the costs and scope an agency is willing to offer as soon as possible.
Complete Your HubSpot Onboarding Within 60 Days with ProperExpression
At ProperExpression, we understand how stressful HubSpot onboarding can be – but we can take the weight off your shoulders.
Our methodology combines proven frameworks and a range of platform expertise with the flexibility required to truly respond and adapt to your needs. From auditing your existing system to providing the technical and strategic support you need, we make HubSpot every aspect of onboarding fast and easy – setting you up to maximize the platform’s long-term value.
Want to learn three ways we could help you drive more value during the onboarding process?
