When AAXIS conducted a major reorganization of its sales team, Andy Wagner, Executive Director at AAXIS, had the opportunity to rebuild from scratch.
Part of the reorg included canceling AAXIS’s Salesforce subscription due to exorbitant costs.
“AAXIS was paying significant fees for the number of Salesforce seats we had,” says Andy. “And the sales team was basically using it as a glorified Excel spreadsheet.”
Therefore, AAXIS chose to migrate from Salesforce and start over with the free version of HubSpot CRM. As the sole member of the new sales team, Andy was in charge of implementation. As an experienced CRM user, Andy worried about the task ahead.
“Generally, you don’t want to make a bunch of changes when you have a full database of contacts,” says Andy. “Plus, I had to get my head around their existing sales processes.”
Another concern was user adoption. If the new platform was too difficult to use, he knew he’d meet resistance.
“I needed to get the people who actually deal with clients day-to-day to use HubSpot,” says Andy. “Otherwise, we’d be back to square one.”
Scaling Sales and Marketing with HubSpot CRMTo Andy’s relief, the transition from Salesforce to the HubSpot CRM was painless.
“I’d never worked with HubSpot before,” says Andy. “But it was very easy to get the basics sorted and configured.”
If he got stuck, he simply turned to the HubSpot knowledge base for guidance.
“To be honest, I didn’t even think to call support for help,” says Andy. “I just searched the HubSpot knowledge base to get detailed, step-by-step instructions.”
Increased productivity through automation
Andy’s experience with the free version of HubSpot CRM was so positive, AAXIS decided to upgrade to Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and CMS Hub.
This upgrade gave Andy access to the automation features he needed to keep sales and marketing efficient, especially during the transition.
“I found I could automate a lot of the day-to-day mechanics of tracking deals and opportunities. It’s helped me eliminate time-consuming hours for our Sales Execs and Client Partners who would otherwise need to be chased to keep things updated and accurate,” says Andy.
Increased user adoption with customization
With Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and CMS Hub in place, Andy turned his attention to customizing the HubSpot CRM in a way that would make it even easier for users to adopt.
“Sure, having salespeople complete 72 fields on a form would be amazing, but no one’s going to do that,” says Andy. “And honestly, you probably only need six. So I set up HubSpot in a way that made sense for us.”
With this customization, AAXIS team members can use the platform with confidence and rely less on Andy.
“When you have a platform that’s so customizable and easy to use, you can put control into the hands of your people,” says Andy. “It transforms my role from salesperson to more of a sales resource.”
Aligning sales and marketing
Now that sales and marketing are both on the HubSpot CRM platform, Andy no longer has to switch from platform to platform to complete tasks. It also makes it easy for other AAXIS team members to contribute cross-functionally.
Andy sees this alignment between sales and marketing as critical to AAXIS’ future success.
“Any company that still has a marketing team siloed away from their sales team isn’t going to grow as fast as those who realize that salespeople need to be marketers and marketers need to be salespeople.”
Efficiencies with website hosting
In addition to evolving sales and marketing functions, Andy is also benefiting from having the AAXIS website hosted and managed in HubSpot CMS.
“I can manage pages and content without having to switch to a new software,” says Andy. “It combines everything into one user experience.”
HubSpot technical support
When AAXIS upgraded to a paid HubSpot subscription, Andy was assigned a customer success manager, who helped him with implementation—and continues to guide him today.
“We have a call every three or four weeks, which has been fantastically useful,” says Andy. “Salesforce only gives that level of support to big organizations.”
“The caliber of people I’ve dealt with at HubSpot over the past three years has been very, very high,” says Andy.
Integration with Leadfeeder, Hotjar and ZoomInfo
While Andy consolidated sales and marketing on the HubSpot CRM, he still has the capability to use other software in his tech stack, specifically Leadfeeder and Hotjar for tracking and ZoomInfo for business intelligence.
Andy was able to easily integrate all three of these into the HubSpot CRM platform because they’re part of the HubSpot app ecosystem.
“They simply act as an extension of HubSpot,” says Andy. “It’s all very seamless.”
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