How Primary Colors Help HubSpot Build a CRM That Customers Love

At HubSpot, buyer expertise comes first. All the time.

Whether or not our advertising and marketing crew is choosing a time at which to ship an e-mail or our internet crew crew is selecting the scale and site of a button on our homepage, the query we at all times return to is: “Will this be expertise for our prospects?”

As HubSpot’s Chief Product Officer, this customer-first precept is my guiding gentle in relation to product improvement. And it is the explanation why we do not purchase know-how once we need to ship a brand new product to our prospects. We construct it.

This build-first method is changing into more and more uncommon in our business. Conventional SaaS corporations have a tendency to amass different corporations after they need to considerably broaden their product choices or shortly enhance their buyer base. This could typically result in a fast uptick in income — in spite of everything, when an organization buys one other, it acquires all of its prospects — but it surely’s typically a really unfavorable expertise for the client.

When two fully totally different techniques are cobbled collectively after an acquisition, the burden of constructing them work collectively is foisted onto the client. Every firm most likely took a very totally different method to product improvement, leading to totally different underlying know-how, totally different processes, and totally different person interfaces.

Reconciling these variations with out inflicting friction for purchasers is an virtually unimaginable job. And when SaaS corporations apply this method over time, the friction accrues, technical debt goes by way of the roof, and the client expertise steadily degrades because of this.

This method solves for the corporate implementing it, not the purchasers it is alleged to serve. That is why we do issues in another way at HubSpot. In any case, it is not like us to comply with the group.

When most corporations had been doubling down on the previous outbound playbook, we championed inbound approaches as a substitute. When most companies had been questioning whether or not distant work might ever work, we noticed the share of HubSpotters working from house hit double digits lengthy earlier than 2020 pressured everybody’s hand. And whereas our business was nonetheless furiously centered on funnels, we embraced the flywheel.

We’re totally different. It is in HubSpot’s DNA. It is even mirrored in our firm mission: we assist organizations develop higher. Not develop based on the established order. Not develop by adhering to age-old playbooks. Develop higher.

Simply as we imagine there’s a greater technique to develop, we additionally imagine there’s a greater technique to construct. That is the place the Major Colours are available.

Meet the Major Colours

Our method to product improvement is straightforward, and it permits us to create multiplicative advantages for purchasers that no different CRM platform provides. We deal with 5 foundational parts that span all of our merchandise, and we work at enhancing every one in every of them, the entire time. These parts are: Automation, Content material, Knowledge, Messaging, and Reporting. We name them “Major Colours.”

Each one in every of our Hubs – Content material Hub, Advertising and marketing Hub, Gross sales Hub, and Service Hub – includes a distinct mix of the 5 Major Colours, that means that each product on our platform is constructed on the identical underlying basis.

So when the product crew reveals as much as work each day, the query we ask ourselves is not “Which Hub or characteristic will we work on in the present day?” It is: “Which Major Colour will we improve?”

Because of this, once we add worth to at least one space of HubSpot, worth is robotically added throughout the complete CRM platform. And that permits us to ship a gradual stream of enjoyment to all of our prospects on an ongoing foundation.

Listed below are 3 ways wherein this method permits us to supply distinctive worth to our prospects within the crowded CRM market:

1. Steady enchancment throughout the platform.

“HubSpot is the proper, always-improving advertising and marketing software program” – review on G2

The identical 5 Major Colours go into constructing every HubSpot product, so once we enhance one Major Colour, we enhance each Hub. And each buyer of each HubSpot product sees a right away profit, no matter a part of the platform they use.

For example, once we put money into making Reporting in Gross sales Hub extra strong, this robustness ripples out to each Reporting instrument throughout the HubSpot CRM platform. So Advertising and marketing Hub prospects who use our Reporting instruments profit, Service Hub prospects who use our Reporting instruments profit, as do Content material Hub prospects — all as a result of we invested in enhancing only one Major Colour.

2. Straightforward adoption of recent merchandise.

“We shortly adopted the Gross sales Hub Professional and Advertising and marketing Enterprise for our rising wants. It has been top-of-the-line selections we have now made” – review on G2

Since all of our Hubs are constructed on the identical Major Colour basis, our prospects can anticipate a well-recognized, quick, and pleasant person expertise each time they add a brand new characteristic or product to their tech stack. This implies prospects can get pleasure from the advantages of every new addition instantly, with no time misplaced to coaching, integration, or new-system frustration.

As HubSpot’s co-founder, Dharmesh Shah, places it: “Our prospects’ time-to-joy is diminished.”

As soon as a buyer learns the way to use Automation in, say, Advertising and marketing Hub, they immediately know the way Automation works in all of HubSpot’s merchandise throughout the CRM platform. In order their firm scales and provides new merchandise, options, and integrations to their tech stack, they will anticipate consistency, not complexity.

They do not must relearn how Messaging works or how Knowledge is saved each time they add a brand new Hub — one thing they’d doubtless must do in the event that they had been working with a system that had been cobbled collectively by way of acquisitions or in the event that they use totally different instruments for various customer-facing groups.

3. The flexibility to run a complete enterprise on a single platform.

“I can handle the web site, CRM, e-mail advertising and marketing and all different efforts in a single single place. This permits me to have a single location for all my knowledge Reporting and have a single supply of fact” – review on G2

With HubSpot, fast-growing corporations can run their entire enterprise on a single system, as a result of HubSpot provides the identical insights and energy to entrepreneurs, salespeople, and repair professionals alike.

And when all groups at an organization are understanding of the identical acquainted system, silos crumble, knowledge is centralized, and knowledge flows freely. The entire crew has entry to the identical helpful insights, permitting them to know their prospects higher and ship a seamless expertise throughout each touchpoint.

For instance, when an organization’s advertising and marketing crew makes use of Advertising and marketing Hub and its gross sales crew makes use of Gross sales Hub, each groups achieve entry to the identical buyer knowledge in a centralized CRM. And since each Hubs provide similar performance for recording and storing Knowledge, it turns into equally simple for every crew to entry not solely the information they generate, but additionally Knowledge the opposite crew generates.

This offers entrepreneurs and salespeople a holistic view of the client, enabling every of them to tailor their techniques and personalize their outreach. If a prospect is exhibiting explicit curiosity in advertising and marketing content material a few sure characteristic, the gross sales crew can see this data within the shared CRM and can know to deal with that characteristic on their subsequent name with the prospect.

They need not wait on a advertising and marketing report or depend on an impersonal script – they will personalize their outreach and hone in on a prospect’s particular areas of curiosity, all because of each Hubs being constructed on the identical basis.

Constructing In another way, Rising Higher

The challenges that corporations face in 2021 are new, so our method to constructing our merchandise must be new as nicely. With the rise of the hybrid office, we’re all discovering our work lives intersecting our house and household lives, too. That raises the bar on what we anticipate from enterprise software program.

Folks use HubSpot to energy their companies, to supply for his or her households, to assist their communities thrive, and in lots of circumstances, to make the world a greater place.

It is now extra essential than ever that our CRM platform expertise looks like one thing you’d use on the weekends, not simply Monday morning.

That is why we’re fiercely dedicated to constructing software program that has enterprise-grade energy mixed with consumer-grade intuitiveness and an expertise as pleasant as that supplied by the apps all of us use in our private lives.

At HubSpot, our bar is about by what our prospects want, not what our rivals have achieved in previous many years. With the 5 Major Colours powering our platform and our unwavering dedication to by no means compromise on buyer expertise, we’re excited to proceed to assist our prospects develop higher in 2021 and past.