Paying for, But Not Using, Salesforce
PivIT Global was spending a lot on Salesforce, but no one in the company was using it.
Hunter Gorman, Director of Growth at PivIT Global explains why:
“Salesforce is built for businesses with unlimited budgets that have dedicated teams to configure it. But at the time, we were a 25-person company and didn’t have the people to manage a tool like that. So we were paying a ton of money for a software nobody used.”
Consequently, PivIT Global’s sales, marketing and service teams relied on manual methods for their processes.
“Everything was in spreadsheets and emails,” says Hunter. “We used sticky notes and relied on people’s memories. It wasn’t a good look for an IT company.”
Without having one central place for data that all teams could rely on, confusion was common and service suffered.
“When records conflicted, everyone was convinced their record was right,” says Hunter. “This caused problems for us internally, with our vendors and likely with our customers.”
Hunter knew they needed a single source of truth for all PivIT Global sales, marketing and service data. And so he turned to HubSpot.
The HubSpot CRM Platform as a Single Source of Truth for the Whole Company at a Reasonable Price
Hunter had previous experience with the HubSpot CRM Platform, and he knew it would be the perfect solution for PivIT Global.
He decided to roll out Marketing Hub, knowing that the platform would essentially sell itself once other teams saw it in action. Sales Hub, Service Hub and CMS Hub soon followed.
“Everyone saw it, fell in love with it, and wanted it,” says Hunter. “It wasn’t long before the whole team was on board.”
PivIT Global also purchased a Premium Consulting engagement to assist with rollout and management of the platform, giving Hunter as well as marketing and customer service teams access to strategic and technical consultants on a weekly basis.
Today, PivIT Global has 26 seats of Sales Hub Enterprise and 14 seats of Service Hub Enterprise globally.
Expanding capacity and efficiency with custom objects
PivIT Global is using custom objects to mold the HubSpot CRM Platform to its unique needs.
“We couldn’t fit our company into four objects, so we worked with HubSpot Professional Services to build some custom ones,” says Hunter. “The beauty is that these custom objects live in HubSpot, and you can treat them just like you would any other ticket.”
These custom objects are also having a major impact on the company’s efficiency.
“With custom objects we’re using workflows to execute on orders and things like that,” says Hunter. “It’s been a game changer.”
Aligning sales, marketing and service
In moving to the HubSpot CRM Platform, PivIT Global now has a single source of truth for sales, marketing and service. It’s also centralized its tech stack to manage inventory and streamlined its sales and service processes.
“Everything is in there,” says Hunter. “From operations teams in our warehouse to sales teams in our offices, they can all go to the same central source of data and get the full picture of our customers.”
This shared access to complete information helps PivIT Global deliver excellent service to its customers, which is reflected in its soaring Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Teams across sales, marketing and service are also working more efficiently, spending less time on manual tasks. And because the HubSpot CRM Platform is so easy, insightful and efficient to use, all teams have readily adopted it.
“HubSpot has freed up people to do their jobs instead of spending time on administrative tasks that are time consuming and unproductive,” says Hunter.
The sales team in particular are big proponents of the HubSpot CRM Platform because by spending less time on admin they have more opportunity to hit sales targets, which impacts their commissions and opportunities for career advancement.
Using sequences to move deals forward
PivIT Global is using the Hubspot CRM Platform to push deals forward more efficiently. The sales team is reaching new levels of productivity with sequences, even with COVID-19 taking in-person sales calls off the table.
“Sequences have been a huge deal for us,” says Hunter. “The combination of sequences and Loom is our recipe for winning deals each and every time. What used to take a month they can do in one afternoon from home.”
Scaling with company growth
Thanks to this increase in productivity and efficiency, PivIT Global is able to scale its business without having to expand the size of its teams at the same rate.
Still, PivIT Global is having to hire new salespeople to keep up with its rapid growth, but Hunter is confident that the HubSpot CRM Platform will scale with the team.
“HubSpot is helping us scale our efforts as well as scaling with the team,” says Hunter.
Crushing organic search
Hunter is also seeing a marked improvement in website traffic with CMS Hub, without PivIT Global having to change its internal processes.
“We haven’t changed our strategy at all,” says Hunter. “We’re still writing blogs and don’t have an SEO team. But we’re crushing organic search because CMS Hub does what it’s supposed to do. And we reap the benefit of that.”
PivIT Global is also breaking new ground with CMS Hub. It recently launched a products domain completely hosted on HubSpot, using HubDB to layer in relevant SKUs (stock keeping units).
In addition, they’re using CMS functionality to accept and manage customer inquiries by applying crm_objects and crm_associations on hosted pages.
31% Increase in Customer NPS
With the help of the HubSpot CRM Platform and the Professional Services team, PivIT Global has increased its customer NPS by 31% in the past year, going from 64 to 84.
This growing level of customer satisfaction is also apparent in PivIT Global doubling its average number of orders per customer.
Customer retention has also improved, with customers staying active twice as long as before.
The success of PivIT Global’s content marketing is also apparent, with the company achieving a five-fold increase in website visitors in the course of 18 months.
Hunter has zero regrets about moving from Salesforce to HubSpot, and he recommends that other companies, especially those of similar size, do the same.
“Stop paying so much and get a tool that’s easy to configure,” says Hunter. “People love using HubSpot. So give your team something they actually want to use.”