Lack of Revenue Reporting in Salesforce CRM
ResellerRatings struggled with its Salesforce CRM for years, but the platform’s lack of revenue reporting was the final straw.
Christina Kay, Vice President of Marketing and RevOps at ResellerRatings, explains:
“We couldn’t do much revenue modeling with Salesforce. We could report on ‘closed lost’ and ‘closed-won,’ and what’s in the pipeline, but we couldn’t see stages, predict what’s coming, or compare revenue by person.”
What’s more, the Salesforce CRM didn’t even include products and their costs as line items.
“We could see what a customer is paying, but that was about it,” says Christina. “We couldn’t tell the full story.”
Consequently, it was difficult for ResellerRatings to forecast accurately and find new opportunities for revenue growth.
Clunky and frustrating to use
Just as frustratingly, the Salesforce CRM platform was clunky to use and frustrating to manage.
It lacked some basic functionalities, such as bulk updates. So Christina and her team had to make updates one at a time whenever sales reps moved and accounts were reassigned.
“With Salesforce, you had to use a marketplace plugin to make those changes in bulk, and they never really worked,” says Christina. “It sounds like a small thing, but it was incredibly annoying and frustrating.”
Similar problems existed with other basic functions, including merging clients and setting up permissions.
“You’d have to essentially write a tiny bit of code to merge contacts,” says Christina. “And setting up a permission took about a dozen clicks.”
Lack of workflows and integrations
Christina and her team were also frustrated by the lack of workflows and integrations with Salesforce CRM, which again resulted in more manual work.
Christina gives an example:
“When a contract was signed in PandaDoc, we’d have to update the status in Salesforce, create a customer and subscription in Chargebee, alert the sales team that the deal was won, and alert accounting so they could double-check everything.”
These manual processes took time—and could come to a halt whenever anyone involved was away from the office.
Issues with Salesforce Service Cloud
In addition to Salesforce CRM, ResellerRatings also used Salesforce Service Cloud, which came with its own set of problems.
“The two platforms weren’t consistent in how they looked and performed,” says Christina. “Service Cloud created a lot of chaos in our CRM, and our support team found it clunky and difficult to use.”
Slow and unreliable Salesforce support
Compounding matters, Salesforce support was not as fast as we liked and sometimes did not reply in a timely manner.
“Our Salesforce support rep would change every other month,” says Christina. “We would send in tickets and not hear back for weeks.”
Consequently, ResellerRatings had to hire outside developers to resolve its Salesforce issues.
“We were spending thousands of dollars a week on consultants due to lack of Salesforce support,” says Christina.
Meanwhile, ResellerRating was using HubSpot CRM Marketing Hub Enterprise for marketing, and the marketing team loved its intuitive interface and easy-to-set-up workflows.
So Christina and her team decided to rip out Salesforce and implement the full HubSpot CRM Platform, adding Operations Hub, Sales Hub Enterprise, Service Hub Professional, and Enterprise Marketing Contacts to Marketing Hub.
Deciding to switch to HubSpot CRM
Senior executives at ResellerRatings were fully onboard with Christina’s decision to switch from Salesforce to the HubSpot CRM Platform.
ResellerRatings CRO, Bradley Poole, explains his thinking:
“We ultimately made the switch from Salesforce to HubSpot because of how easy it is to automate everything from leads to deals to onboarding to renewals. Knowing that all of the sales tools we used were apps already built into HubSpot, it was clear that we had finally found an ‘all in one' solution that could be the core of our business.”
Nishan Sothilingam, CEO at ResellerRatings, agrees:
“The capabilities of the HubSpot platform and team convinced us to make HubSpot the nucleus of our company’s revenue operations, sales, and communications flow.”
Implementing HubSpot’s full CRM Platform
Throughout the implementation process, Christina was impressed with the help she received from the HubSpot support team.
“They really listened to our pain points and helped us craft a strategy,” says Christina. “Rather than just telling us how to do something, they helped us figure out what to do. Their structured approach made sure we weren’t biting off more than we could chew at any time.”
The HubSpot team didn’t just aim to replicate ResellerRatings’ existing processes but reexamine and improve upon them.
“They helped us elevate what we were doing and make it better,” says Christina. “They gave us confidence that this was going to work.”
Nishan concurs:
“HubSpot’s platform put us in the driver’s seat. Instead of being left alone to figure out how to implement technology in the best way for our situation, we knew we would always have the support of the HubSpot team.”
Not only was the implementation a success, but it was also quick, taking only 90 days from start to finish.
Flexible revenue reporting for forecasting
With operations, sales, marketing, and service consolidated on the HubSpot CRM Platform, Christina now has the revenue reporting that ResellerRatings needs.
“With HubSpot, we can spin up reports quickly to see average revenue by service package and average revenue from add-on services. We can also report on customer churn and lost deals,” says Christina.
This reporting, and its associated data insights, proved revelatory for the entire business.
“Once we got product line items into HubSpot, it was eye-opening,” says Christina. “Our trajectory became clear, and our forecasting got a lot easier.”
Integrations for end-to-end workflows
Thanks to HubSpot’s many API integrations, Christina and her team have set up seamless workflows that include third-party software, including PandaDoc and Chargebee.
“What used to take nine steps happens automatically in HubSpot once the contract is signed. It’s very fluid and streamlined,” says Christina.
Workflows have also shortened processes, even when people are away on vacation.
Email sequencing for upsells and renewals
Christina and her team are also using HubSpot automation in the form of email sequences to increase contract value, increase contract renewals, and build stronger relationships with clients.
For example, they’re using sequences to introduce clients to their new account managers whenever they change, which has resulted in more upsells.
They’re doing something similar with contract renewals, which has also proven successful.
Resolution of Salesforce data issues
Today, Christina can use bulk updates to keep contact data clean and organized so email outreach looks more organic.
ResellerRatings had over a million data issues in Salesforce that couldn’t easily be fixed with Salesforce Process Builder automation. But once Christina and her team started cleaning data with HubSpot Operations Hub and Insycle, they achieved a 75% decrease in data issues.
“Data clean up is so much easier in HubSpot,” says Christina. “It’s easy to standardize contact information so the first name isn’t in all caps and the first name isn’t an email address.”
60% increase in new customer growth
Since ripping out Salesforce and implementing the full HubSpot CRM platform, ResellerRatings is achieving a 60% increase in new customer growth month-over-month.
It's also achieved a 30% increase in contract value and reduced its customer churn rate by 76%.
In addition, the sales team is saving about 50 hours a month thanks to HubSpot CRM Platform automation.
Further, ResellerRatings is no longer spending thousands every week on outside Salesforce developers.
More impressive results
Those aren’t the only impressive results ResellerRatings achieved. Since implementing the HubSpot CRM Platform, it has also realized:
- 86% increase in new deals
- 12% percentage point increase in renewal rates (from 80% to 92%)
- 156% increase in sales activities
- 60% increase in completed sales tasks
- 124% increase in sold against quota goals
- 65% increase in deals pushed
- 42% increase in pipeline
- 224% increase in forecasted against goal versus previous year with Salesforce.
Given these great results, it’s no wonder Christina describes herself as a HubSpot champion.
“HubSpot CRM not only helps us increase revenue, it also saves us time so we can focus on deals, nurture clients, and push the business forward,” says Christina.
Bradley agrees:
“HubSpot is the partner we needed. They’re doing things I never thought possible with a CRM.”
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