The HubSpot Sales Process

For partners, it's important to understand the HubSpot sales process, so you can better align your selling motions with HubSpot. Understanding this process will lead to more success in selling and co-selling with HubSpot and moving deals forward, and lead to better outcomes for our shared customers.

Why have a sales process?

A consistent sales process is not just a set of requirements needed to move forward, it’s an agreed upon process used to move a deal forward to close, and increase the likelihood of that happening.

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Read & Understand Our Sales Rules & Operations

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Activities & Exit Criteria

Each stage will have a set of activities and exit criteria associated with it.

Activities

Activities provide a framework for how to think about what you need to gather from a prospect

Exit Criteria

Exit criteria are the outcomes needed to complete one stage and move to the next in the sales process

Connect

Activities

  • Identify prospect's role in the org
  • Identify specific business goals and challenges
  • Identify prospect's degree of influence in the process
  • Ensure understanding of service offerings at a high level
  • Identify compelling reason to change and/or specific pain/opportunity

Exit Criteria

  • Clear understanding of prospect’s role in the org
  • Specific business pain/opportunity identified

If activities have been performed and exit criteria has been met, create a deal

Inbound Prospecting for Solutions Partners

In this course, you'll learn how to identify quality leads by looking at a prospect fit matrix, and how to open the conversation with prospects.

Alexa Rank:

Alexa Rank is a measure of website popularity/success. It ranks millions of websites in order of popularity, with an Alexa Rank of 1 being the most popular. The Alexa Rank is calculated on the site's estimated traffic and visitor engagement over the past three months. The lower the Alexa rank, the more popular the website.

BuiltWith:

BuiltWith is a tool that helps you uncover the tools and technology a prospect is currently using. This can help you learn what software they're currently using prior to talking to them in order to improve conversations.

Website Grader:

Website Grader is a free tool that grades websites against key metrics such as site speed, seo, and more. 

Datanyze:

Datanyze is a powerful prospecting tool that lets you gather data on over 35 million companies. It’s another tool that’s useful for finding out which software your prospects use, but it also lets you compare prospects’ technology stacks against each other to figure out which companies are the best fit for your offering.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator:

Your sales teams are likely already connecting with prospects through LinkedIn. Investing in LinkedIn Sales Navigator will provide them with an array of extra features that can accelerate those efforts. LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you turn the networking site into a premier lead hunting ground. With advanced search features, lead recommendations, and even CRM integration at higher tiers, Sales Navigator lets you use LinkedIn to its fullest prospecting potential.

Sales Connect Call Structure

 

Influencer - traditionally a junior-level employee who's asked to research options before their superior is briefed. They don't have the budget or authority to make a final decision, but they do have the power to influence the decision maker. The influencer is usually your main point of contact at the company, and they'll pull in the appropriate stakeholders (such as Finance or IT) throughout the sales process.


Evaluator/Expert - often, decision makers have an "expert" in the organization that they turn to on a decision they're trying to make. Experts have influence but not authority to ultimately decide to purchase. Frequently you'll find a technical expert involved in a decision process where the business is making a systems decision (think Head of Sales Operations if you're selling CRM). Speak with the champion to try and understand a key decision maker, "Who does Decision Maker turn to for advice on this kind of decision? Or do they tend to just decide alone?"


Champions - are ultra influencers. They are your guides and your channel through the purchase process from the prospect's point of view. If your influencer provides you with information such as the product/service review process, how the decision is made, who participates in the decision, and/or if they make an introduction to a Decision Maker, you have a champion.


Decision Maker -they may be the economic buyer or they may reside higher up in the decision-making hierarchy. Decision makers wield the ultimate purchase authority. As they are the ones making the final call, it is absolutely critical that you make sure to understand their motivations.


Detractors- a stakeholder that has the power to potentially stop the deal from going through. You'll want to make sure to identify them quickly to understand their concerns and involve them how you can to meet their needs.
Examples: Tech, Security, Procurement, Legal

Discovery

Activities

  • Identify prospect’s business model
  • Identify specific business goals and challenges
  • Identify compelling use case
  • Identify timeline
  • Identify decision making process and decision makers
  • Discuss investment

Exit Criteria

  • Quantifiable business goals and pain identified
  • Compelling event established
  • Decision making process identified
  • Competition identified
  • Investment acknowledged

Inbound Selling for Solutions Partners

In this course, you'll learn how to better engage with prospects and work through the discovery. You'll also learn how to close the deal.

Why Go HubSpot - Certification

This course walks through why it's important for each partner to have their own "why go HubSpot" educational pitch, how to construct this pitch (with example soundbites from HubSpot), and how to evaluate their pitch's success.

Exploratory Question Guide

A guide that includes some of the best questions you can ask during the discovery/exploratory stage in the sales process.

Why Go HubSpot - Landing Page

“Why Go HubSpot” refers to the talk track our partners and direct reps leverage to describe and differentiate the HubSpot platform to prospects and customers. It is usually used in tandem with the "Why Go HubSpot" landing page.

28 Questions to Ask on a Discovery Call

A blog post from HubSpot's top sales trainer, Dan Tyre.

Discovery Call Checklist

A simple, yet useful checklist on key actions to take within the discovery stage.

16 Free Sales Voicemail Templates

Free and proven sales voicemail templates you can use every day.

Using Video for Sales Demos

Using video for sales is no longer optional. This in-depth guide will teach you how to research prospects before a demo, feel confident in your video presentation, and sending follow-up emails and videos that close. Download this guide and have access to the entire collection.

Library of Free Resources to Help You Sell

HubSpot ran a "Sell from Anywhere" campaign in 2020 and all of the resources are free to download.

  1. Open the call
    1. Build rapport
    2. Review challenges
    3. Set agenda
    4. Pull up prospect's deal record to record GPCT (snippet - #sbd)
  2. Explore 
    1. Business Overview
    2. Marketing, Sales, Services Processes
    3. Challenges that HubSpot can help solve (Growth, Efficiency, ROI)
  3. Summarize and position
    1. Summarize no more than 3 challenges
    2. Reframe as challenges that HubSpot can help to solve
    3. Link Sales, Marketing, and Services challenges to the overall business goals or challenges
    4. Explain how Inbound and HubSpot's tool can solve for their unique challenges
  4. Recommend
    1. Make a recommendation
    2. Walk through the proposed pricing on our pricing page. 
  5. Demo*
    1. Only demo Starter packages on the Discovery Call. If your prospect wants a demo for Pro packages, book a separate session for Solution Demo. 
  6. Close the call 
    1. (If you did not demo)Recommend a demo, schedule for specific date and time, pull in decision makers. 
    2. (if you did the demo) Ask for the sale.

What is the purpose of Discovery?

The objective of Discovery is to understand how a business makes money. How do they plan on growing? In this phase, you discover more about the business and ask questions to learn more.

How long is a Discovery Call?

It depends on the segment you're in and the needs of the prospect, but typically they're about 45 minutes long. The Demo may be included as well which would extend the time.

What is the ideal outcome?

A discovery call has three potential outcomes that can be stated during your up front contract: 1. We decide there is a potential fit and we schedule a demo, 2. We decide there is not a fit and we part ways or 3. We decide there is a good fit but timing is off, so we schedule time to connect in the future. 

You can clearly state the answers to the following questions:

  • Identify Company's Business Model
  • Identify specific business goals and challenges/opportunities
  • Discuss contact's current plan for solving these problems
  • Identify compelling use case(s)
  • Identify timeline for when they want a solution in place and if there is a compelling reason/event - why now?
  • Identify what technical solutions/tools ("tech stack") they currently have in place
  • Identify the Decision Making Process as well as Buying Process
  • Identify Key Decision Makers (including business, technical, financial, and ultimate decision maker)
  • Discuss alternative solutions (are they considering in-house or other competitor solutions)
  • Discuss levels of investment
  • Identify where they will be serviced to ensure within region and to validate shipping

Solution Demo

Activities

  • Reconfirm pain/gain for all stakeholders
  • Reconfirm decision making process
  • Solution mapped to pain
  • Discuss which offering to move forward with

Exit Criteria

  • Agreement that partner’s services meets their needs
  • Competitor comparison conducted (if applicable)
  • Agreement on which option(s) to move forward with
  • Confirmation on next steps and decision making process

My Demo Account

This is a free individual enterprise-version of HubSpot's suite of products that each Solutions Partner has access to. To learn more about setting you account up, visit this page.

Partner Demo Certification

This certification in Academy was created to help partners learn to demo each of HubSpot's products as if you were a solutions engineer.

7 Key Principles of Value-Based Selling 

HubSpot blog article with some helpful guidance on value-based selling.

 

Description

This Framework is a best practice for preparing a demo in order to decide which tools to demo and how you should position each of them.

Relevance/Context

Since we are selling solutions and not just features, you want to customize the demo or select the tools based on the Buyer Persona. You can do this once you understand the typical challenges of the user persona by following the previous steps and asking questions to ensure you understand their pain and need.

Impact

Without preparing a framework, you run the risk of not accurately addressing your prospect's goals and challenges with the correct themes and tools. You may also find it difficult to structure your Demo presentation, and end up simply presenting features instead of targeted solutions.

Example:

This framework helps you to create a personalized demo in four easy steps:

  1. Document the prospect's challenges
  2. Document the consequences
  3. Select your themes (a maximum of 2 themes)
  4. Select your tools (a maximum of 3 tools)

Business Considerations

Activities

  • Address all objections from decision makers and key stakeholders
  • Address any outstanding technical objections
  • Address security, procurement, legal and financial objections
  • Develop mutually agreed upon close plan

Exit Criteria

  • “Yes” on solution* if we meet final financial and legal terms
  • Agreement on implementation plan and timeline
  • Legal, security and procurement objections overcome

*note that a partner’s solution typically includes HubSpot as the way they execute on their services.

Inbound Selling for Solutions Partners

In this course, you'll learn how to better engage with prospects and work through the discovery. You'll also learn how to close the deal.

Join Evaluation Plan:

A joint evaluation plan (JEP) is a mutually agreed upon set of steps between a sales rep and their prospect that includes each step required to come to a purchasing decision. Without a JEP, a sales rep runs the risk of losing control of the sale and missing key steps in the buyer’s evaluation.

Account Planning Template

A free strategic template for your account-based marketing, sales and management.

Ultimate Guide to Objection Handling

HubSpot blog highlighting 40 common sales objections and how to respond to them.

 

Pricing & Terms

Activities

  • Finalize any outstanding pricing and terms
  • Set target date for signature and start date
  • Setup contract signer with HubSpot login

Exit Criteria

  • Verbally agree to final pricing, terms and start date
  • Payment link sent with instructions
  • Committed date for completing online forms.

Out for Signature

Activities

  • Answer any final questions from decision maker

Exit Criteria

  • Contract for Partner’s Services Signed
  • Contract for HubSpot Signed
  • Confirmation Link Signed (if needed)

Closed Won

Activities

  • Complete detailed notes for your delivery team
  • Ask customer for referrals within network
  • Confirm upsell/cross sell plan
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Learn and Understand Our Sales Rules

Looking for help in navigating HubSpot's sales rules and operations? Find all the details on this page where we introduce you to our core sales rules including Partner Collaboration and Do Inbound For Me rules.