Digital disconnection damaging productivity
Rebel Rock Wealth’s Founder Lesley Batson wanted to help more customers grow and protect their money. But a patchwork of disconnected tools created roadblocks for the boutique business.
They were using a calendar app for meetings, Mailchimp for marketing, a basic CRM to nurture leads, a scheduling tool to organize operational tasks, and a further platform for creating forms.
Lesley needed to focus her energies into business development. But too much time was consumed logging into disparate platforms, managing subscriptions, running frustrating upgrades, and hopping between applications that weren’t aligned.
“I'm very busy in my business and I don't want to have to go to multiple applications,” she says. “I just needed my tools to work how and when I needed them, without so much effort.”
Leads not being captured
Leads are the oxygen of any small business, so it’s critical to make them count. But Lesley couldn’t efficiently do that.
Her tool for scheduling meetings wasn’t integrated with her CRM. This meant that contacts weren’t automatically captured. It also required a mountain of manual work to send reminders and follow up after calls.
Lesley also found her legacy CRM too unwieldy to set up deal stages and track how prospects progressed. She also had no dashboard tool to capture and display critical metrics. This lack of visibility raised the risk of prospects falling through the cracks.
“Without a dashboard to keep track of the customer journey and manage prospects through our process, you could actually forget to follow up with people, and I’ve done that before,” she says.
Lack of comprehensive, real-time data
Lesley had built an attractive, modern brand, but couldn’t create marketing assets that matched.
Her legacy CRM and Mailchimp had tools to create landing pages and newsletters. But building them was time-consuming and the end result looked like “something from 1999”.
Lesley says, “It's really important from a branding perspective that your clients or prospects can recognize who you are, especially on a landing page which isn’t on your main website. But our tools didn't represent my brand well. After a while, I just didn’t want to use them.”
Changing the game with HubSpot Starter Customer Platform
Lesley wanted a CRM that solved all her acute pain points in one hit. Cost was also a consideration, because she needed it “to be reasonably priced for what I needed it to do”.
She says: “As independent financial professionals and small business owners, we don't have an enterprise paying for our software and tools. But it's just as important for us—if not more important—to have smart and efficient tools to run our practices.”
Lesley found the answer with HubSpot Starter Customer Platform. The bundle gives subscribers access to starter editions of all six HubSpot products along with the Smart CRM: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Content Hub, Service Hub, Commerce Hub, and Operations Hub.
HubSpot Starter Customer Platform was about to change the game for Lesley. It replaced frustration and inefficiency with connected data, consolidated tools, and features that saved her time and money.
Capturing leads easily to make more sales
Lesley leverages HubSpot’s Meetings function to capture more leads and eliminate the back and forth of finding convenient times for a sales call.
She puts Discovery Call links on every available channel, including her website, email signature, mobile app, and digital business card. When a lead clicks, they enter their details into an integrated form and book a slot on her live calendar.
Contact details automatically flow into the HubSpot ecosystem, ensuring no lead is lost. Lesley is organized and sales oriented from the first contact.
She says, “Everyone is automatically now a lead in the system. At the minimum, I have their name, email, phone number, and what state they're in. So it gives me some information to research ahead of the call. Plus, I can set up different calendars for different campaigns or meetings. So it has a lot of flexibility and it's all built into one.”
Organizing deal stages and tracking them with ease
Lesley used Starter’s intuitive interface to define different deal stages within the platform. The whole customer journey is organized, so she makes the most of every opportunity.
She says, “It’s a big benefit to know where potential customers are in the deal flow. We have all the different steps from that first conversation all the way to when we close the deal and I can easily track all of that.
“If I have to go back and look at a client three months later, everything is there. I see where we left off, what happened, what I need to follow up on. I can manage everything, it's just so easy.”
Building her brand with less manual effort
Starter enables Lesley to build on-brand marketing assets that convert. She uses Landing Page Builder to design and launch attractive landing pages to support campaigns and events, without needing designers or IT.
Lesley says, “HubSpot’s templates enable us to build custom pages that have brand familiarity. It doesn't matter which demographic I want to target, I can create a quick landing page and get it out there in a couple minutes!”
She also uses Email Marketing Templates, which not only increase the speed and efficiency of sending nurturing emails, but represent her brand in an attractive way.
“As a small boutique business, you want to always be on people’s minds. HubSpot’s email templates help us produce regular content that makes people remember who we are,” she says.
Reporting insights feed strong decision-making
Starter’s reporting tools empower Lesley to get quick insights into business development and performance. Tracking campaign performance is a breeze.
“With landing pages in particular, I can track and analyze how engaged prospective customers are. I can see which campaigns actually work and which ones aren't, and measure their success,” she says.
With well-managed pipelines and data consolidated in one place, Lesley sees exactly what’s in front of her and takes data-driven actions.
She says, “HubSpot’s dashboards helped me realize that I needed to expand my team and enabled my decision to bring on a Virtual Assistant (VA). As a result, I offloaded a lot of administrative work from my plate, which helped the business become more efficient.”
Streamlining cashflow with Payments
Starter’s Payments function is another game-changer. As Lesley scales and adds new services, Payments allows her to set up different payment plans, send trackable invoices, and collect credit card payments instantly.
“Payments has a lot of flexibility, which is great as you grow,” she says. “When I organized an event recently, I used HubSpot to create a website and took all the payments automatically through the website. Everything was integrated and easy.”
43 days a year saved
Time is money for Lesley’s wealth strategy and coaching business. So she’s thrilled HubSpot Starter saves her “at least five to seven hours a week” to focus on other priorities.
Based on 49 working weeks, that’s a staggering 43 days per year that Lesley saves.
“I save so much time not having to dig around different systems and emails to find what I need,” she says. “I do more business development and sales, because I can focus my time better.”
With HubSpot consolidating all their tools and data in one place, Lesley has eliminated three tools she previously relied on. She saves on subscriptions and eradicates the time wasted juggling disconnected platforms.
25% increase in revenue YoY
With Lesley’s work days more productive, she spends more time thinking strategically, generating ideas, and chasing opportunities.
She says, “With the efficiency that Starter brings, I’ve introduced new revenue streams, including coaching. This led to a 25% increase in revenue in the past year.”
Lesley recommends HubSpot Starter Customer Platform to any boutique business looking to solve their challenges for an affordable price.
She says, “The amount of value that I get for what I'm paying for Starter is significant. No matter what business you're in, you need to identify people to pay for your service, track the progress of that conversation, track if it worked, and attribute how much sales came from that. HubSpot does a great job and definitely fits the bill.”