At INBOUND17, HubSpot's major conference in Boston held in September, a number of updates were...
HubSpot have announced so many new features in the last few weeks and the sales tools are also getting a revamp.
There are countless added functions, as well as some changes to the current features and structure. We’re going to give you a rundown on all these upcoming revisions, so for those of you worried about what might get changed, you don’t need to panic.
Change Is Coming (But Not How You Think!)
The biggest adjustment to note about HubSpot’s sales tools is that they will now come in two separate tiers: Sales Starter and Sales Professional.
These two divisions are meant to help diversify their sales tools so that smaller businesses don’t need to bundle themselves in, paying a higher price, for functions they can not utilise yet due to their growing size.
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HubSpot have released the above video to simplify the whole announcement, but if you're looking for further clarity and or our view on it, read on!
Sales Starter
As you can tell from the name, Sales Starter is the first level version of HubSpot’s sales tools, which is designed to help small, growing companies, who are ready to scale up their business after the initial boost has begun to even out.
The sales starter tool contains all of the key features which will help smaller businesses keep momentum, without packing it full of features which won’t be utilised by a small team. It’s been specifically designed to help businesses who have just left that initial boost period behind and have recently begun flatlining in the growth department.
Here are the features that will facilitate your sales reporting and analytics in Sales Starter:
- Core CRM - access to the core CRM features
- Send Later - the ability to schedule 1:1 emails to go out at a specified time
- Teams - the ability to create 1 team
- Multiple Deal Pipelines - the ability to create 2 deal pipelines
- Templates - Unlimited templates
- Sequences - Unlimited sequences
- Documents - Unlimited documents
- Meetings - Unlimited meeting links
- Live Chat - Access to messages (live chat)
- Calling - 500 minutes of calling per month
- Notifications - Unlimited notifications
All these features will be available on Sales Professional, too, with much more added in, as well.
Sales Professional
The upgraded version of HubSpot’s sales tools comes with new elements and some revisions to the features you know and love.
So what are the new features?
Workflows - This is a feature which works brilliantly with the pipeline function by keeping it up-to-date and accurate. Workflows can be used for deal and task automation, as well as to assign and undertake certain tasks.
Reporting - Sales Pro users get unlimited custom reports which contain all your detailed sales information, all manageable from one dashboard. The reporting add-on will still be in effect which will give you multiple dashboards rather than one.
Predictive Lead Scoring - This feature allows you to predict leads from tasks. It analyses your keywords and SEO tasks, and existing contact lists to give a realistic expectation of how many leads it should create. This is done using a proprietary algorithm which was created by HubSpot for this exact purpose.
Smart Notifications - This is a really great feature which helps you to prioritise your outreach by highlighting which of your leads is the best for you, rather than just listing the most recent.
Products - Products is a new feature which will be added in the main HubSpot CRM. It allows you to associate a deal with the specific product you are trying to sell so that teams and managers can then create reports on product-specific data.
What’s Changing?
From 1st November, there will be a few features that have previously been available to everyone but will now become Sales Pro features only. This includes:
- Calling (35 hours a month)
- Required Fields
- Multiple Deal Pipelines (Unlimited)
- Teams
- Advanced Views
Any existing customer won’t have this taken away, though. You’ll be able to retain all these features for free which is great news for all you long-term users. It’s only the stragglers who were late to the HubSpot party that will have this bundled in with Sales Professional in future.
What's The Price?
HubSpot Sales Starter is available for $50 per user per month while Sales Professional is $400 per month for up to 5 users.
HubSpot are offering a fantastic early deal, which means that anyone who purchases Sales Pro before its launch on 1st November, will be able to buy it for $50 per user per month, which will continue to be your price after the launch and in the foreseeable future.
That’s an unbelievable offer and if you’re going to be purchasing the Pro tool anyway, then you should definitely take advantage of this while you can.
Anyone who buys ahead of time will also be able to gain access to functionalities ahead of 1st November, which is pretty sweet.
What Do We Think?
Here at Digital 22, we’ve been looking through all the new sales tools and we can’t believe just how much new stuff there is. November will roll-out so many new additions and changes which for the most part seem like fantastic upgrades to the helpful world of sales on HubSpot. We think that Workflows and Smart Notifications, in particular, will have an amazing impact on sales analysis and making sure you’re targeting the perfect buyer.
Having some previously free features become a paid option going forward is not something that sounds fantastic on the surface. However, HubSpot are making sure that none of their existing customers will be missing out, allowing us to keep those elements for free. New customers will have to pay for Sales Professional in order to gain access, but these tools were so premium in the first instance, that they should be paid for as an added feature, and we think HubSpot have made the right move in reflecting this by moving them into the Sales Professional package.
Most importantly, we think that having two separate tiers for the sales tools is a genius way of ensuring that smaller businesses get value for money. Having just the one package with all functions would deter small business owners from purchasing, and rightfully so as many of the features would be unusable, which means they would miss out on many of the helpful functions which could have a great impact on their business. We absolutely love this and we hope that more features in the future will be designed with smaller businesses in mind.
We’re excited for November and the improvements that it will bring. Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
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