ClearPivot

HubSpot revenue operations experts. We build high-impact business systems on the HubSpot platform that turn marketing and RevOps leaders like you into heroes.

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Do you wait until things get bad to change, or do you take action before things get rough? See what happened when we helped Nexus Consulting build a process that could withstand change.

Full case study here: https://t.co/uLdLr5CWp3

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Episode 45: The Marketing-to-Sales Lifecycle with Kristina McConnell
https://t.co/mQO9UvAPx8

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

ConnectCareHero is on a mission to make senior living more vibrant. But as they scaled, managing customer service became a challenge. They hired us to rebuild their customer service systems from a patchwork of tools into a full scaleable system runn...
https://t.co/JouJO03Rge

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Nexus Consulting, a NYC construction permit consulting firm, needed to improve their sales process and website. They teamed up with us to migrate to HubSpot, custom-build the platform to their specific processes, and migrate their data in.
https://t.co/wK8ChUwszQ

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Listen to the full podcast here:

Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/01H2jdKJJ8

Spotify: https://t.co/DGNqtQKpYo

YouTube: https://t.co/TlCeeTxIml

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

The most important part of your operations is your “single source of truth.” And when you’re in the business of manufacturing parts for the space industry, that’s non-negotiable. Listen to Travis Johnson from @VELO3DMetal talk about how they run their CRM & Marketing Operations.

[Chris Strom @cgstrom]

New podcast episode now live. 🤘

Maia Morgan Wells and I tag-teamed on this episode to interview Travis Johnson, who runs marketing operations for @VELO3DMetal. We talk through the operational side of marketing: the systems, the data, and the processes.

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Episode 44: CRM & Marketing Operations with Travis Johnson
https://t.co/LW0YPz8D9L

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Check out the full podcast for more on how we track sales and marketing metrics:
Spotify: https://t.co/wD1se5T6Qx
YouTube: https://t.co/23JwF71PT7
Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/DumsMOlmW1

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Tracking the reasons that a deal was lost is never fun, but it helps you stay competitive. See what we track and why it’s so crucial to our business operations.

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Listen to the full podcast to see what other metrics we track for our customers:
Spotify: https://t.co/wD1se5T6Qx
YouTube: https://t.co/23JwF71PT7
Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/DumsMOlmW1

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

We start our analytics reports with our clients’ sales metrics. To do it right, we have to highlight the most impactful, actionable data. These are some of the most common sales metrics we track.

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

How can you tackle such a big project under impressive strain? Find out here.

https://t.co/S1ZYu8RAxx

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Rapid growth is generally a good thing. But things can get complicated when that growth strains a company’s current system. Our client’s growth meant they had to adapt quickly or risk losing their recent gains.

[Chris Strom @cgstrom]

We migrated our @ClearPivot quote-to-cash process 💸 from Adobe Document Cloud and Quickbooks into @HubSpot last year. We built out quote templates in HubSpot for the 3 main ways we do contracts:

➡️Time & materials contract with a project deposit
➡️Retainer contract with first month’s payment included
➡️Retainer contract with first month billed separately

Our time & materials contracts line-item out 10-20 hours of pre-paid time on a pre-payment table as part of the contract document. After us and the client both sign the contract, then a Pay Now button on the contract becomes functional for them to complete the pre-payment. After that, we start the project and then do our remaining invoicing through Quickbooks, with the pre-paid amount subtracted from the next subsequent invoice.

Our retainer contracts work the same way for signature and payment, except instead of a specific pre-payment amount, the payment amount is for the first month’s retainer billing. We then set up the following months’ retainer billing as a recurring invoice in Quickbooks. We might at some point move those recurring invoices into running through HubSpot as well.

For time & materials contracts and retainer contracts with the first month’s payment included, we don’t mark the deal in our HubSpot pipeline as Closed Won until after the contract is signed and paid. A signature alone is not sufficient for logging the deal as won!

We use the retainer contract template with the first month billed separately for unique circumstances, such as when a client’s legal/procurement department needs to manually sign a PDF version of the invoice or needs to process the contract through their own internal document signature tool. In cases like that, we’ll generate a manual invoice in Quickbooks to accompany our HubSpot-generated contract. But it’s a more cumbersome process, so we try to avoid it where possible.

We’re rolling out this quote-to-cash functionality in HubSpot to our clients as well: we recently built out a series of 6 custom quote templates for one of our clients who also does professional services work like us. We built out functions like project description fields, payment schedules, line-item tables, supplemental services, and change orders. 🛠️

A lot of this functionality only became possible in the HubSpot quotes tool within the last year. It’s been exciting to see it develop! We’ll definitely be leaning in to building out more quote-to-cash processes in HubSpot for clients going forward.

How do you run your quote-to-cash process at your company? What processes and systems do you run for it? I’d love to compare notes.

#quotetocash #cpq #crm #hubspot #revops

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

How do you manage your contracts? Listen to the rest of the episode of The Marketing Hero Podcast here and let us know what you think.

Spotify: https://t.co/8e7YtInlyQ
YouTube: https://t.co/eGxxuS0rR9
Apple Podcast: https://t.co/LqHeR2ulyp

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

How do we manage our contracts? Our process has changed a lot over time. Nowadays we use the HubSpot quotes tool to build our contracts. Learn about the different quote templates we use and how they work.

[ClearPivot @ClearPivot]

Every once in a while, you meet someone who truly strives to improve the world around them. See what we did to help our client provide quality, affordable care to seniors in South Georgia.
https://t.co/Rm6KRZ42Tq

[Chris Strom @cgstrom]

@ClearPivot I recorded a whole podcast episode on how we run our @ClearPivot sales pipeline, and why. Check it out here:

YouTube: https://t.co/Z6I2MNM5W3

Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/GgsfVEqf6u

Spotify: https://t.co/Bxr3Ec2wRh

[Chris Strom @cgstrom]

We used to have a “Put On Hold” deal stage in our @ClearPivot sales pipeline. But we recently decided to eliminate it.

When we’re selling to other companies, timing and priorities are big factors in the sales process. Oftentimes deals can get moved back by a couple of weeks to even a couple of months due to new priorities or initiatives being asked of our points of contact at the prospect companies. Or sometimes they have to wait for the next quarterly or even fiscal year budget cycle to have the funds to start a project with us.

So we originally had created a Put On Hold stage in our HubSpot deal pipeline as a place to store deals in that state. But we eventually found that it was way too easy for deals to just pile up in that stage and rarely looked at again. And it’s especially easy (emotionally) to just mark a deal as Put On Hold rather than admitting to yourself that it’s more likely just Closed Lost altogether.

So we eliminated the Put On Hold stage, and now we either keep deals in an active pipeline stage or move them to Closed Lost. If a prospect asks to push a deal back a few weeks due to other projects on their end, but we feel that they’re actually genuinely still interested, we’ll keep the deal in the pipeline in the Explore stage or one of the other active pipeline stages.

If the prospect is pushing the deal out and we’re not getting any sense of urgency from them about it, we’ll just suck it up and mark it as Closed Lost, so that the deal isn’t just sitting there giving us a false sense of hope that “it will close one day eventually.”

When we mark a deal as Closed Lost, we’ll make a task for ourselves to follow with that prospect in a few months to see how things are going with the road they chose for themselves. If they’re interested in resuming the conversation, we’ll then move the deal out of Closed Lost and back onto an active deal stage.

How do you handle manage timeframe pushbacks with your prospects? How do you decide the criteria for keeping active deals in your pipeline? Post a comment below - I’d love to compare notes.

#RevOps #RevenueOperations #Sales #SalesPipeline #HubSpot #Salesforce #CRM