At HubSpot, buyer expertise comes first. All the time.
Whether or not our advertising and marketing crew is deciding on a time at which to ship an e mail or our internet crew crew is selecting the scale and site of a button on our homepage, the query we all the time return to is: “Will this be a great expertise for our prospects?”
As HubSpot’s Chief Product Officer, this customer-first precept is my guiding mild on the subject of product growth. And it is the rationale why we do not purchase expertise once we wish to ship a brand new product to our prospects. We construct it.
This build-first strategy is changing into more and more uncommon in our trade. Conventional SaaS corporations have a tendency to accumulate different corporations once they wish to considerably increase their product choices or shortly improve their buyer base. This will generally result in a fast uptick in income — in spite of everything, when an organization buys one other, it acquires all of its prospects — however it’s typically a really unfavourable expertise for the client.
When two fully totally different programs are cobbled collectively after an acquisition, the burden of creating them work collectively is foisted onto the client. Every firm most likely took a very totally different strategy to product growth, leading to totally different underlying expertise, totally different processes, and totally different person interfaces.
Reconciling these variations with out inflicting friction for patrons is an virtually not possible process. And when SaaS corporations apply this strategy over time, the friction accrues, technical debt goes by the roof, and the client expertise steadily degrades consequently.
This strategy solves for the corporate implementing it, not the purchasers it is imagined to serve. That is why we do issues in a different way at HubSpot. In spite of everything, it is not like us to comply with the gang.
When most corporations have been doubling down on the previous outbound playbook, we championed inbound approaches as an alternative. When most companies have been questioning whether or not distant work might ever work, we noticed the proportion of HubSpotters working from house hit double digits lengthy earlier than 2020 pressured everybody’s hand. And whereas our trade was nonetheless furiously centered on funnels, we embraced the flywheel.
We’re totally different. It is in HubSpot’s DNA. It is even mirrored in our firm mission: we assist organizations develop higher. Not develop in response to the established order. Not develop by adhering to age-old playbooks. Develop higher.
Simply as we imagine there’s a greater approach to develop, we additionally imagine there’s a greater approach to construct. That is the place the Main Colours are available.
Meet the Main Colours
Our strategy to product growth is easy, and it permits us to create multiplicative advantages for patrons that no different CRM platform provides. We deal with 5 foundational components that span all of our merchandise, and we work at bettering every one in every of them, all the time. These components are: Automation, Content material, Information, Messaging, and Reporting. We name them “Main Colours.”
Each one in every of our Hubs – Content material Hub, Advertising and marketing Hub, Gross sales Hub, and Service Hub – includes a special mix of the 5 Main Colours, that means that each product on our platform is constructed on the identical underlying basis.
So when the product crew exhibits as much as work daily, the query we ask ourselves is not “Which Hub or characteristic will we work on at present?” It is: “Which Main Shade will we improve?”
In consequence, once we add worth to at least one space of HubSpot, worth is mechanically added throughout your complete CRM platform. And that permits us to ship a gradual stream of pleasure to all of our prospects on an ongoing foundation.
Listed below are 3 ways wherein this strategy permits us to supply distinctive worth to our prospects within the crowded CRM market:
1. Steady enchancment throughout the platform.
“HubSpot is the right, always-improving advertising and marketing software program” – overview on G2
The identical 5 Main Colours go into constructing every HubSpot product, so once we enhance one Main Shade, we enhance each Hub. And each buyer of each HubSpot product sees a right away profit, no matter a part of the platform they use.
As an illustration, once we put money into making Reporting in Gross sales Hub extra strong, this robustness ripples out to each Reporting device throughout the HubSpot CRM platform. So Advertising and marketing Hub prospects who use our Reporting instruments profit, Service Hub prospects who use our Reporting instruments profit, as do Content material Hub prospects — all as a result of we invested in bettering only one Main Shade.
2. Simple adoption of recent merchandise.
“We shortly adopted the Gross sales Hub Professional and Advertising and marketing Enterprise for our rising wants. It has been top-of-the-line choices we’ve made” – overview on G2
Since all of our Hubs are constructed on the identical Main Shade basis, our prospects can count on a well-recognized, quick, and pleasant person expertise each time they add a brand new characteristic or product to their tech stack. This implies prospects can get pleasure from the advantages of every new addition instantly, with no time misplaced to coaching, integration, or new-system frustration.
As HubSpot’s co-founder, Dharmesh Shah, places it: “Our prospects’ time-to-joy is decreased.”
As soon as a buyer learns tips on how to use Automation in, say, Advertising and marketing Hub, they immediately understand how Automation works in all of HubSpot’s merchandise throughout the CRM platform. In order their firm scales and provides new merchandise, options, and integrations to their tech stack, they will count on consistency, not complexity.
They do not must relearn how Messaging works or how Information is saved each time they add a brand new Hub — one thing they might seemingly must do in the event that they have been working with a system that had been cobbled collectively by acquisitions or in the event that they use totally different instruments for various customer-facing groups.
3. The power to run a whole enterprise on a single platform.
“I can handle the web site, CRM, e mail advertising and marketing and all different efforts in a single single place. This enables me to have a single location for all my information Reporting and have a single supply of fact” – overview on G2
With HubSpot, fast-growing corporations can run their complete enterprise on a single system, as a result of HubSpot provides the identical insights and energy to entrepreneurs, salespeople, and repair professionals alike.
And when all groups at an organization are figuring out of the identical acquainted system, silos crumble, information is centralized, and knowledge flows freely. The entire crew has entry to the identical worthwhile insights, permitting them to grasp their prospects higher and ship a seamless expertise throughout each touchpoint.
For instance, when an organization’s advertising and marketing crew makes use of Advertising and marketing Hub and its gross sales crew makes use of Gross sales Hub, each groups achieve entry to the identical buyer information in a centralized CRM. And since each Hubs supply similar performance for recording and storing Information, it turns into equally straightforward for every crew to entry not solely the info they generate, but additionally Information the opposite crew generates.
This provides entrepreneurs and salespeople a holistic view of the client, enabling every of them to tailor their ways and personalize their outreach. If a prospect is exhibiting specific curiosity in advertising and marketing content material a few sure characteristic, the gross sales crew can see this data within the shared CRM and can know to deal with that characteristic on their subsequent name with the prospect.
They needn’t wait on a advertising and marketing report or depend on an impersonal script – they will personalize their outreach and hone in on a prospect’s particular areas of curiosity, all on account of each Hubs being constructed on the identical basis.
Constructing In another way, Rising Higher
The challenges that corporations face in 2021 are new, so our strategy to constructing our merchandise must be new as properly. With the rise of the hybrid office, we’re all discovering our work lives intersecting our house and household lives, too. That raises the bar on what we count on from enterprise software program.
Folks use HubSpot to energy their companies, to offer for his or her households, to assist their communities thrive, and in lots of circumstances, to make the world a greater place.
It is now extra essential than ever that our CRM platform expertise looks like one thing you’d use on the weekends, not simply Monday morning.
That is why we’re fiercely dedicated to constructing software program that has enterprise-grade energy mixed with consumer-grade intuitiveness and an expertise as pleasant as that provided by the apps all of us use in our private lives.
At HubSpot, our bar is ready by what our prospects want, not what our opponents have finished in previous a long time. With the 5 Main Colours powering our platform and our unwavering dedication to by no means compromise on buyer expertise, we’re excited to proceed to assist our prospects develop higher in 2021 and past.