Everyone loves HubSpot, and with good reason.
It’s the CRM/marketing automation/email/social tool for “the rest of us,” those of us small/mid-sized business owners that don’t have half-a-million dollars to spend on Salesforce or Microsoft.
Not only that, but it’s probably one of the easiest tools to use, too. But… (yes, there’s almost always a “but,” a catch of some kind) it doesn’t do sales proposals all that well.
While it has CPQ (configure, price, quote) functionality, it 1) only comes with the paid professional version, and 2) it can be quite a heavy lift to get started (as you essentially have to build all your product/pricing configurations and handle other implementation requirements).
Which is why, if you’re looking for proposal software that integrates with HubSpot, it’s probably best to look outside the solution for a sales quote tool that 1) costs less and 2) requires less of a heavy lift on your part.
(Side note: if you’re using the free edition of HubSpot and want to add CPQ to it, we can help!)
Here are a few more things to look for when picking the ideal proposal tool for HubSpot…
Proposal templates
Don’t settle for Word docs or Excel spreadsheets. Your quote is usually going to be one of many being reviewed by someone who puts out an RFP. You need to stand apart from the crowd with professionally designed–and easily customizable–sales proposal templates. Ensure your solution has them!
And you’ll need more than one as, for example, the look/feel of a proposal sent to a trucking company should be quite a bit different than one sent to a florist. Different templates for different markets!
Product & pricing configuration
This is the big one, the functionality that makes a proposal tool into a productivity tool. Being able to centralize and easily manage product and pricing configurations means being able to both empower and control your sales reps.
Yes, that sounds like a dichotomy, but it’s not. As a sales manager, you want to ensure your reps are empowered to quickly make sales proposals. But you also need to to ensure they’re selling the best possible product configurations at the best possible price across any possible market. This means controlling those configurations. So you’re not really controlling the reps themselves, but ensuring they can’t take control of pricing and more.
As for building and uploading those configurations into your HubSpot sales proposal tool? That brings us to the next thing to look for…
Support, ideally FREE support
Support is typically in the eye of the beholder. Some only need an FAQ, whereas others need an embedded resource, 24/7. For adding CPQ functionality to HubSpot, you will most likely need something in the middle.
While uploading templates likely won’t cause you much trouble, building and importing your initial product and pricing configurations is a different story. You’ll want a provider that will do all or most of that for you (like these guys).
Reporting and analytics
Finally, ensure that the proposal software you add to your HubSpot instance has granular tracking for every quote you send. There are far too many opportunities for a quote to get derailed between the “sent” and “signed” steps (typically, the only quote tracking metrics most CRMs offer). It’s critical to track every step and keep every proposal moving forward, or at least know why it didn’t.
More questions about building, sending, and tracking sales proposals in HubSpot? We can help.
