How to Optimize Hubspot Salesforce Integration

Several years ago, the Harvard Business Review published an op-ed describing the rivalries between sales and marketing departments. The two functions are inextricably tied, and their ultimate goals are to add to a company’s bottom line. Yet, when sales goals aren’t met, sales blames marketing, and marketing blames sales. A Hubspot Salesforce integration can bridge the divide, improve data quality, and give sales the information needed to close more deals.

The sales/marketing problem might not be as simple as finger-pointing. In a siloed business structure, each department has its own data set. For example, in a Salesforce survey of business leaders, 57 percent of companies reported that their CRMs (customer relationship management platforms) were fragmented, sometimes with each department having its own CRM.

With separate yet incomplete and duplicate data, along with a lack of insight into what the other department is doing, it’s no wonder sales and marketing teams see each other as rivals instead of as two rungs on the same ladder. It’s also no wonder customers become frustrated when it becomes clear the two departments have entirely different transactional records.

Hubspot Salesforce integration: Benefits to Sales and Marketing Integration

As the Harvard Business Review noted, IBM integrated their sales and marketing teams, and the result was shorter sales cycles, lower market-entry costs, and a lower cost of sales.

In 2020, LinkedIn commissioned a survey of European sales and marketing decision-makers in professional services, technology, and financial services. Their responses were similar to IBM’s.

• 87 percent said sales and marketing integration enabled business growth
• 85 percent thought that aligning their sales and marketing departments is the most significant opportunity for improving business performance
• 90 percent think sales and marketing collaboration is better for customers

However:

• 90 percent say their sales and marketing departments are misaligned
• 97 percent blame, in part, poorly integrated sales and marketing tools
• In North America, communication and collaboration silos cost companies more than 350 hours per year and 15 percent of contact center agents’ time
• Poor customer experience costs US companies $537 billion per year
• Duplicate and low-quality data costs US companies more than $600 billion per year

Related: How Customer Data Analytics and Automation Can Boost Your Company’s Performance

Fortunately, it doesn’t require a dramatic organizational shift like IBM’s to close the sales and marketing data gap while eliminating duplicate records. A Hubspot Salesforce integration drives collaboration and follows customers through the entire sales cycle, giving sales a full view of the customer pipeline. All the while, marketing receives the data it needs to know where the sales cycle fails and where it succeeds.

How Are Hubspot and Salesforce Different?

Individually, both CRMs have a lot to offer. Both have tools for sales and marketing, but Hubspot is better known for marketing with several free tools for small businesses. In addition, the Hubspot Marketing Automation Platform offers website building, email marketing, social media marketing, lead generation, and content marketing tools.

As the name implies, Salesforce is a force to be reckoned with. Its robust features make it more challenging to use than Hubspot, but it shines in lead and contact management.

Five Steps to Optimize Your Hubspot Salesforce integration

Once you’ve decided that it’s time to integrate your marketing and sales CRMs, there are a few steps that you should take to ensure that the Hubspot Salesforce integration works for your organization.

Become familiar with the entire sales funnel

Learn the entire sales funnel and determine the stage in which Hubspot should transfer leads to Salesforce and what’s essential to communicate among departments. For example, you may find that marketing and sales have different definitions of “marketing-qualified lead.” Bring the two departments together to figure out the criteria for handing off to Salesforce and what information sales needs from marketing.

Become comfortable with both platforms’ jargon

Hubspot terminology is more marketing-centric than Salesforce’s, and conversely, Salesforce’s is tailored to sales. For example, Hubspot contacts are labeled as “marketing” and “non-marketing” while Salesforce’s are labeled “leads” and “contacts.” In Hubspot, only marketing contacts are sent through the lifecycle stages, which are:

• Subscriber – Any contact who opts in to receive updates through your newsletter or blog
• Lead – A contact that has communicated or interacted with your company beyond a subscription
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – A lead that’s ready to send to the sales team
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – A lead that the sales team deems a potential opportunity
• Opportunity – A potential customer
• Customer – Has purchased at least one product or service from your company
• Evangelist – A customer who leaves positive reviews or refers other leads
• Other – Anyone who doesn’t fit into one of the above designations

In Salesforce, the stages are:

• Prospecting – This designation is applied to those who are targeted through advertising, public relations, etc
• Lead Qualification – An opportunity to offer prospects more information or an enticement
• Demo or Meeting – This is the time to schedule a meeting or other contact with the lead to describe the company’s products or services
• Proposal – Formal presentation of pricing, product or service benefits, and scope of work
• Negotiation and Commitment – The time to come to adjust and come to an agreement on pricing and scope of work
• Opportunity won – A closed sale
• Post-Purchase – An opportunity to monitor the service and to potentially upsell or offer new products or services

Determine inclusion list and sync data

Company databases are notoriously bulky. Adding contacts is easy, and removing them rarely happens, so it is vital to clean the database before integrating. Create strict criteria for lead scoring if you haven’t already.

Sales might not want access to every subscriber or even every MQL. Set the point where you want to sync contacts as your inclusion list. You can manage your sync settings in multiple directions:

• One-way: From Hubspot to Salesforce
• One-way: From the Hubspot inclusion list to Salesforce
• Two-way: From Hubspot to Salesforce and from Salesforce to Hubspot
• Two-way: From the Hubspot inclusion list to Salesforce and from Salesforce to Hubspot

Hubspot offers an inclusion smart list that populates data from a predetermined set of criteria to sync to Salesforce to simplify the process.

Related: Hubspot-Salesforce Integration Issues

Please note that it will no longer be synched when a contact falls off the inclusion list.

Create and map custom fields

Few companies use Hubspot or Salesforce’s “out of the box” settings. There may be a lot of helpful contact information inside custom fields.

Use Hubspot’s Data Sync and Operations Hub for more advanced connections

Hubspot’s Data Sync is part of its Operations Hub when you need to sync multiple platforms. With Data Sync, you can create both one-way and two-way syncs. Because Data Sync allows you to automate, there’s no need to export data via spreadsheets.

But note, Hubspot’s Operations Hub was never intended to be a replacement for a comprehensive integration, particularly when multiple CRMS are involved and large data sets.

Challenges with native integrations

It’s common for an organization to attempt a native integration, which means using integration tools written by Hubspot or Salesforce. There are benefits to a native integration, such as that many of the tools are free. However, native integrations have a lot of challenges, including:

• Lack of flexibility
• Erratic support
• Only allow 1:1 integrations
• Limited scalability

Many companies try to cut costs by attempting the integration in-house, only to hit problem after problem. An in-house integration takes IT people from their usual roles, and it can hit several roadblocks along the way.

Avoid the roadblocks and company downtime with Vertify. Vertify seamlessly automates the customer data journey. We handle all the background tasks and automatically connect, move data in real-time, clean and analyze data, and deliver the data across the revenue stream. With Vertify, companies can close deals 65 percent faster and grow their client base by more than 85 percent in less than six months. Request a demo to learn more about how a Hubspot to Salesforce integration can work for you.