Scenario: A client’s Sales VP wants your help to implement Salesforce for their team’s CRM needs, but they already have an instance of HubSpot CRM and Sales professional that one of their Sales divisions is using. The Sales VP is simply unaware of HubSpot’s CRM and sales tools, and hasn’t considered the costs and benefits of getting more HubSpot Sales seats vs. a new Salesforce instance. What should you do?
Remind the Sales VP about the existing HubSpot Sales + CRM instance, and remind her of its capabilities. Ask if there is a specific reason they need Salesforce rather than what they already have, and suggest doing a cost benefit analysis that includes not only the price of both tools, but also how ingrained the existing HubSpot Sales tool is, and what it would cost in terms of time/money to implement Salesforce.
Remind the Sales VP gently, but remember that your job is to implement what the Sales VP needs in order to maintain a productive business relationship. Don’t linger on the topic and risk offending her. Skip over doing any kind of discovery, and move on towards implementing Salesforce. This is a large company, and it won’t hurt them too much if they have more than one tool for doing the same thing.
Suggest that the Sales VP forego the CRM idea altogether. Their team is too disorganized to benefit from a CRM, and are better off organizing their process in excel. Don’t mention the limited HubSpot instance their team is already using, because you want to avoid muddying the waters too much with complexity. Focus on Sales consulting, and try and convince the Sales VP to look beyond the need for a CRM.
Take an educational approach towards consulting them on this issue, rather than pushing for any particular solution aggressively at first. Find out if it makes monetary and temporal sense to expand the existing HubSpot Sales instance vs. implementing Salesforce. Once you’ve made your decision regarding what’s best for their tech stack, remind the client that they’re obligated to follow your recommendations if they wish to retain you as a partner.
