This HubSpot sales enablement story features our work with Lotus Innovations, a private equity fund focusing on companies stuck between startup and growth. The Lotus Effect provides growth capital, and supports a small firm’s growth trajectory with shared services, including innovative marketing. Lotus came to Big Presence with a need for a better business development process to help its portfolio companies grow, and to seamlessly exit the company once sold.
Challenge: Overcoming Cumbersome Processes
The client came to us with a mix of disparate systems, and a need to optimize lead generation metrics. Lotus Innovations was using a combination of Act-On, Salesforce and Gmail, along with a mix of manual spreadsheets and notes. The system was being utilized at a basic level, but the firm knew it was time for some improvements. The goal was to develop a sales enablement system to help turbocharge the revenue generation power or each portfolio company under the Lotus umbrella with a much more streamlined set of tools. The challenge was complicated, because of the client’s unique business system, in which it needed to house marketing and business development programs for a collection of portfolio companies (as well as a system for its own fundraising), keeping contact records and activity data siloed between them, for a smooth exit process upon sale.
Approach: Selecting the Right Tools to Enable Effective Sales Processes
In order to implement an effective business development system for Lotus Innovations, Big Presence started with an exploration of the existing tools. Our sales enablement team worked with the individual portfolio companies under Lotus to determine how they were handling sales, with which tools, then considered what parts of their sales strategies could and could not be automated. Our approach was to try and find a clean solution with minimal need for retraining. Big Presence recommended a solution for Lotus Innovations to enable better sales processes with HubSpot Sales Pro, HubSpot CRM + Reporting Add-On, HubSpot Marketing Free, and MailChimp Pro.
Our HubSpot Sales Enablement Solution for Lotus Innovations – At a Glance
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- Cleaned and imported existing contact database of over from Salesforce, while ensuring data integrity between Salesforce and HubSpot.
- Onboarded Lotus Innovations to HubSpot CRM, with 3 individual CRM instances for its portfolio companies.
- Used HubSpot Sales Pro to set Sequences to save time and money on email communication.
- Task queues were used to improve the process of enrolling multiple contacts into Sequences.
- Integrated HubSpot Sales Pro to work in concert with Gmail to preserve business development’s existing communication processes, and track activities like opens and clicks.
- Set up HubSpot Marketing Free and integrated with MailChimp Pro to help Lotus and its portfolio companies begin marketing efforts and list segmentation.
- We helped configure Lead Flows, Meetings Application (for live meeting links), and HubSpot Messages on partner company websites (live chat feature).
- Setup customized, unique dashboards per the Reporting Add-On that allows sales managers to easily track their teams and produce real-time reporting to the C-suite.
- Trained employees on the sleek new HubSpot sales enablement solution.
Solution Highlight: Elegant Fix to Alias and Offboarding Issues with HubSpot CRM
Unraveling Email Sends: Getting Around HubSpot Alias Limitations
Because the client’s business development staff supports the investment fund, Lotus Innovations, but also its individual portfolio companies, the firm needed to make sure emails from could be sent from the appropriate domain. HubSpot has a limitation in that aliases can’t be used in Sequences (while emailing from Hubspot’s platform). Big Presence solved the challenge by setting up individual CRM instances for each portfolio company. We created individual user names to go with portfolio companies and solve the alias issue.
Setting Up for Smooth Transitions Upon Exit
Lotus Innovations’ method of buying companies, investing in business development and marketing, and then selling those companies means there needs to be an efficient way to exit. This means offboarding their HubSpot accounts in a way that preserves all the work Lotus has put in to build up the companies and their customer base. It’s not possible to just export the portfolio company’s contacts from a singular Lotus database in HubSpot, because important activity data does not go along with the export. The solution of setting up individual CRM instances in HubSpot was an elegant way to solve both email alias, and company offboarding issues.
Results
1) Processes are smoother, faster, more effective:
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2) Visibility Transformed:
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3) Savings on Tools:
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IMPACT
| “My team loves being in HubSpot. It makes it easier to get things done and has not only increased productivity but also the job satisfaction of our reps. Going from a mix of systems to one clean interface makes it easier to work and stay motivated.” – Joe Milam, Head of Business Development, Lotus Innovations |
“The results we have seen from working with Big Presence on HubSpot Sales Enablement have far exceeded my expectations. My BDs are now making more calls, booking more meetings and passing more sales qualified leads through the pipeline. The results so far have been fantastic.” – Jeff Luzzi, Head of Marketing, Lotus Innovations |
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| “My team loves being in HubSpot. It makes it easier to get things done and has not only increased productivity but also the job satisfaction of our reps. Going from a mix of systems to one clean interface makes it easier to work and stay motivated.” – Joe Milam, Head of Business Development, Lotus Innovations |
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| “The results we have seen from working with Big Presence on HubSpot Sales Enablement have far exceeded my expectations. My BDs are now making more calls, booking more meetings and passing more sales qualified leads through the pipeline. I can’t wait to see how this impacts our business once it’s been in place for a quarter or two. The results so far have been fantastic.” – Jeff Luzzi, Head of Marketing, Lotus Innovations |
