Steeple trusts Make the Grade to audit its HubSpot CRM

Organizing internal processes to ensure European scalability

In a context of hypergrowth and European expansion, Steeple needed to optimize the use of their Hubspot CRM. The company chose to call on Make the Grade to help teams improve internal usage.

Become the European leader in phygital employee experience with HubSpot CRM

Steeple, the specialist in internal corporate communications

Launched in 2015, Steeple's story really began in 2013, during a research project led by the two founders. Initially with the aim of transforming students' internal communications, Steeple then expanded into the corporate world. 2016 was a turning point, when they reinvented the bulletin board, proposing instead large, innovative touch screens. These screens are the basis of a so-called phygital solution, also available on mobile and computer. The mission is clear: to re-establish a link between employees and involve them 100% in the company's collective adventure.

Why did Steeple call on Make the Grade to optimize the use of their HubSpot CRM?

Steeple wants to become the European leader in internal communication, so the company is giving itself the means to achieve its ambitions. Today, it has 1,000 corporate customers in France, with international expansion into Spain, Germany and Italy.

Steeple's goal is to become the European leader in internal communications.

As with any growing company, this means the arrival of new employees. With some forty users already on their Hubspot portal, the solution was becoming complex to manage. Certain bad practices, notably impacting collaboration between sales and marketing departments, absolutely had to be improved. Steeple needed all teams to use the CRM optimally. That's when Make the Grade stepped in, providing solutions to get them back on track.

How to precisely identify Steeple's needs on Hubspot CRM

In order for Steeple to have all the keys in hand to optimize its CRM, the audit had to provide real added value. Here's the methodology for a complete and effective Hubspot CRM audit: 

• Verify understanding and application of organizational processes around the software
• Ensure the company's ability to implement actions to achieve its objectives
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• Provide avenues for improvement and appropriate recommendations to drive the company towards progress
• Interview each employee concerned by a CRM usage, to discover their pain points and provide them with tailor-made solutions

A crucial stage for making concrete findings and providing teams with numerous benefits in their daily actions:

• Eliminate time-consuming tasks with little added value
• Optimize data acquisition and organization so they can make the best decisions
• Adjust the uses of the Hubspot solution to make the investment required by CRM profitable

These benefits form the basis of a marketing and sales strategy that meets the organization's expectations.

Workshops to align marketing and sales teams for SaaS software

While marketing and sales are often set apart, they both pursue the same goal. That of bringing the most value to the customer, in order to generate revenue. While sales wants to obtain the most qualified leads possible, marketing expects the lead to be handled in the best possible way. It's with this alignment in mind that we've brought these teams together for joint workshops. Two half-day workshops, one based on the marketing use of CRM, the other on its commercial use. As Steeple already boasts excellent customer retention, we focused mainly on web acquisition and the activation of business opportunities.

These phases are essential to accelerate their growth in Europe. More than just tool presentations, these days are more like real training sessions. The expectations of each participant must be taken into account in order to deliver relevant content, responding to their field issues. Among those present were the Marketing Director, the Traffic Management Manager and the Sales Director.

From the start of these workshops, the framework was set, with a well-defined agenda. To ensure that all participants contributed actively, we varied between two formats with complementary approaches. The first consisted of moments more akin to training. On the agenda: presentation of CRM functionalities, demonstrations and tips for improving the stages of the buying process. It was also important to set up more collaborative periods, where each participant could actively contribute. Several workshops were set up, on specific topics, focusing on both sales and marketing. Some examples of HubSpot CRM workshops:

• Structuring and building the sales tunnel
• What sales data do you need to track and pilot
?
• What contact properties are specific to your business
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• Etc.

The end of the workshop is just as important. It's a phase during which we recall all the points discussed and evoke the next steps to come and the actions planned.

Consign Hubspot users' pains and hindrances, thanks to field interviews

In order to concretely identify needs and deploy a tailor-made CRM, we then interviewed the people directly concerned. These were the "Pre-sales" and "Closing" teams, including SDRs, Customer Account Managers, as well as the respective managers.

The aim of each of these interviews was to get to the bottom of their CRM practices and the pain points encountered on a daily basis. The program included a presentation of each person's position, their missions, team organization and objectives. They were then asked a series of questions, with a view to proposing recommendations in line with their objectives. In all, 18 people were able to answer the questions, providing our teams with further details on the use of CRM at Steeple. These exchanges were necessary to complete the work done during the workshops.

How to customize Hubspot CRM according to the expectations of each department.

The audit as well as the interviews carried out were a first step in order to transmit a complete and personalized report of astonishment. The ambition was to provide an implementable strategy over the medium and long term to optimize their practices on Hubspot.

An astonishment report, to delineate team friction points

The astonishment report is a major tool for continuously improving a company's strategy. The aim is to highlight strengths, but also dysfunctions that need to be improved. With such a process, it's easier to visualize which actions need to be prioritized for the organization to achieve its objectives.

In the Steeple context, the astonishment report was divided into three parts. We will focus during this time only on the first two, based on sales strategy and marketing strategy. The commercial axis concerned the various points of friction encountered by the sales force in the course of their CRM activities. The second dealt with the inbound marketing strategy, website content and conversion-critical data. To distinguish between them, star ratings are integrated into the report:

• 1 star: action easy to think about and implement, junior talents are autonomous in it
• 2 stars: reflection and actions to implement possible by initiated marketers and salespeople
• 3 stars: advanced thinking and action implementation, aimed at technical and experienced talent

This rating method follows a very precise three-step process. First, we tackle a "Statement" of the issues for each friction point. This involves highlighting any counter-productive elements that need to be improved. Then comes the "Advice" phase, where recommendations are made to the relevant players. The final stage is "Resources", in which we share with customers a range of content for each topic. This can be articles and other textual content, visuals, or asynchronous videos, so that they choose the right resources.

Delivery of specifications, with processes to be implemented on Hubspot CRM

During a CRM audit, having a clear, structured deliverable is crucial. This makes it easier to visualize globally all the actions that need to be prioritized, as well as the players involved. By scrupulously following the "Findings - Advice - Resources" schema, Steeple and I were able to draw up the third and final part of this report. It includes a summary of all the actions to be taken and recommendations for implementing CRM best practices. As Steeple is not an expert in Hubspot software, not all actions could be carried out in-house. They were split between their teams and the Make the Grade teams, according to the level of complexity.

The actions rated 1 and 2 stars concerned adjustments that could be made in-house, by Steeple talents. Actions rated 3 stars, on the other hand, were carried out via the agency's own expertise. These included CRM consulting, growth marketing consulting, web design and web development. It was concluded that two projects were priorities for Steeple, so that they could structure their organization in the best possible way:

• Automation of marketing and sales tasks
• Optimization of sales dashboards

In parallel, a migration from Wordpress CMS to Hubspot CMS also took place. A well-considered decision at SEO level, as the company needed to put all the chances on its side to achieve its acquisition objectives. Building a competitive natural search engine optimization strategy is essential for growth.

Steeple industrializes its acquisition and activation with Hubspot

All in all, this audit established some fifteen essential actions to be optimized. These have enabled Steeple to restructure its processes and build a genuine growth strategy on a European scale. A successful audit in every respect, leading Make the Grade and Steeple to collaborate on another project at a later date. Today, the agency continues to support Steeple in its European development. Find out now how to implement automation-commercial to focus more on your customer relationships.