HubSpot Hacks: Optimizing Your CRM and Sales Tools for Growth

Maximizing the effectiveness of HubSpot requires more than basic usage—it demands strategic insights and optimized functionalities. Unveil a series of hacks that focus on improving CRM and sales tools, optimizing custom objects, and leveraging HubSpot's existing features. Common challenges faced by sales teams, such as inefficient meeting preparations, disorganized prospecting efforts, and underutilized CRM features, are addressed head-on.

Throughout this blog, I outline five key hacks that will help you transform your HubSpot experience, enhance your sales processes, and ultimately achieve superior results.

1. Pre-Qualify Your Meetings

One of the most effective ways to improve sales efficiency and meeting quality is to pre-qualify prospects before the call. Customizing your HubSpot meeting links with pre-qualification questions allows you to dive straight into meaningful discussions with qualified prospects and identify unqualified buyers ahead of your scheduled meeting. This way, you can focus on the prospect’s needs from the get-go.

Once I implemented this, the quality of my meetings improved dramatically, and one-call closes became a reality. This small tweak in your HubSpot CRM can significantly enhance your sales efficiency.

2. Creating Custom Views

Default views in HubSpot are a great starting point, but personalizing your views can make a significant difference in enhancing user experience and efficiency by making the data you need readily available. Custom views help you prioritize the most relevant information for building relationships and deepening connections. For example, incorporating properties like: 

• "Last activity date" can help you identify prospects who haven't been contacted recently.
• "Recent conversion" shows you what content they’re engaging with.
• "Date of last meeting booked = known" and "number of associated deals = 0" to identify opportunities where follow-up could convert into deals.

Custom views are a powerful feature in HubSpot CRM that can streamline your sales prospecting efforts. 

3. Utilizing Task Queues

Task Queues add a fun sense of gamification to your prospecting process, helping you stay focused and organized. Often, I would create a Custom View of targeted prospects, only to get distracted after engaging with one or two of them.  

Life happens, you know?  

Task Queues help solve this common problem with prospecting by organizing a salesperson’s critical tasks and keeping them engaged while they work their way through the list.

1. Create a custom Task Queue in the Tasks page of HubSpot and add tasks for a segment of your prospects.

2. Once those tasks are created, go back to the Tasks index page and select your Queue from the navigation bar.

3. Click on the "Start ___ Tasks” in the top right-hand corner and your Task Queue will begin!

   
   
   
   

This process will bring you to the specific contact record with new Task Queue information displayed at the top, with the option to reschedule, skip or complete the task. Depending on the task type (to-do, call, email), the Task Queue will open the contact record with that activity module open for you to begin your prospecting.

This HubSpot sales tool can significantly boost your sales productivity by keeping you organized and on task.

4. Implementing Custom Playbooks

For sales managers, creating custom Playbooks can standardize and scale your team’s approach to prospecting, demoing products, and closing deals. HubSpot offers templates like “Qualification Call Script” and “Discovery Call Script,” which incorporate tried and true sales tactics like BANT and GPCT. However, tailoring these Playbooks to your specific sales strategy can be incredibly effective.  

HubSpot Playbooks allow collaboration for best practices for sales and customer support - all while allowing for the flexibility of the individual contributor’s unique style. My personal favorite part is auto-updating specific object properties.  

For instance, if you create a custom question like “What is your budget for this project?”, you're able to list out specific answers which can then automatically update a corresponding property on the record. So, if a prospect lets me know their budget is $100,000, I can select that answer and have the “Budget” property on the Deal record auto-update.  

This saves a ton of time post-call - instead of dissecting my notes for the most important details, I can check them off as I go through my Playbook. HubSpot Playbooks are a game-changer for any sales team looking to improve their CRM optimization.

5. Repurposing HubSpot's Native Functionality

A custom object in HubSpot is a flexible data structure that allows you to store information unique to your business needs. Unlike standard objects (such as contacts, companies, deals, and tickets), custom objects can be tailored to track any type of data that doesn't fit into the predefined categories. This provides businesses with greater customization and the ability to build a CRM that aligns perfectly with their specific workflows and processes. 

Even with the advent of custom objects, there are creative ways to repurpose existing HubSpot objects if you don’t have access to custom objects. During my tenure as a HubSpot Sales Representative, they did not yet have custom objects available on the platform. This allowed me to get “creative” with the functionality that did exist within the tool, namely repurposing the standard HubSpot Objects.  

For example, if the Ticket object is unused in your portal, consider repurposing it for processes like customer onboarding or implementation. This can help you increase the adoption of HubSpot functionalities and streamline your operations without additional costs. Utilizing native HubSpot functionality creatively can lead to better CRM optimization and sales process efficiency. 

By leveraging these HubSpot hacks, you can enhance your sales processes, improve efficiency, and drive better results. Whether you’re a seasoned HubSpot user or just getting started, these tips can help you unlock the full potential of the platform.

Ready to take your HubSpot CRM to the next level? 

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About the Author

Over the past 11 years in the HubSpot ecosystem, with 8 of those years being at HubSpot, I’ve discovered invaluable tips and tricks to help you maximize the platform's capabilities. Whether you're managing customer relationships or optimizing your sales pipeline, these insights can transform your approach and drive significant results, particularly around the CRM and sales tools, where I’ve spent considerable time as part of HubSpot’s sales team.

My journey at HubSpot began with 2 years as a Business Development Representative (BDR) and Inbound Marketing Specialist, followed by 2 years as a Product Specialist and Sales Engineer, and then 4 years as an Inbound Growth Specialist and Account Executive. These roles have given me a comprehensive understanding of HubSpot’s CRM and sales tools. Now, as I focus on operations and system architecture, I'm excited to share key strategies—especially regarding custom objects and optimizing existing functionalities—to help you overcome common challenges and achieve your goals.