Case Study: Building an Unshakable Sales Process in HubSpot CRM for a Telecom Product Manufacturer

The Client

Unique products need unique partners. And our client is one of them. Our client is a company specializing in developing products for wireless infrastructure. They set out with the mission to help customers gain faster site approval and improve wireless network performance. Their casings, tubing, and protective housing for radio equipment solved a need for products their clients couldn’t find anywhere else. 

Their dedication and persistence led to exponential success. As an Inc. 5000 company, they went through rapid growth as a result of their partnerships with operators, utilities, and major OEMs. When sales grow, the infrastructure to manage them needs to grow, too. After all, how do you keep track of all the new opportunities? 

The Problem

The problem was just that. Our client's rapid growth was straining their current system. They were already running HubSpot CRM, which is our platform of choice, but their current implementation couldn’t handle all the new contacts they were getting, and their sales process was falling apart under the strain. 

If that was the system, imagine the people running it. 

The stress was palpable. The sales department was wait-listing potential deals. The client was turning down new work and suffering because of their existing systems. Everybody was ready for a change, but the team needed an expert to lead the initiative. That’s when they contacted ClearPivot. 

Coming into an already tense situation isn’t easy. Everybody had different ideas of what the ideal solution would look like. And listening to so many different voices is… hard. 

Some team members were ready to adopt any solution ClearPivot suggested. Others were deeply protective over their current process. The worry was that a change to the software would replace the sales process built for their business with one built instead for the software. So the challenge was clear: Configure HubSpot to match their approach, but make it easier to use than ever.

The Solution

The first step was deciding who would pioneer the project on each side. Everyone wanted their voice to be heard, but without filtering out the noise, no one’s would. In the initial meetings, everyone wanted to be a part of the discussion, but they soon realized that the best way would be to decide on a leader to speak for them.

Once the leaders were chosen, the real work began. ClearPivot would build the framework for a new, stronger process in their HubSpot portal. The north star for this project was keeping the process true to its roots and making it easy for the team to adopt. So, the ClearPivot team sat down with the client’s sales team to nail down how they managed their current process.

Thankfully, ClearPivot’s experience with revenue operations made documenting the process a breeze. They broke down the existing process into stages, clarifying what criteria the deal needed to meet to move to the next phase. However, in the spirit of making the process easier, ClearPivot wanted to save the client the task of manually reviewing the criteria and updating the deal’s status wherever possible. They created a process that works for itself wherever possible, using elements like form submissions, call data, and actions from the sales rep to determine its stage.

Building a sales process isn’t enough. The problem ClearPivot was tasked with was to fix the client’s sales process. But what does that really mean? Logging the data and ensuring no one falls through the cracks is one thing, but creating a process that helps them grow is another. The sales process needed to log better data to document and anticipate trends. And, as always, it had to be easy.

The next part was to fine-tune the data. When a deal in HubSpot is marked as “Closed Won,” the associated contact record's lifecycle stage is marked as a customer. However, the client often has multiple projects with the same company in different sales cycle stages. If they’re marked as a customer, then the data for the remaining deals won’t be correct. Though this was a default in HubSpot’s build, ClearPivot built a workflow to exclude contacts from becoming “customers” when a deal closes.

With the rest of the process built and the data management fine-tuned, there was only one thing left: setting up their future approach. Better reports could help the company forecast their future sales, so we wanted to give them everything we could to do it. Both ClearPivot and the client sat down to decide which kinds of reports they would need to analyze and predict their sales.

ClearPivot set to building out the dashboards and creating a “region” selection that would help the sales team see the over and underperforming regions. They also helped them view which contacts hadn't been contacted from their sales pipeline each month. 

With their new platform, processes, and reporting ready to go, it was time to see how the client’s solution would work.

The Results

The sales team quickly embraced the new process. ClearPivot stepped in to help train the team and make sure that they could get started right away. But there’s a surprise to this story.

Almost immediately after, our client’s business was acquired by another company.

Acquisition is a seismic change. Departments get restructured, software changes, and even the small details of the company can be turned on their heads.

But their sales process survived.

In spite of all the changes, the solution that ClearPivot developed stayed strong in the process. The ClearPivot team still remains on-call to this day to help maintain and improve their system as the company grows.