At HubSpot, buyer expertise comes first. All the time.

Whether or not our advertising group is deciding on a time at which to ship an electronic mail or our internet group group is selecting the scale and placement of a button on our homepage, the query we all the time return to is: “Will this be an excellent expertise for our clients?”

As HubSpot’s Chief Product Officer, this customer-first precept is my guiding gentle in terms of product growth. And it is the explanation why we do not purchase expertise once we wish to ship a brand new product to our clients. We construct it.

This build-first strategy is turning into more and more uncommon in our business. Conventional SaaS firms have a tendency to accumulate different firms once they wish to considerably increase their product choices or shortly enhance their buyer base. This may typically result in a fast uptick in income — in spite of everything, when an organization buys one other, it acquires all of its clients — however it’s usually a really unfavorable expertise for the client.

When two utterly completely different methods are cobbled collectively after an acquisition, the burden of creating them work collectively is foisted onto the client. Every firm most likely took a very completely different strategy to product growth, leading to completely different underlying expertise, completely different processes, and completely different person interfaces.

Reconciling these variations with out inflicting friction for purchasers is an nearly not possible job. And when SaaS firms apply this strategy over time, the friction accrues, technical debt goes by means of the roof, and the client expertise steadily degrades because of this.

This strategy solves for the corporate implementing it, not the shoppers it is speculated to serve. That is why we do issues otherwise at HubSpot. In any case, it is not like us to observe the gang.

When most firms had been doubling down on the previous outbound playbook, we championed inbound approaches as an alternative. When most companies had been questioning whether or not distant work may ever work, we noticed the share of HubSpotters working from dwelling hit double digits lengthy earlier than 2020 compelled everybody’s hand. And whereas our business was nonetheless furiously centered on funnels, we embraced the flywheel.

We’re completely different. It is in HubSpot’s DNA. It is even mirrored in our firm mission: we assist organizations develop higher. Not develop in keeping with the established order. Not develop by adhering to age-old playbooks. Develop higher.

Simply as we imagine there’s a greater method to develop, we additionally imagine there’s a greater method to construct. That is the place the Major Colours are available.

Meet the Major Colours

Our strategy to product growth is straightforward, and it permits us to create multiplicative advantages for purchasers that no different CRM platform presents. We deal with 5 foundational parts that span all of our merchandise, and we work at bettering every considered one of them, all the time. These parts are: Automation, Content material, Knowledge, Messaging, and Reporting. We name them “Major Colours.”

Each considered one of our Hubs – Content material Hub, Advertising Hub, Gross sales Hub, and Service Hub – contains a unique mix of the 5 Major Colours, which means that each product on our platform is constructed on the identical underlying basis.

So when the product group exhibits as much as work every single day, the query we ask ourselves is not “Which Hub or characteristic will we work on at the moment?” It is: “Which Major Colour will we improve?”

Consequently, once we add worth to at least one space of HubSpot, worth is mechanically added throughout your complete CRM platform. And that enables us to ship a gradual stream of enjoyment to all of our clients on an ongoing foundation.

Listed below are 3 ways wherein this strategy permits us to supply distinctive worth to our clients within the crowded CRM market:

1. Steady enchancment throughout the platform.

“HubSpot is the proper, always-improving advertising software program” – overview on G2

The identical 5 Major Colours go into constructing every HubSpot product, so once we enhance one Major Colour, we enhance each Hub. And each buyer of each HubSpot product sees an instantaneous profit, no matter a part of the platform they use.

For example, once we put money into making Reporting in Gross sales Hub extra sturdy, this robustness ripples out to each Reporting device throughout the HubSpot CRM platform. So Advertising Hub clients who use our Reporting instruments profit, Service Hub clients who use our Reporting instruments profit, as do Content material Hub clients — all as a result of we invested in bettering only one Major Colour.

2. Simple adoption of latest merchandise.

“We shortly adopted the Gross sales Hub Professional and Advertising Enterprise for our rising wants. It has been among the best selections we have now made” – overview on G2

Since all of our Hubs are constructed on the identical Major Colour basis, our clients can anticipate a well-recognized, quick, and pleasant person expertise each time they add a brand new characteristic or product to their tech stack. This implies clients can get pleasure from the advantages of every new addition instantly, with no time misplaced to coaching, integration, or new-system frustration.

As HubSpot’s co-founder, Dharmesh Shah, places it: “Our clients’ time-to-joy is lowered.”

As soon as a buyer learns find out how to use Automation in, say, Advertising Hub, they immediately know the way Automation works in all of HubSpot’s merchandise throughout the CRM platform. In order their firm scales and provides new merchandise, options, and integrations to their tech stack, they will anticipate consistency, not complexity.

They do not must relearn how Messaging works or how Knowledge is saved each time they add a brand new Hub — one thing they’d seemingly must do in the event that they had been working with a system that had been cobbled collectively by means of acquisitions or in the event that they use completely different instruments for various customer-facing groups.

3. The power to run a whole enterprise on a single platform.

“I can handle the web site, CRM, electronic mail advertising and all different efforts in a single single place. This permits me to have a single location for all my information Reporting and have a single supply of reality” – overview on G2

With HubSpot, fast-growing firms can run their entire enterprise on a single system, as a result of HubSpot presents the identical insights and energy to entrepreneurs, salespeople, and repair professionals alike.

And when all groups at an organization are understanding of the identical acquainted system, silos crumble, information is centralized, and data flows freely. The entire group has entry to the identical priceless insights, permitting them to know their clients higher and ship a seamless expertise throughout each touchpoint.

For instance, when an organization’s advertising group makes use of Advertising Hub and its gross sales group makes use of Gross sales Hub, each groups achieve entry to the identical buyer information in a centralized CRM. And since each Hubs supply equivalent performance for recording and storing Knowledge, it turns into equally simple for every group to entry not solely the info they generate, but in addition Knowledge the opposite group generates.

This offers entrepreneurs and salespeople a holistic view of the client, enabling every of them to tailor their techniques and personalize their outreach. If a prospect is displaying explicit curiosity in advertising content material a couple of sure characteristic, the gross sales group can see this data within the shared CRM and can know to deal with that characteristic on their subsequent name with the prospect.

They need not wait on a advertising report or depend on an impersonal script – they will personalize their outreach and hone in on a prospect’s particular areas of curiosity, all because of each Hubs being constructed on the identical basis.

Constructing In another way, Rising Higher

The challenges that firms face in 2021 are new, so our strategy to constructing our merchandise must be new as nicely. With the rise of the hybrid office, we’re all discovering our work lives intersecting our dwelling and household lives, too. That raises the bar on what we anticipate from enterprise software program.

Folks use HubSpot to energy their companies, to supply for his or her households, to assist their communities thrive, and in lots of circumstances, to make the world a greater place.

It is now extra necessary than ever that our CRM platform expertise seems like one thing you’d use on the weekends, not simply Monday morning.

That is why we’re fiercely dedicated to constructing software program that has enterprise-grade energy mixed with consumer-grade intuitiveness and an expertise as pleasant as that provided by the apps all of us use in our private lives.

At HubSpot, our bar is ready by what our clients want, not what our opponents have executed in previous a long time. With the 5 Major Colours powering our platform and our unwavering dedication to by no means compromise on buyer expertise, we’re excited to proceed to assist our clients develop higher in 2021 and past.