James Walters interviews Andy Morley, Business Development Director at Hewland, about how Hewland uses HubSpot for their sales activity, which is part of our series on How Automotive companies can use HubSpot. Join the #SalesSuperleague.
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James: So I'm joined today by Andy from Hewland and we're talking about how Hewland went from previous state to now using HubSpot CRM to manage their sales activity. So Andy, what is it that Hewland sells?
Andy: Hi James. So Hewland sells transmissions to a variety of different applications, predominantly motorsport applications from Le Mans right through to Formula E.
James: And what type of customers are you typically looking to sell to?
Andy: Typically, directly to the OEM. We do have a number of professional motorsport teams that we sell to as well, but predominantly OEMs and constructors.
James: And tell me about your day to day role. What are you responsible for and how are you measured?
Andy: So I look after the sales and business development functions of Hewland. So, the day to day role would consist of trying to find new business in various different markets, whilst also overseeing a number of our accounts teams as well as marketing. And then with the ultimate goal of then being measured against the revenue and the longevity of the business that we manage to bring in.
James: And give us a bit of background. How were you handling sales activity previously, before moving to HubSpot CRM?
Andy: So previously Hewland hadn't had a CRM function. It really managed sales through traditional outlook methods and phone calls, without pulling it all into one place and using pipeline and offline in excel spreadsheets and other tools which weren't all linked essentially.
James: A fairly typical state for the market I'd say. Which is all good. And when did you realise you needed a CRM or something different to manage your sales activity?
Andy: So I've always been an advocate for CRM in a sales team. Predominantly because of the reasons beforehand, to ensure everyone is linked up together, and everybody's got visibility of all contacts, as well as opportunities that are live, which makes the sales task, from an administration point of view, as easy as possible. And making the core role of the salesperson to actually find the business and secure it without the need for lots of administration.
James: More time selling and less time admin, definitely. So did Hewland try any other CRM's or sales tools before choosing HubSpot?
Andy: Yes we did actually use BTM as a tool which you get free with outlook, which I had used in previous roles. It does work quite well off the back of contacts, when you're adding contacts to outlook but its not, from an actual pipeline point of view and recording opportunities, it's not very good at linking opportunities or developing opportunities from it. It's predominantly just a customer information recording tool.
James: So I suppose, why did you then go with HubSpot CRM and Sales Professional, and ultimately ourselves at The Tree Group for implementation?
Andy: Yes, so The Tree Group obviously highlighted some of the key benefits of moving to HubSpot, and I think the advantages for us is really around the visibility from senior management right through to the people working on the opportunities now. That's really where everybody can see what deals are at what stage, and it allowed us to not only record what our projects were from an opportunity point of view but also down to single gear boxes, which we still sell to a variety of different levels of motorsport.
James: And being an advocate of CRM's, how do you feel HubSpot compares to the other CRMS you have used before?
Andy: Yes, I've been really impressed how intuitive it is, and how easily it integrates into our processes, so when you're developing sales processes internally and getting them to reflect into a piece of software has been really key to getting the buy in from the rest of the organisation to use it. I've been pretty impressed with the ease of how it's integrated into our day to day systems from developing proposal numbers to really understanding where opportunities are, and then from my perspective using that new business forecast into my overall company sales forecast.
James: Yeah, often companies will invest in technology but if it's not easy to adopt then it's probably a wasted investment. So, obviously HubSpot does quite a lot. So what do you feel for you personally, in your job role, is the main benefit of using HubSpot?
Andy: I think probably the Deals aspect of HubSpot is a really good tool when you're working on multiple deals with the same client potentially. It's good to have a way of segregating out the different deals, and then also the visibility I get from where we are in each deal stage, and how that projects into revenue into the next coming months or years. So it's really good for me to then take that ongoing factored new business revenue and be able to use that as an intelligent part of my sales forecast.
James: Obviously you're responsible as a team leader, management level, so are you using any other of the more detailed tools such as Email Templates, or Tasks, or the Inbox Integration to automatically add contacts and log emails to the CRM?
Andy: Yes so, I think it's important to have the same messaging when we're initially responding to new business and new contacts that come through the website, that we're able to share initial product information which all looks the same and has the same feel but also allows our guys to send follow-up messages without having to remember to contact that person as it [HubSpot] does it automatically. So that's been really useful and the templating response has been good. So yes, the sequencing aspect has been quite useful for the rest of the team.
James: Brilliant, its ultimately a way to bring all of your sales emails on brand and make sure everyone is using the latest info. Like you say, the sequencing is great because each sales person has their own online P.A. who does all the chasing for them, without them having to do it, that's perfect. Lastly, what are your future plans with HubSpot? How might you use HubSpot differently as Hewland grows?
Andy: As the data over the past year has been accumulated, it's becoming much more intuitive, so I think some of the areas we could be looking to further exploit is around the suggested leads that HubSpot can generate, but also I think more and more as we are growing, the need to grow the number of sequences and the number of templated responses we have on initial enquiries is going to be another area which we're going to look to move forward in. As well as some of the reporting that we get from HubSpot allows us to feed into the CEO much more comprehensive data than previously. So we're going to try exploit that a little bit more.
James: It might be interesting to see, maybe now your processes have advanced with HubSpot, maybe how the Workflows tool could help automate the manual data entry as you hand off leads from one to another. Brilliant, I'm glad you're getting on really well. That's great, thanks Andy.
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About The Tree Group
The Tree Group is a business growth agency and HubSpot Certified Partner that combines sales, marketing, and websites to help Automotive companies with at least 10 staff and a desire to grow by 15% in the next 18 months. Does that sound like you?
