Driving User Adoption on the HubSpot Platform

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Bayard Bradford
  • Date Published
  • Categories Analysis, Blog, Guide
  • Reading Time 4-Minute Read

User adoption is the critical determinant of using the Hubspot platform (Marketing Hub, Sales Hub and Service Hub) to drive revenue growth.

According to Redspire, almost 50% of CRM projects fail due to slow user adoption. Nearly 70% of project managers expect that their staff will be cynical about using a CRM solution.

A CRM may enable reps to work more efficiently, but its use can’t be optional. Success requires a programmatic approach to build user adoption. The HubSpot platform has numerous features built-in that enable user adoption and ensure ROI on an investment in the software.


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The 3 Cs of CRM User Adoption: Convenience, Competence and Community

HubSpot adoption depends on what we call the “3C” model.

3 Cs of CRM user adoption

#1: Convenience

HubSpot Sales Hub is easy to learn and convenient use, even for salespeople who don’t have CRM prior experience. HubSpot’s selling methodology, Frictionless Selling, emphasizes convenient selling experiences for both buyers and sellers. Delivering a frictionless selling experience for salespeople means adding the sales enablement and workflow automation tools available in HubSpot Sales Hub. (Learn more in this free 56-page ebook, the Ultimate Guide to HubSpot Sales Hub Deployment).


Free Download: The Ultimate Guide to HubSpot Sales Hub Deployment


HubSpot CRM functionality drives adoption thanks to some critical features:

  • Sales intelligence such as prospect identification and automatic contact enrichment
  • Sales acceleration tools like email tracking and document tracking
  • Automation capabilities such as sequences, smart lists, task reminders.
  • Mobile app capabilities

During implementation, take the necessary steps to ensure a successful initial user experience before onboarding, training and initial use.

#2: Competence  

Competency development means taking a programmatic approach to moving new HubSpot users from incompetence to competence. Classroom-type training is necessary but rarely sufficient for developing a user’s competency in a complex toolkit like HubSpot. Three critical elements of competency development to add to your training program are:

  • Onboarding
  • Mentoring
  • Certifications

Onboarding:  A well-designed onboarding plan explains why the software tools are being implemented and give users the opportunity to immediately apply their work to the new technology.  Onboarding also includes preparing users for success once they finish training courses.  The support system for users must be up and running in case there are issues and problems. HubSpot’s Sales Hub Onboarding is a great option for companies just getting started with the HubSpot CRM.

Mentoring:  Having mentors available will help the new users jump-start their work on the HubSpot platform.  Power users form a core of capable users who can work with less

Certifications:  Certifications grow expertise across the organization and can motivate users to strive for excellence by bringing recognition to the adoption process. HubSpot Academy, HubSpot’s official learning resource,  specializes in comprehensive certifications  Users can be rewarded for obtaining certifications as part of building a community of expertise.

#3: Community

To establish a successful HubSpot community, consider using an app such as Slack or Microsoft Teams to organize community communications. Then plan for these elements:

  1. Communication is critical throughout the planning, implementation, and operational phases. Leaders communicate their vision of the future, consistently support the CRM program, and demonstrate active use of the CRM in their daily work.
  2. Support for users ideally takes the form of a help desk with a ticketing system. HubSpot’s Service Hub is an ideal solution for ticketing and support. The support process will capture and publish FAQs, successful practices and approved solutions in a knowledge base.
  3. Recognition helps define and sustain your community of CRM users. Recognizing and rewarding users for meeting key milestones and metrics (KPIs) builds a shared sense of ownership.

The results of applying the 3C model of user adoption can be seen in high user adoption rates, high numbers of competent users, increased sophistication of automation develop by users, acceleration of the sales cycle from lead to close, and higher rates of customer retention.