Before you commit to choosing a HubSpot Solutions Partner, there are certain questions you should ask yourself to ensure you're making the right decision.
On a drive back from a client visit in Cambridge once, our co-founder and Head of Revenue Eric Murphy recounted a talk he’d heard by Theodore Zeldin at Oxford TEDX around ‘The Conversation Menu’. Run by Zeldin, the dinner event saw guests paired off and encouraged to forego small talk in place of a series of questions presented to them on restaurant-style menus.
The questions were probing, the wording carefully considered, designed to stimulate thinking and conversation around subjects such as ambition, curiosity, fear, friendship and society. Not your average corporate dinner, then.
"One director", Eric told me as we flew down the A421, "said he learned more about a colleague in two hours than he had in over 20 years of working with him."
Questions make the world go round. They’re the building blocks of stories and the cues from which rapport grows. They’re a quest for information and they also provide it, in the form of answers. (We don’t need to highlight the commercial value of those.)
But there’s something else questions can do that’s at least as important as the answers they provide.
Questions test us. They encourage us to think about a subject more deeply. The right questions, asked in the right way, can even lead us to see something from a different perspective. On the search for the right HubSpot Solutions Partner, that’s incredibly valuable, equipping you and any prospective partners with all the insights you need to make informed partnership decisions with the best possible outcomes.
Download our guide to finding, assessing, and proceeding confidently with the Solutions Partner best suited to helping you hit your business goals.
Understanding your business
Before you begin to consider what a relationship with a HubSpot Solutions Partner will look like, it's important to revisit your core challenges and business goals.
Questions that explore your challenges and goals can help you to revise what you thought you needed. You might have counted tactics for lead generation your top priority when actually it's the rivalry between your sales and marketing teams or challenges defining lifecycle stages in the CRM that's the root cause of the problem.
"Questions test us. They encourage us to think around a subject more deeply. The right questions, asked in the right way, can even lead us to see something from a different perspective."
As your prospective partner, we want to make sure we're the right fit for you, too. We work with our clients in a variety of ways, from strategy, consultancy, and the design of customer-facing tech stacks with HubSpot at the core right through to the delivery of scalable inbound campaigns across marketing, sales and services.
Asking these questions of yourself first helps us because you’ll be able to go into greater detail when you come to share your answers, and we’ll be able to get a clearer idea of how your organisation operates and whether or not we’re the partner best suited to helping you unlock the full value of the HubSpot platform.
In the spirit of good conversation (and considered answers), we’ve compiled 31 of those questions below for you.
Whether you're considering us or another HubSpot Solutions Partner, use these questions to make your conversations as helpful and productive as possible.
31 questions to ask yourself before choosing a HubSpot Solutions Partner
YOUR GOALS
- How many customers do you need this year?
- How much is a customer worth to you (on average)?
- What is your lead to customer conversion rate?
- How many monthly visitors does your website get?
- What is your visitor to lead conversion rate?
- Do you have any additional goals?
CURRENT MARKETING ACTIVITY
- What marketing activities are you currently undertaking?
- How are they converting for you?
- What is the ROI for each channel?
- Are you working with any agencies or consultants?
CURRENT SALES ACTIVITY
- What CRM system are you using?
- What is the size of your sales team?
- Is your sales team in-house?
- What is the biggest challenge for your sales team in terms of goals?
- What is the biggest challenge for your sales team in terms of operational duties? Call logging etc.?
Related Read: How to Scope Your CRM Requirements [Example Document + Free Download]
BACKGROUND
- What problem are we solving?
- Who is the consumer we are problem-solving for?
- What’s the consumer insight?
- What facts and emotional reasons will make people buy/convert?
- What's your value proposition?
- Who is the competition?
CAMPAIGN MEASUREMENT
- How do we measure success?
- What are the key milestones/KPIs?
- What are your revenue forecasting/reporting requirements?
YOUR RESOURCES
- Is your team HubSpot Academy Certified?
- Do you have experienced in-house content writers?
- Who would be working on/managing this project from your end?
- Who will be the main point of contact for the day-to-day?
- Who will be responsible for the strategy and reporting?
TECHNICAL RESOURCES
- Is your team HubSpot Design Certified?
- Do you have in-house developers?
From consultation to conversation
We ask lots of questions, too. Your answers help us to understand who you are as a business, where you want to be, and what shape your inbound strategy or wider business/technology requirements should take.
One thing that's interesting about the calls our Business Development Representatives make in the sales process is that while they ask a whole range of familiar questions to dig into your challenges, they will also encourage you to think differently before answering.
This means thinking beyond what it is you sell, for example, but also what problems you’re solving for the customer and what your buyers actually want from you.
In our experience, many of these questions go much further than those asked by other Solutions Partners when they first engage with someone.
What are our clients saying about us? Read about their experiences in the HubSpot Partner Directory.
Thinking about hiring a HubSpot Solutions Partner and want to talk?
Inquisitiveness is one of our core values. Whether Eric is helping our clients start meaningful conversations with their prospects or discussing Theodore Zeldin with the wind in his hair, we understand that communication matters.
If you’re thinking about hiring a HubSpot Solutions Partner and you'd like to have a conversation with us about how we could help you to unlock the full potential of the HubSpot platform, have a go at answering the questions above then get in touch. We’ll quickly be able to assess where you’re coming from — and how we could help.
Learn more about finding, assessing, and proceeding confidently with the Solutions Partner best suited to helping you hit your business goals in our dedicated guide. Click the button below to download.
