Let’s start with what has become obvious: lacking CRM training is a big problem.

As a long-time HubSpot solutions partner, we’ve seen it time and time again – sales and marketing teams are onboarded to HubSpot, but they don’t have the required training to use it effectively. In fact, a recent study showed that 32% of companies using a CRM stated their biggest challenge was a lack of expertise among users, highlighting the need for improved training.

If your business is on HubSpot and lack of user technical capacity is holding you back, deciding to provide your team with training is a critical step (as is hiring the right HubSpot Certified Trainer). But there’s vital work that needs to happen before training starts, and that’s what this post is all about.

Read on for tips on how to get the most out of HubSpot training.

Define and Align on the Right Learning Objectives

Imagine you’re a beginner runner and you hire a trainer to help you prepare for an upcoming race. You wouldn’t give your trainer a vague goal like “Help me get in shape” – you’d probably say something like “I signed up for a 10k that’s happening three months from now and I need help improving my endurance and speed because I want to finish the race in under an hour.”

The same goes for HubSpot training; to get what you want out of the program, you need to go in with clear, applicable learning objectives.

Think of learning objectives as goals for the program. By the end of the training, will your team be able to do XYZ? Ensure that the learning objectives are directly aligned with your broader business goals. For example, if a KPI for your team is to increase sales revenue by 20% in the next fiscal year, your training might include objectives tied to mastering HubSpot’s sales pipeline management and automation tools to improve deal closure rates and accelerate deal velocity. (You know the drill: specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-bound.)

A good trainer will collaborate and guide you to good learning objectives, but you should be prepared to speak to what you ultimately want your team to be armed with as a result of the work.

Communicate the Importance of the Training with Your Team

In a previous post, we explored how to overcome CRM adoption challenges – and a key component of success is leadership’s role in guiding the necessary change management from the top down.

This is true both of CRM adoption generally and CRM training specifically. Your team will be looking to you for signals as to how they should think about the training, so you must communicate your expectations to ensure they take it seriously and understand the benefits to themselves and the company.

Specifically:

  • Make it clear this is a priority for you and the company’s leadership team
  • Tie the benefits of training back to their personal goals (e.g. explain how it will make their lives easier/help them hit their sales targets/reduce admin busy work – whatever is most pertinent for them)
  • Communicate the expectations for not only participating in the training but applying the learnings afterward (how will this figure into how your team is assessed, rewarded, hired and fired?)

Arm Your Trainer with Useful Intel Beforehand

The more your trainer knows about your team going into training, the more effective it will be because they’ll be able to anticipate nuances and challenges.

Let’s say your sales team includes Shaun, a 30-year sales veteran who’s openly hostile to change and new technology; Melissa, a newer hire who asks really good questions but generally needs to be called on before talking in group settings; and Greg, a BDR who prefers Salesforce and is resisting HubSpot in hopes the company eventually migrates.

Tell your trainer about all these things! Give them all the dirt and give it to them ASAP. This invaluable background intel will help them tailor the training and tackle these challenges head-on.

Participant Prep and IT Checklist

I can attest from personal experience that seemingly mundane things like your company’s firewall settings can easily derail a training session if they haven’t been addressed beforehand.

To prevent this from happening, confirm all participants have completed the following tasks before training:

  • Accept the invite to HubSpot and create a login
  • Download the HubSpot mobile app and log in

Also, have your IT team confirm the following have been addressed prior to training:

  • Enable participants to install HubSpot Sales for Google or Microsoft 365 (installation requires administrative privileges).
  • Firewalls will need to allow communication with *.hubspot.com via HTTPS. Any updates will require communication with dl.getsidekick.com.


Checking these boxes in advance takes almost no time to complete and will avoid potential headaches during the training, so be sure not to skip this step.

Final Thoughts

The CRM training problem isn’t merely that not enough users are trained – it’s also that users who have been trained weren’t trained sufficiently. Sometimes that comes down to who is providing the training, but the businesses hiring the trainer play a big part in this equation.

By following the steps outlined here, you put your business to be positioned for successful training that arms your team with the technical skills they need to grow your business.

To learn how we help clients with this very thing, you can take a look at our HubSpot training service, and feel free to get in touch to schedule a consultation. Happy training!