In this article, we'll be exploring practical use cases for integrating HubSpot with Kluster, the industry leader in forecasting and revenue analytics, to demonstrate how this partnership can significantly enhance your sales strategies.
Revenue forecasting serves as a critical navigational tool for organisations, providing the necessary guidance for effective planning, informed decision-making, and resource allocation.
Companies are now benefiting from lower inflation and low staff cuts. The shift allows planning in quarters/years, emphasising the precious nature of capital.
This underscores the need to:
- Avoid revenue blindsides.
- Plan revenue meticulously.
- Deliver rock-solid unit economics.
This strategic approach aligns with the evolving economic landscape, highlighting the importance of revenue forecasting as a key tool for navigating uncertainties and shaping financial futures.
Notably, research underscores the significance of accurate forecasts, revealing that companies with precise predictions are 10% more likely to achieve year-over-year revenue growth and have twice the probability of attaining top-tier status within their respective industries.
HubSpot's forecasting tool is purpose-built to offer a versatile and user-friendly solution for businesses, serving a range of purposes. Whether it's for tracking progress, projecting quarterly outcomes, or facilitating one-on-one meetings, HubSpot's Sales Hub has maintained its reputation as a go-to platform for sales management since its debut in 2014.
Over the years, it has continually evolved and expanded its influence, attracting a growing user base, including larger enterprises. As the platform's user community expanded, there emerged a heightened demand for more robust forecasting capabilities.
HubSpot made a noteworthy announcement at INBOUND23, as they unveiled an array of specialised forecasting tools that are poised to redefine how businesses can make the most of HubSpot Sales Hub.
The HubSpot and Kluster integration, with its advanced capabilities, takes this commitment to the next level by offering a powerful solution to enhance revenue forecasting and management. With Kluster, organisations can improve their forecasting capabilities using machine learning predictions, historical trends applied to the live pipeline and forward-looking views.
The HubSpot and Kluster integration
So, why do you need a tool like Kluster? Kluster becomes essential when businesses outgrow simpler structures that HubSpot's forecasting tools cater to.
It addresses complex scenarios with multiple forecasting splits, diverse revenue streams, technical reporting challenges, stringent compliance requirements, intricate organisational structures, and the need for advanced reporting features. By integrating Kluster, businesses can customise their solutions to meet these specific demands, enhancing their forecasting and reporting capabilities.
Use Case 1: Automated Trend Analysis
Kluster addresses the core problem in the market: executives need better insights, more signals and less noise. Kluster is the strategic platform for executives and board members looking for data-driven GTM strategy analyses. It goes beyond the needs of managers and salespeople, providing executives with tools for high-level decision making and course correction for sales leaders in the field.
A key challenge in sales management is the struggle to achieve sufficient visibility. The obstacle is the inability to compare key time periods, analyse trends and respond effectively to risks. Kluster supports managers with the insights they need to make strategic decisions, ensuring a more efficient, data-driven approach at the top level of your organisation.
HubSpot provides a robust foundation for sales analytics, allowing teams to track and analyse their sales pipelines. It provides valuable insights into the ongoing sales activities, such as lead generation, deal progression, and revenue generation.
However, if your business is similar to most B2B organisations with different sales teams targeting different markets, Kluster is essential to provide comprehensive visibility broken down by product line, team or region. Regardless of the size, scale or complexity of your sales organisation, Kluster is the tool you need to truly harness the power of historical data and gain deep insights into trends over time.
Kluster seamlessly integrates with HubSpot and takes your data analysis to the next level. It offers features like Stalling Pipeline, Pipeline Change Reporting, and Forecast Flow. These features empower both sales managers and reps to swiftly discern how the pipeline has changed, which is difficult to do in HubSpot. Stalling Pipeline highlights deals that have stagnated, prompting reps to bin deals that skews numbers, helps reps to update pipeline improving their data hygiene and gives leadership insights into resource allocation by answering important questions, such as which segments you should invest marketing spend in.
Pipeline Change Reporting provides insights into changes within the pipeline, allowing teams to forecast and track their sales activities more effectively. In addition, Kluster enables a quick understanding of changes within the pipeline that would normally take hours to analyse and understand. This allows executives to create reports for the board and makes it easier for vice presidents to work with reps to improve the management of their pipelines. Understanding how the pipeline has changed with one click streamlines decision-making processes and improves overall operational efficiency.
By leveraging Kluster on top of HubSpot, you not only streamline the process of tracking pipeline trends but also gain valuable insights into why certain deals stall or change. This data-driven approach allows you to take prompt actions to rectify issues and capitalise on opportunities, resulting in a more agile and efficient sales operation.
Use Case 2: Increased C-suite & Board Reporting Visibility
Automated ARR reporting:
Forecast ARR and renewals:
HubSpot can do simple deal-based forecasting, such as determining whether deals are in the best or committed stage. However, its limitations become apparent when you need to forecast ARR, renewals and new MRR split by various factors such as products, teams, and custom objects.
Enter Kluster, the solution to bridge this gap in revenue reporting. With Kluster, the process of tracking ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) changes becomes more streamlined and insightful. Kluster automates ARR reporting, providing a detailed view of changes over time - visualising ARR change over time, split by any products, hierarchies, and line items. This functionality enhances your understanding of how ARR has evolved over any key period, offering a comprehensive and dynamic perspective on your revenue landscape.
Imagine you have a complex sales operation with multiple revenue streams and product lines. With HubSpot alone, tracking these diverse revenue sources can be challenging. However, Kluster's ARR change reporting feature not only makes it easier to understand how renewals and new ARRs are distributed across your products, teams and custom objects, but also provides clear insights into ARR changes over time, broken down by any item, ensuring comprehensive and meaningful reporting.
Kluster's ability to dissect the components of ARR changes empowers you to make informed decisions. You can identify which products or teams are driving revenue growth and pinpoint areas that may need attention.
Kluster forecasting:
Precision in revenue reporting is key. HubSpot excels in providing recurring revenue reporting, especially when the forecasted deal amount is evenly spread over several months. However, when deal amounts vary, technical revenue reporting can become challenging.
Kluster helps you automate reporting for any revenue recognition model. Close the gap between bookings and revenue recognition. If you need flexibility in customisation, Kluster is the way to go.
Kluster steps in to offer a solution for deal forecasting that empowers sales representatives to scenario plan and edit their forecasted deal amounts. This not only allows for more accurate revenue forecasting but also provides executives with the confidence they need in the forecasted numbers.
Imagine a scenario where your sales deals involve varying deal amounts, such as product bundles with different pricing structures. HubSpot may struggle to provide precise revenue forecasts for such scenarios. Kluster's Forecasting Context Widgets and Forecasting features seamlessly integrate with HubSpot, allowing you to handle these complex deal structures with ease.
By leveraging Kluster on top of HubSpot, you can not only maintain accuracy in your revenue reporting but also provide executives with a clear view of expected revenue, taking into account multiple revenue streams, including organisations with a part product-led growth strategy.
Use Case 3: Technical Revenue Reporting
Precision in revenue reporting is key. HubSpot excels in providing recurring revenue reporting, especially when the forecasted deal amount is evenly spread over several months. However, when deal amounts vary, technical revenue reporting can become challenging.
Kluster steps in to offer a solution that empowers sales representatives to scenario plan and edit their forecasted deal amounts. This not only allows for more accurate revenue forecasting but also provides executives with the confidence they need in the forecasted numbers.
Imagine a scenario where your sales deals involve varying deal amounts, such as product bundles with different pricing structures. HubSpot may struggle to provide precise revenue forecasts for such scenarios. Kluster's Forecasting Context Widgets and Forecasting features seamlessly integrate with HubSpot, allowing you to handle these complex deal structures with ease.
By leveraging Kluster on top of HubSpot, you can not only maintain accuracy in your revenue reporting but also provide executives with a clear view of expected revenue, taking into account multiple revenue streams, including organisations with a part product-led growth strategy.
Use Case 4: Targets broken down by rep
Setting targets for your sales team is a fundamental practice for achieving success. However, generic benchmarks often fall short of motivating and guiding your sales reps effectively. This is where Kluster's unique capability comes into play.
Kluster Vision, when integrated with HubSpot, allows sales managers to set realistic and personalised targets based on the specific behaviours and conversion rates of each sales representative. This level of customisation empowers your teams, reps, and regions to achieve their targets more effectively, driving both productivity and efficiency.
HubSpot alone provides you with the means to set overall sales targets, but it may lack the granularity required for individual performance improvement. By pairing HubSpot with Kluster Vision, you can take a more data-driven approach to target setting.
The key to sales strategy is setting targets, monitoring the plan and course correcting - especially when the market is settling but the pressure from the board to watch cash flow is not. With Kluster's interactive scenario planning tool, executives and salespeople can course correct based on historical sales applied to live data. This can be applied to any product line, team or campaign.
This data-driven approach provides sales teams with a clear roadmap to success, ensuring that targets are not only challenging but also attainable. Sales reps can see precisely where they need to improve, and sales managers can gain deeper insights into which behaviours drive success.
The result is a more motivated and efficient sales force, working cohesively to achieve and exceed their individual targets. The combination of HubSpot and Kluster Vision fosters a more dynamic and results-oriented sales environment.
Use Case 5: Customised Sales Insights
HubSpot is renowned for its deal reporting capabilities, which are tailored for smaller and newer sales teams. However, as organisations grow and their sales teams become more diverse, the need for advanced insights becomes evident, especially in the realm of sales predictions and trend analysis - an area where HubSpot may have limitations.
Enter Kluster, offering a specialised focus on sales predictions and automating trend analysis, addressing a gap in HubSpot's capabilities. The key lies in building predictions using the right sales methodologies, and this is where Kluster excels, particularly in AI-driven forecasting.
Kluster even takes it a step further than AI Forecasting by enabling teams to easily understand what lies ahead. Kluster's Machine Learning forecasts provide a range of confidences, including Low Projections, Predicted Projections, and High Projections. This empowers executives to strategize based on a variety of scenarios, allowing for in-depth pipeline analysis, prediction, and stress testing.
Another critical aspect is the process rigour for bottoms-up forecasting. Aligning on what constitutes a good forecast can be challenging, and Kluster addresses this human element by providing expertise to improve forecasting methodology and visibility into deal health.
Kluster's Forward-looking pipeline views offer detailed insights tailored for both executives and reps. It aids in understanding performance, required pipeline coverage, and accurate predictions in real time. This tool allows executives to plan for the future and reps to course-correct, fostering a dynamic and adaptive sales environment.
Tailored to any product line, representative, or region, Kluster emphasises understanding historical trends and applying them to live pipelines. This approach enhances current sales team productivity and metrics, providing a foundation for building a robust revenue plan for the next 12 months.
The integration of Kluster with HubSpot becomes indispensable for organisations with diverse sales team structures and complex reporting needs, offering the granularity and customisation required for success in the ever-evolving world of sales predictions and analytics
Empower your sales team with HubSpot and Kluster
As businesses continue to evolve and diversify, the need for more advanced and customisable solutions in sales management becomes increasingly evident. HubSpot, with its Sales Hub, provides an excellent foundation for managing sales operations, and its recent enhancements reflect a commitment to adapting to the changing needs of its user base.
However, it is the integration of Kluster that truly takes your sales analytics and forecasting to the next level.
Kluster helps you to double your ability to hit quota by seamlessly working with HubSpot and providing advanced features, from scenario planning to in-depth insights. This empowers your teams to make more informed decisions and optimise their sales strategies for greater financial success.
Kluster enables you to:
- Increase your team's productivity: Tailor pipeline capacity per rep/per region, allowing your teams to focus on real deals and ultimately increase conversions.
- Enhance visibility for executives: Get early warning forecasting shortfalls, improved deal management, deal health insights, and a unified forecasting methodology across any team or region.
If you find yourself dealing with complex revenue structures, a diverse sales team, or intricate reporting requirements, this partnership extends your sales team's productivity and visibility, no matter how complex your set-up.
If you want to learn more about how HubSpot and Kluster can transform your sales analytics and strategy execution, don't hesitate to contact our team.
Learn about the key insights, risks, rep behaviours and trends that could improve your team's productivity and your visibility. Take the next step with Huble and Kluster by booking your free trial today.
