Avison Young ultimately decided to move to HubSpot as its global CRM because of the simplification that the system brought and chose Huble as its partner to expertly guide them through the CRM migration process.
Our solutions architects initially defined Avison Young’s global processes and setup before migrating data from 300,000 contacts and 120,000 companies, plus all of the corresponding activities for these records, into their central HubSpot portal which supports the entire two-billion-dollar enterprise.
To increase CRM adoption among brokers, our change management consultants put in place several strategies.
This included training a team internally at Huble that provided around-the-clock HubSpot support to all of Avison Young’s CRM users, an Ambassador Programme where we trained and supported internal AY HubSpot ambassadors, an end-user support ticketing system, as well as setting up a knowledge base to help users self-serve when they need support, to help with the onboarding of new starters, and provide ongoing training to refresh knowledge and give an opportunity to dive deeper into certain aspects of the platform.
To generate excitement among the users going through their second or third CRM roll-out, we took a more consultative approach when initially defining the global process within HubSpot so that they were part of the process and were able to raise challenges from previous roll-outs.
The result was the training and onboarding of all 1,600 Avison Young team members across the US and Canada onto HubSpot’s Sales, Marketing and Service Hubs, with Germany and the UK soon to follow!
Of these users, we identified and trained the following personas:
- CRM Coordinator (old Apto Admin Users): Responsible for pulling reports, supporting teams with HubSpot settings, and assisting brokers with data migration and questions. They are tech-savvy and have experience as Apto admin users.
- Leadership/Managing Director: Senior persona responsible for forecasting and reporting revenue across all regions, including active involvement in creating and updating deals, contacts, and companies. They manage regional divisions and report to C-Suite individuals. Some are tech-savvy, while others are not accustomed to using a CRM.
- LRP (Revenue Processor)/Researcher: Responsible for extracting deal information from HubSpot for financial reporting. They export deal data but no longer update deals on behalf of brokers. They are under pressure from brokers but cannot enter deals themselves. They are familiar with basic CRM tasks.
- Broker/Broker Admin/Operations Manager: Main users who store client information, track activity, keep notes, and manage deals in HubSpot. Using the CRM is crucial for commission claims. Training should focus on essential features, emphasizing ease of use and the importance of adding specific data.
- Marketing Ops (Innovation & Marketing Support): Support brokers with marketing activities for listings and deals. They need to quickly identify deals requiring marketing support and assist brokers promptly. These individuals are tech-savvy and experienced in using marketing tools.
At the very start of the HubSpot deployment project, we had outlined a high-level timeline including training.
Once the project was underway, we met weekly with Avison Young and looked at the project milestones each week which included the pilot, change management plan, training plan, training material creation and the end-user training itself.
We built out a training plan, defining the initial training region, the number of users that needed to be trained, the different roles across the company so that we could tailor the training and divide the groups appropriately, and the number of sessions we would run to ensure the group sizes were as small as possible.
We recommended that all training all included the following:
- Learning objectives tailored to each individual role
- The objectives of the global CRM project as a whole, including a reminder of the problems AY was seeking to solve
- What does success for Avison Young look like and how will it benefit each person using the platform
- How HubSpot helps to accomplish this
- Support resources available to all users
- Learning resources for further training, including HubSpot’s Academy
We then structured the rest of the agenda in a ‘Day in the Life’ approach, focusing on how HubSpot would fit into their daily activities to ensure the training was clear and applicable to each user and their role within the company.
