Close to HubSpot and back again: Melanie Power sales team returns to its #1 CRM

HubSpot has an industry-dominating marketing suite. There’s a reason it’s well-loved by marketers around the world: as a centralized, streamlined tool––HubSpot crushes it.

But in the 7 years since HubSpot launched its CRM, they’ve yet to fully win over the hearts and workflows of small business sales teams.

We hear this every day from sales leaders who are struggling with disengaged, frustrated reps using HubSpot.

Anna Cochrane, the Client Success Director at Melanie Power, knows that feeling all too well.

“Last year, we were aligning ourselves with another company who used HubSpot, and we migrated there from Close to help streamline our sales communication. But it was just a whole different way to sell. We really struggled with it.”

Anna and her team couldn’t afford to wander in the desert for long. Their journey back to Close was a relatively quick one.

A simple sales workflow with big impact

Melanie Power is an Australia-based coach who helps women in bookkeeping and accounting command the price they deserve for the services they provide. Her company––of the same name––has a small team with 4 sales reps, plus client services and coaches.

“We help women in business learn to market themselves and become their own true CEO,” Anna says. “We give them accountability and the tools they need to grow.”

Their workflow is also simple and straightforward:

"We use Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube Ads driving to landing pages to help women find our private coaching Facebook group. From there, they can book inbound calls with our sales team. We also host free group training to nurture anyone who’s not yet ready to work with a coach. As sales reps, we lived out of our Close inboxes every day."

A tech transition creates unhappy reps

As a small, remote team across Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, and the U.S., Anna and her team have no room for error when it comes to their sales tech. But during a potential 2020 merger with another company, they needed to align their stack with the other sales team. Enter: the HubSpot CRM.

We were so gutted to be moving off Close because it was so easy. HubSpot was just an awkward tool for our sales team. It was never as easy as Close, and we had to layer in JustCall as another dialer.

Anna Cochrane
‍Client Success Director, Melanie Power

"We never knew where to put the notes," Anna remembers. "Our opportunity notes never saved against the contact in an intuitive way. HubSpot has cool features, but for what we needed as a small sales team––it was too much."

Even with outreach from the HubSpot success team, Anna and her reps knew they wanted to work inside of Close instead. When the Melanie Power team and its potential merger partner decided to part ways, Anna was relieved they could come back to the right-fit CRM.

“Every week, my team says how glad we are to be back in Close,” Anna says. “That’s so important to me as a sales leader because if my reps don’t love our CRM, they won’t use it.”

How small, remote teams use (and love) Close

Today, Anna and her team are settled back into Close after a free migration out of HubSpot––and already feeling the impact on their workflow:

Close just lays out everything we need so clearly and succinctly: notes, customer changes, our custom fields, and opportunity stats. It’s such a great central hub for our entire team, from sales reps to coaches working with clients. Multiple people can help our clients in one view: it’s so clean.

The Melanie Power team tech stack:

The Melanie Power team has 10 seats on Close Business, and with an annual discount, their investment in a CRM is minimal compared to the power and velocity it gives their agile team.

This year, Anna and the Melanie Power team are on an exciting growth trajectory. They’re focused on automation and simplicity within Close––but looking to spice up their prospecting and scaling strategies:

We’re looking at ways to keep the sales team small but be more innovative with how we find and warm leads. We’re adding webinars as sales tools and automating as much as possible with our really strong CRM foundation at the center.

Anna Cochrane
Client Success Director, Melanie Power