Is your HubSpot data & CRM holding back your revenue operations?

For many companies using HubSpot, data challenges creep in quietly but grow into serious obstacles for your CRM and revenue operations. Duplicate records, inconsistent formatting, fragmented datasets, and incorrect information don’t just clutter your database — they undermine your ability to make informed decisions, deliver personalised customer experiences, align sales and marketing, and scale operations effectively.

Data in the CRM is critical to revenue operations—yet it remains one of the biggest pain points and hindrances to driving growth. Our in-house HubSpot CRM extraordinaire, Stacey Roberts, shares her insights into this very pertinent topic.

Q1: What are the most common reasons clients come to SpotDev feeling frustrated or disillusioned with their HubSpot portal or subscription?

A: A lack of knowledge when it comes to HubSpot features and tools. Without fully understanding the capabilities of the platform, users can get frustrated believing they are not able to perform certain tasks, need additional software or that HubSpot is just a customer database. 

1.1. Messy data and automations 

While no one system is ever 100% perfect when it comes to data, having inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete or duplicated data in any system is sure to lead to user frustration, team misalignment and poor adoption. 

1.2. Lack of oversight of HubSpot data 

Simply having data in a system doesn’t fulfil the needs of most teams or businesses. In order to achieve your goals, you need to understand where you currently are – to do that you need to implement reporting within that system. That may be simple, top-level reporting or it may be more in-depth and comprehensive. 

1.3. Excessive manual work 

Many teams have been working in a particular way for a long time. When they move to HubSpot, they now have a host of places to navigate, properties to update, tasks to action and notifications to monitor. Utilising the host of automation tools available within HubSpot, manual work can be significantly reduced – for all teams involved. Workflows can update properties, send notifications and automatically update customers on progress while users can automate sales outreach with sequences. 

Q2: What common mistakes do companies make when importing or structuring their data in HubSpot?

A 2.1.) Not following data formatting and hygiene best practice 

HubSpot makes data formatting and hygiene easier with built-in data formatting and entry rules. You can use workflows to automate fixes—like turning “john” into “John”. You can also require unique values and set formatting rules for phone numbers and postal codes, for example. Messy data leads to inaccurate reporting as well as confusion, frustration and delays for both HubSpot users and customers. If there are external systems integrated with HubSpot, these issues can expand right the way across the business. 

Figure 1: Workflows are an excellent tool to help you format your data correctly

2.2) Not enforcing data requirement rules 

Constantly monitoring and rectifying missing data issues is time- and energy-intensive. HubSpot provides a selection of tools which reduce this manual workload. Setting required data as mandatory at record creation or at the different stages of deal and ticket pipelines can ensure the correct information is recorded and available to the relevant teams. 

2.2.1 Conditional logic on properties can make it easy for teams to input required data while keeping record views clean and tidy. Conditional logic on properties in HubSpot means that some fields only appear based on the values selected in other fields. This helps teams focus on the right inputs without cluttering the screen with unnecessary fields. Let’s say your team is entering details about a new deal:

• Property 1: "Deal Type” (dropdown: New Business, Renewal)

• Conditional Property: "Reason for Renewal”

  • This field only shows up if “Renewal” is selected in “Deal Type”

2.2.2  Workflows can also be utilised by enrolling records which do not meet the required criteria (e.g. no associated contact) and setting tasks for the record owners to update as needed. Reporting dashboards can also allow teams to easily identify records which need attention. 

2.3. Assuming a custom property/object is always needed 

Many customers define a new process, or integration, and assume they need a whole new set of properties and objects to make it work when, quite often, there are existing objects, properties and association labels that will do the job just fine. 

2.3.1). Existing Objects

Definition:
Predefined types of records in HubSpot that represent core parts of your business.

Examples: Contacts (people); Companies (organisations); Deals (sales opportunities); Tickets (support requests)

Figure 2: Examples of objects in HubSpot - contacts, companies, deals & tickets

2.3.2). Properties

Definition:
Fields that hold information within an object.

Examples (for a Contact): First Name; Email Address; Job Title

HubSpot provides a host of default properties, based on their knowledge of how their customers across many industries, use the platform. While these properties are quite generic, most can be personalised according to your business and solve multiple problems at the same time. For example, Industry is a default single-line text property, but this property could be changed to a dropdown or multi-select property should a business work with a specific list of industries. This would also standardise the inputs, making reporting much easier. 

2.3.3). Association Labels

Definition:
Custom tags used to describe the type of relationship between two associated records.

Examples (for a Contact): A contact is associated with a deal as a "Billing Contact" and/or a company is associated with a ticket as a “Decision Maker”

Rather than having several different yes/no properties for the relationship a record has with another, association labels can be used and required. This allows users to easily identify the relationship between records at a glance, without having to search for multiple properties. For example, association labels for contacts which show their relationship to a deal record as “billing contact” or “decision maker” are shown on the contact association card on the deal.  

2.4 Having multiple sources for the same data with no hierarchy in place causing conflict/duplication 

While it is exciting to integrate external systems to HubSpot and create that link across teams/processes, clients can sometimes jump into an integration without properly mapping out the data and clearly defining the hierarchical rules that need to be implemented. 

When there is the possibility that the same data may be present in multiple systems, it’s important to ensure rules are set in place as to which source of data is the truth. For example, when an in-house app with customer login/account data is synced to HubSpot, it’s important to ask, should the in-house app always overwrite the data in HubSpot for certain properties.

Q3: What proactive steps can businesses take to avoid data issues in HubSpot from the start?

A: 3.1 Following data formatting and hygiene best practice 

Proper data formatting is a critical step in ensuring that data is efficient, accurate, and aligned with your business needs and:

• Minimises the risk of data inconsistencies or errors.
• Ensures that all critical data fields are properly mapped and accessible in the HubSpot.
• Reduces delays caused by incomplete or improperly formatted data. 
• Facilitates a smooth transition for the team to the new platform.

• Removing/merging duplicate data – be that whole records, or duplicated properties.
• Ensuring consistent data types e.g. date following consistent format (DD-MM-YYYY).
• Removing leading or trailing spaces in any data fields.
• Ensuring each record has a unique identifier (e.g. email for contacts). 

3.3 Regularly auditing existing properties:

• Check for duplicate properties and merge/remove where possible 
• Check for unused properties – if not needed, remove them; if they are needed investigate why they are not being used – perhaps a team training exercise on how to use them is needed 
  

3.4 Regularly auditing workflows:

• The HubSpot workflows tool includes two very useful default saved views – “Needs Review” and “Unused” 
  
• Regularly reviewing any workflows in the “Needs Review” view facilitates the speedy identification and rectification of any errors. 
• “Unused” workflows are those which have had no actions in the past 90 days. This may be by design (e.g. on a workflow built to send automated emails during a certain monthly period such as Christmas break) or it may be that the workflow was set up for a job that has not been repeated or a process that is no longer applicable to the business. Monitoring these workflows and removing those that are no longer needed reduces the risk of confusion on the part of users and incorrect actions/data updates by out-of-date workflows.