George B. Thomas
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For years, making money or taking payments online has been difficult. You have to set up a payment processor, figure out how to hack a PayPal button for a webpage or take that daring journey of creating your own Stripe account.
All the while, you wonder if you're making the right choice. Or are you setting it up right?
Okay, maybe that’s only me.
But, as we move into a time where modern buyers want to easily self-purchase and continue to have less patience and more expectations, getting your payments, invoicing, and online purchase right is imperative.
Enter the HubSpot Commerce Hub!
In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the HubSpot Commerce Hub based on several interviews with Jack Coopersmith from HubSpot, additional research, and our own daily usage of the commerce tools here at georgebthomas.com and beyondyourdefault.com.
If you're wondering what the HubSpot Commerce Hub is or why it’s crucial for your organization, you're in the right place! Let’s dig in.
Picture this: you're at the helm of your business, navigating the choppy waters of modern online e-commerce. Along comes the HubSpot Commerce Hub, like a trusty first mate, ready to streamline your voyage towards efficient business operations.
Imagine a world where payment processing doesn’t suck!
Here are just a few ways that the HubSpot Commerce Hub helps your business:
- Invoices and Payment Links: HubSpot Commerce Hub lets you quickly turn quotes into cash with direct invoicing from the HubSpot Smart CRM. It also offers the creation of powerful payment links, enabling sales from various channels like websites, forms, and emails.
- Subscriptions and B2B Checkout: The Commerce Hub supports the management of recurring revenue streams through subscriptions, integrated with the CRM for easy management and reporting. It also provides a seamless B2B checkout experience, enhancing customer satisfaction.
- Custom Billing Automation and Revenue Reporting: HubSpot Commerce Hub offers automation for time-consuming billing tasks and the ability to craft custom, easy-to-use reports. This feature combines commerce and CRM data for a comprehensive understanding of revenue performance and integrates with QuickBooks for streamlined accounting processes.
I don’t know about you, but that makes me want to do a bit of a happy dance!
Leveraging the Commerce Hub is like having a Swiss Army knife in your B2C and B2B E-commerce pocket, ready to be used immediately for your business needs.
Are you wondering what tools create the HubSpot Commerce Hub? Great question. That was one of our first questions when it was released at INBOUND 2023.
Hubspot Commerce Hub Tools
Like that Swiss Army knife we just discussed, what tool do you need to use and when? Let’s look at everything you have at your fingertips with the HubSpot Commerce Hub.
As you can see, you've got robust features in your HubSpot Commerce Hub toolkit. But let’s dive into one of the foundational pieces for which you’ll use HubSpot Products.
It's not HubSpot’s products but your products in HubSpot! 🤔
What are HubSpot Products & Line Items
In HubSpot, "Products" refer to the goods or services that your company offers to the humans you serve. These can be anything from physical items to software subscriptions or consulting services.
HubSpot Products
In HubSpot, “Products” create a standardized list of what your company offers to the world, a.k.a. sells to humans. Each product entry can include details like name, description, price, and SKU. You can even create custom “Product” properties to wrap HubSpot around your E-Commerce needs.
By defining your “Products” in HubSpot, your business can streamline its sales process and enable your sales teams to quickly add these products to deals, quotes, and invoices, ensuring consistency in pricing and descriptions across all customer interactions.
Now, that’s something that any business can “BUY” into. 😂
HubSpot Line Items
In HubSpot, “Line items” are individual entries or units of a product added to a transaction like a deal, quote, or invoice in HubSpot.
Pro Tip: Products are line items, and line items are Products! (Once confusing, now not!) Well, maybe. LOL
When creating a quote or a deal, sales representatives can add products as line items, and each line item can have its own set of quantity, discount, and total price, calculated based on the product's standard information.
Line items in HubSpot allow for detailed and itemized tracking of what's being sold in each transaction. This granularity helps understand sales patterns, manage inventory, and provide clear and detailed proposals or invoices to customers.
That sounds too good to be true, but it’s possible with the Commerce Hub in your digital E-Commerce corner.
HubSpot Quotes: The What and Why
HubSpot Quotes are designed to streamline sales by allowing businesses to create, send, and manage quotes efficiently. HubSpot Quotes are formal documents that provide potential customers with an estimate of costs for your business's products or services.
They are an essential part of the sales process, offering a precise and professional presentation of pricing terms before finalizing a deal and cashing that check!
Hubspot even offers the ability to customize quote templates to align with your company's branding, including your logo, layout, colors, and even specific purchasing terms. These quotes can be directly linked to deals and include line items from the product library you created in HubSpot, ensuring accuracy and consistency in your pricing.
Lastly, HubSpot's quote tool significantly enhances efficiency by reducing the time spent on administrative tasks. It also features electronic approval and e-signature capabilities, allowing for faster deal closures.
Additionally, HubSpot provides tracking and analytics for each quote, giving sales teams insights into customer engagement and the quote's status. HubSpot Quotes facilitate a more efficient, accurate, and professional sales process, helping businesses manage their sales proposals effectively and enhance customer experience.
Ready to start using the Commerce Hub Yet? No? Let’s keep going, then.
HubSpot Invoices: The Digital Cash Register
HubSpot Invoices are a vital feature within the HubSpotCommerce Hub, designed to streamline the invoicing process for modern businesses. These digital invoices integrate seamlessly with other HubSpot functionalities, such as contacts, deals, and products, ensuring accuracy and efficiency in your company's billing processes.
The ability to generate and send invoices directly within Your HubSpot CRM saves time and reduces administrative errors, making the process more efficient and professional.
In today's fast-paced digital world, the importance of HubSpot Invoices lies in their speed, professionalism, and adaptability. If you’re wondering why speed matters, you might want to check out Jay Baer's book The Time to Win: How to Exceed Your Customers Need for Speed.
HubSpot invoices allow you to instantly send invoices and receive payments, which is crucial for improving cash flow and enhancing customer satisfaction. Customizable to match your company's branding, these invoices maintain a professional appearance and brand consistency.
Invoices include tracking and analytics capabilities, providing valuable insights into payment patterns and customer behavior. Overall, HubSpot Invoices are an essential tool for modern sellers, offering a streamlined, automated invoicing process that meets the demands of a digital marketplace and impatient buyers.
They improve the efficiency of financial transactions and enhance the overall customer experience, making them a vital component in the Swiss Army knife of your digital business needs.
Magic in the Moment: HubSpot Payment Links
HubSpot Payment Links are simple, secure URLs your businesses can send to customers for easy online payments. And when I say easy, I mean EASY!
Your customers can then click these links to be taken directly to a payment page to complete their transactions quickly. Payment Links streamline the payment process, making it more efficient and user-friendly for your business and its customers.
👉 For instance, if you want to purchase HubSpot Training, you can easily visit this payment link. 😂
Here are just a couple of ways that it can empower you and your customer experience:
- Ease of Use: Payment Links provide a straightforward and convenient way for your customers to make payments, simplifying the transaction process.
- Efficient Payment Processing: Payment Links enable quick collection of payments, improving cash flow and reducing the need for manual processing.
- Seamless CRM Integration: Payment links are fully integrated with HubSpot's CRM, ensuring automatic updating of payment data in customer records for better tracking and management.
HubSpot Payment Links significantly enhance the customer experience by offering a professional and flexible approach to online transactions, as you saw above if you clicked that link! 😉
Modern customers appreciate the ease of making payments in a self-serve manner, which reflects positively on the business's professionalism. Overall, HubSpot Payment Links are an invaluable asset for businesses aiming to provide a seamless, efficient, and secure payment experience.
HubSpot Payment links might be one of my all-time favorite HubSpot tools! But HubSpot subscriptions are incredible as well.
HubSpot Subscription in Your Commerce Hub
HubSpot Subscriptions in the Commerce Hub are designed to facilitate and streamline recurring billing and payment processes for businesses, making them highly relevant for B2C and B2B sellers. This feature allows your business to establish and manage recurring payments for your products or services, catering primarily to those businesses with subscription-based models.
Imagine all the man hours you’ll save on month-to-month billing when you leverage HubSpot subscriptions instead.
HubSpot Subscriptions offers some pretty dope features like creating various subscription plans, automating billing cycles, and effectively managing recurring revenue. Additionally, businesses can tailor billing frequencies, establish diverse pricing tiers, and automate subscription renewals, enhancing efficiency and customer experience in subscription management.
Now that’s freaking amazing for modern sellers and modern buyers. 🍸
At this point, you might be wondering why Commerce Hub is important to you and your organization. Well, maybe you already have come to that realization alone, but if not, here we go.
Why is the HubSpot Commerce Hub Important for Your B2C or B2B Business?
In the fast-paced digital business world, keeping operations streamlined and customer-centric is more than just a goal; it's necessary. This is where HubSpot's Commerce Hub shines bright like a diamond, revolutionizing how your business interacts with its customers and manages your financial operations.
The Commerce Hub consolidates your e-commerce processes into a single, unified platform. Imagine having a dashboard where customer interactions, payments, and invoicing coexist harmoniously.
Well, you can stop imagining!
This HubSpot Hub significantly reduces the complexity and inefficiency of juggling multiple systems, leading to a leaner, more efficient business operation. At its core, the HubSpot Commerce Hub prioritizes your customer's journey. It streamlines the payment process by integrating payment modules directly on your web pages, email, and other HubSpot tools.
This means your customers enjoy a seamless experience without the hassle of being redirected to different pages for each transaction. It’s like walking into a store, picking up what you need, and checking out all in one aisle - quick, easy, and hassle-free.
Innovating Your Companies Revenue Generation Process
The HubSpot Commerce Hub is not just about managing existing processes; it's a launchpad for new revenue streams. By leveraging payment links and CRM-based workflows, you can innovate how you and your business generate income now and in the future.
Whether through subscription models, on-the-spot invoicing, or tailored payment workflows, the possibilities for creative revenue and faster cash flow are endless. It's like finding new, uncharted territories in a world of revenue ripe for exploration and success.
Pro Tip: These tools make things more accessible than they used to be for you and your business. Before, dealing with payments and keeping track of sales was a giant migraine headache that kept pounding no matter how much aspirin you tried to take.
But now, with Commerce Hub, it's a lot simpler. You don't need to be a tech expert to use it, and everything is set up in a way that's easy to understand and use. Not to mention, it’s the only HubSpot Hub that is not an additional monthly fee.
That’s right: HubSpot Commerce Hub makes money by taking a small portion of each transaction you make vs. a large monthly recurring bill.
The best part, from all we’ve discussed here and learned as we've implemented the Commerce Hub… Your customers can do a lot of stuff alone without you even needing to be involved. They don't always need to call you for help. I repeat, your customers don't always need to call you for help.
This means you have more time to focus on other important parts of your business. It's like giving your customers a super easy way to shop and get what they need all by themselves while you sit on the beach sipping a sweet beverage while the cool breeze blows off the ocean scene you are gazing at.
A Whole New World of Commerce
The launch of HubSpot Commerce Hub ushers in a transformative era for businesses, bridging the gap between efficiency and customer engagement in commerce management. Its seamless integration and focus on customer-centric processes are pillars of modern B2B and B2C business operations.
As discussed in this article, the Commerce Hub empowers businesses like yours to streamline operations and significantly enhance customer experiences. Moreover, the Hub opens avenues for innovative revenue streams, tapping into unexplored market potential.
In this digital age, where adaptability and forward-thinking are paramount, the Commerce Hub is a crucial driver of future growth and success for forward-thinking organizations like yours.
Are you prepared to revolutionize your business landscape with HubSpot Commerce Hub?
Embrace the change, unlock new opportunities, and watch your business soar to new heights of success and innovation in the digital world.
Please let us know if you have questions about the HubSpot Commerce Hub or need help onboarding or setting up the tools. We’re here to help!
