The Customer
Meet Sarah Mercedes
Senior Sales Manager at HubSpot
Industry
CRM Software
Location
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Use Case
Provide structure and templates for one-on-one meetings
“With Fellow, I am able to provide structure and templates for our one-on-one meetings, ensuring that we’re consistently covering important topics and following up on them. It also allows me to assign prep work to my reps, so they can fill out the necessary details ahead of time, and we can quickly review them before the meeting. This has significantly reduced the amount of time we spend outside of our one-on-ones to catch up on things we didn’t cover. As a result, we’ve been able to stay on top of our tasks and initiatives, leading to better outcomes for our team.”
Challenge
The challenge: Streamline one-on-one meetings in the Sales department.
HubSpot, a software company known for its focus on helping businesses attract, engage, and delight customers, wanted to streamline their one-on-one meetings in the Sales department.
Sarah is a Senior Sales Manager for the Corporate segment at HubSpot – responsible for driving net new business and growing existing accounts. Sarah leads one of 14 teams within the segment and has 7 direct reports.
Sarah expressed that the processes and tools her team use before Fellow was disorganized and labor-intensive. HubSpot’s sales team wanted to have a more efficient and structured approach to their meetings, and that’s when they decided to try Fellow.app.
“I wanted a template-based approach to make our meetings with reps more efficient and structured, since we tended to cover many of the same topics.”
solution
The solution: Customizing one-on-one meeting templates
After using Fellow for a while, Sarah discovered that she could customize her one-on-one meeting templates and align them with her direct report’s segment focus and regular topics of discussion. As a result, her reps are held accountable in one-on-one meetings.
“I can assign prep work to my reps, and they can fill it out ahead of time, allowing us to focus on strategy during our meetings. This has saved us time and ensured that we spend our meetings discussing key topics and not just playing catch-up.”
Some of the biggest changes from the previous way of running one-on-ones has been the consistency around how the time is spent, what they’re going to discuss, and the expectations of the role of the rep in these meetings.
“With Fellow, my reps are clear on what they’re responsible for bringing to the meeting. It’s helped a lot with time savings, efficiency, but also accountability.”
When we asked Sarah, how has Fellow impacted the efficiency of your team’s sales process, she responded by saying:
“We have improved our deal creation pacing week over week by increasing our awareness of what we produce. With so many tasks at hand, it’s crucial to have a clear focus on target accounts, monthly campaigns, and upsell opportunities. By allocating space in our one-on-one agenda for renewal upgrades and deal reviews, we can proactively identify and address areas that need attention.” 🔥
“This allows us to capture more specific information about renewals and upgrades to prevent things from falling through the cracks. By having a section for reps to list out deals in our one-on-one agendas, it ensures that we are not overlooking important opportunities. These steps provide better visibility and enable us to lean in areas that may not be immediately obvious.”
results
The results: Effective one-on-one meetings that keep on top of important deals and professional growth
Sarah believes that effective one-on-one meetings are essential – not just to keep on-top of important deals, but also for professional growth.
“One-on-ones in Fellow allow me to create a space in my agenda to discuss coaching goals and non-deal items. It’s important to have these sections because in sales, it’s easy to get carried away and only talk about deals.”
When asked about the difference of running one-on-one meetings before and after using Fellow, Sarah responded with:
“Fellow is more user-friendly and easier to follow. With just one click, I can reset the entire template every week, eliminating the need to copy, paste, and manually color code everything.”
Fellow allows managers to be more thoughtful about one-on-one meetings with their direct reports and helps managers become better leaders by uncovering the important topics of discussion.
“Now that I’ve settled on a solid template, it has helped me reassess what my management approach should look like with my reps.” 💪
Along with running more efficient meetings and building trusting relationships with direct reports, Fellow also saves leaders valuable time.
“Before when my reps didn’t prepare for our meetings by updating their progress and thinking through what they wanted to discuss, our meetings were less productive. We would spend a lot of time going back and forth about updates on deals. This would take up a significant amount of our scheduled time, leaving me with the task of finding additional time to finish discussing important matters.”
“However, since I started using Fellow and encouraging my reps to prepare beforehand, this issue has significantly decreased. Now, we’re able to focus on the most critical items that need attention during our one-on-ones.”
HubSpot’s Senior Sales Manager, Sarah, streamlined her team’s one-on-one meetings with Fellow.app, which allowed for structured templates and prep work, resulting in increased efficiency, accountability, and better meeting outcomes.
“I highly recommend Fellow to other Sales leaders. When you think about where you’re investing your time as a manager, the majority of it should be spent with your team members. However, that time won’t be well-spent if there isn’t consistency, preparation, and focus. This is where Fellow comes in. With Fellow, I am able to provide structure and templates for our one-on-one meetings, ensuring that we’re consistently covering important topics and following up on them. It also allows me to assign prep work to my reps, so they can fill out the necessary details ahead of time, and we can quickly review them before the meeting.”