Is HubSpot a Threat to Salesforce

For sure HubSpot is a threat to Salesforce.

Salesforce has been moving downstream for many years to maintain their valuation and it is working to a degree. Salesforce has grown to a $169 billion valuation and they are still the 800-pound gorilla in the CRM space.

But Salesforce has known for a decade that the standalone CRM is dead, which is why they have gone to great measures to acquire companies like ExactTarget, Pardot, etc.

Email marketing, marketing automation, salesforce automation, social media marketing, SMS marketing, etc. must be part of your sales enablement mix if you are to hit your growth targets.

Salesforce will likely remain the CRM-to-ERP big company/large enterprise leader for years to come, but how many companies need all of that?

The SMB space is huge. HubSpot has grown to a $9.6 billion market cap, which is a 465% increase in five years.

So while HubSpot is still a fraction of the size of Salesforce, they are serving the right market in the right way.

And service is key.

Salesforce has had an arrogant, “You should be honored we returned your call” approach to service and support for as long as I’ve used them, which goes back to 2004.

HubSpot has always had a “We try to answer on the first ring and want you to call us with any question at any time” approach to service and support for as long as I’ve used them, which goes back to 2014. (And they send cool schwag to share with your kids when you pass all of their certifications.)

So despite having a 17x larger market cap than HubSpot, Salesforce is seeing the rate of growth at HubSpot, which can be attributed to several factors:

• HubSpot makes excellent tools
• HubSpot has great support
• HubSpot started on the SMB space so they are better-established in this larger market but it’s also easier to move upstream as their software stack is enhanced
• Salesforce was an early investor in HubSpot for a reason
• HubSpot was an early user of Salesforce so they know what they’re dealing with and what they’re up against
• HubSpot has made such rapid progress in their CRM that they were able to switch their nearly-$10 billion company over to it in late 2018 and they didn’t skip a beat

If you’re a Fortune 1000 company who needs thousands of seats and tight integration with your ERP, start looking at HubSpot.

If you’re in the SMB space and just need your sales and marketing team to be on the same page, take a look at HubSpot by contacting me here and we can dive in.

Market like you mean it.

Now go sell something.