The decision to integrate HubSpot and Salesforce represents a significant investment in your financial services firm's technology infrastructure. While both platforms offer native integration capabilities, the complexity of financial services operations—combined with stringent regulatory requirements—makes partnering with a specialized integration expert not just beneficial, but essential.
Connecting HubSpot to Salesforce creates a unified CRM ecosystem that aligns marketing and sales teams, eliminates data silos, and enables closed-loop reporting. While the technical connection takes minutes, successful integration requires strategic planning, proper configuration, and ongoing optimization.
Choosing between HubSpot and Salesforce represents one of the most consequential technology decisions financial services firms make. Both platforms are industry leaders—Salesforce dominates with 20.7% market share and serves 90% of Fortune 500 companies, while HubSpot has built a reputation for user-friendliness and integrated marketing capabilities that drive 346% more inbound leads for financial services users.
Here's a statistic that should make every business leader pause: approximately 70% of CRM projects fail to meet their objectives. Despite billions spent annually on CRM software, the majority of implementations fall short of expectations—not because the technology doesn't work, but because organizations approach implementation backwards.
After 400+ CRM implementations across financial services, healthcare, professional services, and technology sectors, we've identified the pattern. Companies invest heavily in selecting the "right" CRM platform, only to neglect the factors that actually determine success: their people and their processes.
This isn't a software problem. It's a strategy problem.
💡 Key Insight: CRM failure rarely stems from choosing the wrong platform. It stems from implementing the right platform the wrong way. The technology is typically the easiest part to get right—and the least important factor in long-term success.
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Let's examine what research and real-world experience reveal about CRM failure.
| Failure Factor | Percentage | Root Cause Category |
|---|---|---|
| Low user adoption | 38% | People |
| Inadequate change management | 22% | People |
| Poor data quality | 18% | Process |
| Lack of clear objectives | 12% | Process |
| Technical issues | 6% | Technology |
| Other factors | 4% | Mixed |
Notice something? Over 60% of failures relate directly to people-related challenges. Another 30% stem from process issues. Only a small fraction—roughly 6-10%—can be attributed to actual technical problems with the CRM software itself.
Yet most organizations spend 80% of their implementation effort on technology configuration and only 20% on adoption and process optimization.
This is the fundamental miscalculation that dooms CRM projects before they begin.
When a CRM implementation fails, the losses extend far beyond the software subscription:
Direct Costs:
Indirect Costs:
Opportunity Costs:
💡 Definition: CRM Failure doesn't always mean the system is abandoned entirely. More commonly, it means the CRM is technically functional but underutilized—teams revert to spreadsheets, sales reps enter minimal data, and the "single source of truth" becomes anything but.
Why do smart organizations make this mistake? Because technology feels tangible and controllable.
When business leaders experience CRM pain points—lost leads, disconnected data, manual processes—the instinct is to find a technology solution. A new platform promises:
The vendor demos are impressive. The feature comparisons favor the new solution. The decision seems clear: upgrade to better technology.
But here's what the demos don't show: the same organization that failed with their previous CRM will fail with the new one if they don't change their approach.
Consider these common scenarios:
Scenario 1: The Resistant Sales Team
A company implements a state-of-the-art CRM with world-class features. Sales reps, who weren't consulted during selection, view the system as "corporate surveillance" that creates extra work without personal benefit. They enter minimal required data and keep their real pipeline information in personal spreadsheets.
The technology is excellent. Adoption is dismal.
Scenario 2: The Undefined Process
An organization automates their lead routing workflow in HubSpot. But because their lead qualification criteria were never clearly defined, the automation routes unqualified leads to senior sales reps while qualified ones get stuck in general queues.
The automation works perfectly. The process is broken.
Scenario 3: The Executive Dashboard
Leadership invests in comprehensive CRM reporting dashboards. But because frontline staff don't consistently enter data, the dashboards display incomplete information that leads to poor strategic decisions.
The reporting is sophisticated. The data is unreliable.
After 150+ client engagements and 95%+ client retention, we've refined an approach that addresses the true causes of CRM failure. We call it the People-Process-Technology Framework—and the order is intentional.
Framework Principle: Technology exists to serve people. If people don't adopt the technology, the investment is wasted. Therefore, people considerations must come first.
Key People Questions:
Critical Success Factors:
1. Executive Sponsorship That's Visible and Consistent
CRM initiatives need C-level champions who don't just approve budgets but actively demonstrate system usage, reference CRM data in meetings, and reinforce the importance of adoption.
2. User Involvement from Day One
The people who will use the CRM daily should have input on requirements, workflows, and interface preferences. When users feel ownership over the system, adoption follows naturally.
3. Role-Specific Value Propositions
Generic "efficiency" messaging doesn't drive adoption. Each role needs to understand specific benefits:
4. Internal Champions Network
Identify enthusiastic early adopters in each department who can support peers, answer questions, and model best practices. These champions become force multipliers for adoption.
Framework Principle: Automation accelerates whatever process you have—good or bad. Automate a broken process and you'll break things faster. Process optimization must precede technology implementation.
Key Process Questions:
Critical Success Factors:
1. Current State Documentation
Before implementing any CRM, map existing processes in detail. Identify what works, what doesn't, and why. This prevents inadvertently eliminating effective practices while preserving problematic ones.
2. Future State Design
Define the ideal process—not constrained by current technology limitations but aligned with business objectives. Then evaluate how the CRM can enable that ideal state.
3. Process Standardization
CRM implementations often reveal that the "same" process varies significantly across teams, regions, or individuals. Standardization creates efficiency and enables meaningful reporting.
4. Data Governance Framework
Establish clear rules for:
Framework Principle: Technology should adapt to optimized processes and empower trained people—not force people to adapt to technology constraints. Configuration choices should prioritize usability over feature complexity.
Key Technology Questions:
Critical Success Factors:
1. Right-Sized Implementation
Implement what you need now, with a roadmap for future capabilities. Overloading users with unused features creates complexity that hinders adoption.
2. User-Centric Configuration
Design the interface, fields, and workflows around how users actually work—not how you wish they worked or how the software defaults suggest.
3. Integration Architecture
CRM doesn't exist in isolation. Plan integrations with email, calendar, marketing automation, ERP, and other systems to create seamless workflows.
4. Training and Documentation
Provide role-specific training that focuses on "how this helps you do your job better"—not comprehensive feature tours that overwhelm users.
Let's see how the People-Process-Technology framework applies to a common scenario: implementing HubSpot for a 75-person professional services firm.
Activities:
Deliverables:
Activities:
Deliverables:
Activities:
Deliverables:
Activities:
Deliverables:
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Even with the right framework, specific challenges emerge. Here's how to address the most common ones:
Root Cause: Users don't see personal benefit; data entry feels like administrative burden for management's benefit.
Solution:
Root Cause: Familiar tools feel more comfortable than new systems; spreadsheets offer perceived control.
Solution:
Root Cause: Executives who mandate CRM usage but don't model it undermine credibility.
Solution:
Root Cause: Legacy data quality issues make CRM seem unreliable from day one.
Solution:
Root Cause: Previous failure creates organizational skepticism and learned helplessness.
Solution:
Implementation is not the finish line—it's the starting line. Here's how to measure whether your CRM initiative is actually succeeding:
| Metric | Target | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Active Users | 80%+ of licensed users | Indicates system is part of daily workflow |
| Data Completeness | 90%+ required fields populated | Shows users are entering meaningful data |
| Login Frequency | Daily for sales/service | Confirms habitual usage |
| Feature Adoption | Key features used by 60%+ | Demonstrates beyond-basic engagement |
| Metric | Expected Improvement | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Lead Response Time | 30-50% faster | 3 months |
| Sales Cycle Length | 10-25% shorter | 6 months |
| Customer Retention | 5-15% improvement | 12 months |
| Revenue per Rep | 10-20% increase | 12 months |
At 90 days post-launch, assess:
If you can answer "yes" to most of these questions, your CRM initiative is on the path to success. If not, it's time to revisit the People and Process pillars.
We don't just implement software—we drive transformation that sticks.
We Practice What We Preach
Vantage Point runs its own operations on HubSpot and Salesforce. We experience the same adoption challenges, process questions, and data issues that you do—and we've solved them for ourselves.
People-Process-Technology Is Our DNA
This isn't marketing language for us; it's how we approach every engagement. We've seen the failure statistics and built our methodology specifically to beat them.
Industry Expertise Where It Matters
With deep experience in financial services, healthcare, and professional services, we understand the regulatory, workflow, and cultural factors unique to these sectors.
Results That Speak
The primary reason CRM projects fail is low user adoption, which accounts for approximately 38% of failures. When combined with inadequate change management (22%) and poor data quality (18%), people and process issues represent over 75% of CRM failures. Technical problems with the software itself account for less than 10% of failures.
The People-Process-Technology framework is a methodology that prioritizes factors in the order of their impact on success. It starts with People (user adoption, change management, training), then addresses Process (workflow optimization, data governance, business rules), and finally implements Technology (CRM configuration, integrations, automation). This order ensures technology serves people and processes rather than forcing people to adapt to technology.
A well-planned CRM implementation typically takes 3-6 months, depending on complexity. However, this should be viewed as the beginning of ongoing optimization, not the end of the journey. The People-Process-Technology framework allocates significant time to pre-implementation planning (typically 4-8 weeks) that traditional implementations often skip.
Executive sponsorship that is visible, consistent, and genuine. When leadership actively uses the CRM, references CRM data in decisions, and holds teams accountable for adoption, success rates increase dramatically. Without executive commitment, even excellent technology and processes will fail.
Warning signs include: less than 50% of users logging in daily, proliferation of shadow spreadsheets, incomplete or outdated data, lack of trust in CRM reports, and users complaining that the system creates extra work without value. If you observe these patterns, intervention is needed before the system is abandoned entirely.
Yes, but it requires acknowledging the failure, diagnosing root causes, and committing to the People-Process-Technology approach. Often, the technology is adequate—the implementation just needs a reset focused on adoption and process optimization. Vantage Point has successfully rescued multiple "failed" implementations.
CRM failure is common, but it's not inevitable. The organizations that succeed understand that technology is the easy part—people and processes are what separate thriving implementations from expensive disappointments.
The People-Process-Technology framework provides a proven path to the 30% of CRM projects that deliver on their promise. It requires more upfront planning, more attention to change management, and more patience than the "install and hope" approach. But the results—sustained adoption, clean data, measurable business outcomes—are worth the investment.
At Vantage Point, we've helped over 150 organizations navigate this path successfully. Our 95%+ client retention rate reflects implementations that don't just launch—they last.
Ready to join the 30% of CRM projects that succeed?
Schedule Your Free CRM Assessment →
Let's discuss your current challenges, evaluate your readiness, and build a roadmap for CRM success. No pressure, no obligation—just expert guidance from consultants who've been where you're going.
David Cockrum is the founder of Vantage Point and a former COO in the financial services industry. Having navigated complex CRM transformations from both operational and technology perspectives, David brings unique insights into the decision-making, stakeholder management, and execution challenges that financial services firms face during migration.