Thanks to its usability, robust features, and flexibility, HubSpot is widely recognized as a “top brass” in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) industry. But while it is designed to help businesses nurture customer relationships and close deals seamlessly, managing contracts in high volumes through the platform limits business teams in a variety of ways.

First, as a CRM provider, HubSpot is not specifically designed for contract management. Contract management is one of its various capabilities, alongside marketing automation, lead generation, sales pipeline management, etc. Thus, its contract management features aren't robust, making it difficult for teams to create highly optimized contracts at scale.

Additionally, with advanced contracts typically characterized by complex terms and constantly changing compliance requirements, teams face an elevated risk of noncompliance and legal penalties when managing contracts with HubSpot’s native functionalities.

Fortunately, HubSpot CRM allows you to cash in on its impressive flexibility by offering seamless integration to Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) platforms. This allows you to onboard contracts at scale and close all kinds of deals, regardless of their complexities, without ever leaving HubSpot’s ecosystem.

The Basics of HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is a comprehensive platform designed to help businesses manage their engagements with customers and prospects more effectively. From lead generation and email marketing to sales automation and analytics, HubSpot CRM offers a holistic approach to nurturing leads and building lasting customer relationships.

The main features of the HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM offers a wide variety of tools to help businesses optimize conversion journeys and build strong relationships with customers. 

Here are some of its features:

#1 Contact management

HubSpot CRM allows users to store and organize contact information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, social media profiles, and more. This helps businesses keep track of their interactions with customers and leads.

#2 Basic contract management

Users can create and manage deals or opportunities within the CRM, allowing them to track the progress of sales negotiations, sales stages, and deal values.

#3 Task and activity tracking

HubSpot CRM enables users to schedule and track tasks, calls, meetings, and other activities related to their contacts and deals. This helps ensure that important follow-ups and interactions are not missed.

#4 Automation and workflows

Users can set up automated processes and workflows to streamline repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up emails or assigning tasks to team members based on specific triggers.

#5 Reporting and analytics

HubSpot CRM provides insights into sales activities, deal progress, and contact engagement. Users can generate reports and dashboards to analyze performance and make informed decisions.

#6 Sales and marketing

HubSpot also has robust sales and marketing tools in its ecosystem, allowing businesses access to a consolidated system for managing their customer journeys from the first point of contact all the way to the conversion phase.

Also read: 6 Must-Have CLM Integrations with Business Tools

Should you use HubSpot for managing your contracts?

If you're a small business managing a relatively smaller number of contracts that aren't complex, then using HubSpot for contract management may be safe and doable as it is a top-tier CRM platform. However, as a growing business experiencing an uptrend in business deals of varying sizes and complexities, you should not rely on HubSpot’s native capabilities for contract management.

A CRM doesn’t come with robust clause libraries, flexible contract templates, advanced automated contract workflows, version control functionalities, and many more. Without these, your contracting processes will be largely manual, time-consuming, and prone to errors.

Also, contracts often contain critical provisions covering the rights and responsibilities of all parties with respect to established industry and jurisdictional policies. With HubSpot CRM’s inbuilt features, tracking compliance with these provisions and policies is difficult, exposing you to multiple legal risks.

Furthermore, HubSpot does come with a robust analytics tool, but its metrics aren’t tailored to suit contract management. Thus, it is impossible to achieve insights with high granularity. You want your contract management tool to help you identify bottlenecks, accurately spot risky clauses, optimize your most valuable contracts, and maximize opportunities.

Also read: Simplified CRM Contract Management: Practical Approaches & Tips

Also read: 8 Top Contract Management Software Platforms

CLM integration: Making HubSpot fit for contract management

HubSpot CRM is built to seamlessly integrate with a wide range of 3rd party platforms, allowing you to significantly extend its capabilities beyond the native functionalities.

By integrating Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions with HubSpot, you can effectively bridge the gap between customer relationship management and contract administration. A CLM empowers your organization to efficiently create, negotiate, execute, and manage contracts throughout their lifecycle. This synergy provides a comprehensive approach to customer interactions, ensuring that every deal, agreement, or commitment is not only better tracked but also optimized for maximum value.

The best part? You wouldn’t need to leave the HubSpot interface!

Here’s a breakdown of how a CLM integration enhances HubSpot for better contract management:

#1 Effortless contract creation

You can seamlessly generate contracts directly within HubSpot using templates that are standardized and compliant. This minimizes manual input errors, accelerates the contract drafting process, and maintains consistency across all agreements.

#2 Streamlined collaboration

Collaborating on contracts becomes effortless as you can assign tasks, track changes, and receive notifications within HubSpot. Cross-functional teams can work together at all stages of the contract lifecycle, whether negotiating terms or seeking approvals.

#3 Enhanced visibility

You also gain real-time insights into contract statuses, milestones, and obligations, all within the HubSpot interface. The integration also enables a unified view of customer interactions, making it easier to align important contract elements with your CRM data.

#4 Automated workflows

A CLM enables you to create automated workflows triggered by specific contract events. For instance, you can automate reminders for contract renewals, ensuring timely follow-ups and preventing missed opportunities. You can also set up automated approvals for contracts that meet specified criteria. That way, you close more deals faster. Additionally, you can automate processes like document generation, where HubSpot generates invoices, delivery confirmation, and more once the contract hits its execution phase.

#5 Data-driven decisions

The combination of CRM and CLM data offers a holistic understanding of customer interactions, helping you make informed decisions about contract negotiations, pricing strategies, and more based on a consolidated view of customer interactions and contract performance.

Additionally, integrating CRM and CLM data provides insight into how different contract terms, pricing strategies, and negotiation approaches impact customer behavior and satisfaction. This guides you in adjusting future contract terms to better align with customer preferences and optimize revenue generation.

SpotDraft CLM + HubSpot: Taking contract management to another level

SpotDraft is an industry-leading CLM that leverages cutting-edge technology to revolutionize how businesses create, manage, and analyze their contractual agreements.

With its integration into HubSpot’s ecosystem, your customer-facing teams can now efficiently manage contracts from end to end, regardless of volume or complexity, all within HubSpot’s interface.

How it works

Upon integrating SpotDraft into your HubSpot account, the SpotDraft app appears as a floating card on the right-hand side of your Deals page, displaying details of all your existing contracts for better visibility.

To create a contract, you simply click on the “create contract” button on the SpotDraft card. The contract creation module opens on top of HubSpot, allowing you to create a contract from scratch using SpotDraft’s template workflow, during which the relevant contract particulars get auto-filled from the HubSpot deal section into the contract document.

Additionally, you can upload an offline contract document using SpotDraft’s third-party contract workflow, during which SpotDraft reformats the document for easy redlining and collaborative edits.

Afterward, you can push the contracts to the relevant stakeholders, who will review, sign, and get the contract executed.

Back on the Deals page, you can always find your SpotDraft app card floating on the sidebar by the right, showing details about your contracts, like the status, ID, contract type, and the specific deal associated with each contract document.

Visit SpotDraft’s help center to learn about the setup process, or reach out to our support team for assistance.

Features of the SpotDraft-HubSpot integration

SpotDraft gives you access to the same robust functionalities regardless of the interface. So, even though you're operating within HubSpot's ecosystem, you will still be able to manage your contracts from end to end without hassles.

#1 Auto-fill deal particulars into contracts

SpotDraft scans your Deals page and automatically fetches data for relevant fields like party details, authorized signatories, deal particulars, etc. This saves you time on manual entry and errors. All you need to do is crosscheck for any necessary modifications.

#2 Constant visibility

SpotDraft offers visibility into contracts to ensure everyone is on the same page. This is done by maintaining a non-obstructive floating card at a corner of the screen, revealing crucial details like the real-time status, creation date, ID number, and the party with whom the contract is currently pending.

#3 eSignatures with email notifications

You can get your contracts signed in minutes by leveraging SpotDraft’s native eSignature tool. When you push the contract to the signatories, they get notified via email, with an audit trail at the bottom indicating that it is end-to-end encrypted.

Also read: A Quick Introduction to eSignatures

#4 Bi-directional sync.

A two-way sync between SpotDraft and HubSpot ensures that data and information are consistently updated and mirrored between the platforms in both directions. Any changes to deals in the HubSpot environment are automatically propagated to the corresponding fields in the SpotDraft contract, leading to enhanced data accuracy, reduced duplication of efforts, and access to the most up-to-date information across both platforms. 

#5 Simplified review and approvals

Whether you’re creating the contract from scratch or uploading a third-party document, SpotDraft makes it easy to assign contracts to internal stakeholders for review and approval. Reviewers get notified via email and can approve it instantly. 

Also read: The Perfect Contract Review Checklist for Commercial Contracts

#6 Customized workflows

SpotDraft lets you create customized workflows within HubSpot, so your business teams can operate more efficiently. For instance, your sales team can set up specific contract types that will automatically get generated at certain stages of the sales cycle. So, when a deal reaches the qualified stage, SpotDraft automatically collects particulars from the deal and generates an NDA. If the deal is closed successfully, it generates an MSA.

Also, you can set up automated approvals for contracts that fit certain criteria, like deal size, contract type, etc. That way, qualified contracts can get approved without delays. You can also automate other processes like updates for renegotiated contracts, task reminders, signature collection, and so on.

Also read: Contract Workflow: Examples + Steps for an Effective Workflow

Bottomline

HubSpot is easily among the top CRMs in the industry, loaded with robust features that help businesses nurture prospects and close deals more efficiently. However, without a CLM, HubSpot’s contract management capabilities remain limited.

Thanks to its integration capabilities, this limitation can be eliminated. By integrating HubSpot CRM with SpotDraft CLM, your business will enjoy faster contract creation, seamless review processes, better customer relationships, and, ultimately, the ability to onboard more deals and ramp up your revenue.

Want to get a better view of SpotDraft’s capabilities? Click here to schedule a demo tailored just for you.