Driving Employee Engagement and Value with HubSpot Academy [Customer Story]

No matter what business you are in, or what industry you represent, arming your sales and marketing teams with the right tools can help you achieve great results.

While there are many tools at your disposal to arm your sales force and properly train your team, we have achieved great success with HubSpot Academy. With our helpful guidance and some enthusiasm, you can, too.

The Mission

Since the Rokt team is a regular HubSpot user, we want to share some tips on how to engage your team and get value out of free HubSpot training, specifically the HubSpot Academy certification courses.

HubSpot Academy is a key learning resource for us. (We're arguably their No. 1 fans.) In fact, all new client-facing Rokt employees are required to take and pass a HubSpot certification course as part of their onboarding experience. The requirement? Team members must complete the HubSpot Sales Software Certification course and become certified within their first 30 days at the company.

While the task may seem daunting to HubSpot Academy novices, the pros know that it’s quite the opposite, especially when you have the help of some friendly HubSpot professors along the way!

The Strategy

So why the 30-day requirement? It’s simple: we want our team to hit the ground running. The sales software training course teaches employees how to obtain leads, turn those leads into sales opportunities, and how to close those leads. This goes beyond a typical professional development task.

HubSpot Academy courses help new starters understand best practices and how to do their jobs more effectively.

Another reason for the 30-day requirement? Our employees can’t obtain a HubSpot Sales Pro license until they pass the required course and earn the certification. We think that’s motivation enough!

We feel that knowledge is power. We empower our employees to work hard and be smart. And one of the ways we become smarter is with HubSpot and HubSpot Academy.

While the end goal is to learn, and ultimately become certified, we try to keep this requirement fun and light-hearted. To check in on those who are in-progress with the course, our Marketing Operations Manager will send the occasional friendly reminder.

Overall, our team stays on task because it is ingrained in our sales culture. In fact, we adopt the mentality, “If it’s not in HubSpot, it didn’t happen.”

Meeting Kyle

Anyone who has ever taken the sales software training course knows Kyle Jepson. After all, he’s the professor that teaches all of the lessons in the course. Once our team members watch the first few lessons in the course, they’ve had the chance to “meet” the infamous Kyle!

We like to inject some humor into the whole process by making references to Kyle every now and again by asking, “How’s Kyle today?” or “Have you seen Kyle lately?”

Kyle has become a bit of a celebrity at Rokt because he’s someone everyone knows. Kyle is more than just a friendly face on the other side of the screen. He supports the team through the lessons and even via email. (Little did we know how integral a part Kyle would play in keeping the staff engaged well beyond HubSpot certification — read on!)

How HubSpot Motivates Us

At Rokt, we recognize the hard work of our employees in many ways. We have monthly staff awards, we call out important highlights on our internal digital signage network, and we even organize a full-scale employee recognition event.

But when it comes to HubSpot usage, we take things a step further. We run leaderboards to show engagement from using HubSpot (meetings, phone calls, and emails). Since HubSpot usage is a pretty big deal for us, we sought out a creative way to keep our team engaged even further.

How did we do it? We created The Kyle Award, an original award aptly named after Kyle Jepson.

The marketing team, which tracks HubSpot usage, decided to recognize a top HubSpot user at the company with a Kyle bobblehead. We approached Kyle to record a video and virtually “present” The Kyle Award to our top HubSpot user at our global annual event in Port Stephens, Australia in December.

Our winner, Jack Harary, received the bobblehead and the coveted title of being a HubSpot Super User! 

 

The End Result

So, what have we learned? Our culture is already ingrained to have fun with everything we do. The same holds true for our HubSpot training, certifications, and usage. Since HubSpot touches every client-facing employee at our company, we wanted to extend our relationship beyond the certifications and being a HubSpot customer.

Since The Kyle Award was such a big hit among our team, we’re planning to carry on this new tradition. Rumor has it that employees are already vying for a shot to be the next recipient!

And don’t worry — we didn’t leave Kyle empty-handed. After all, he was the inspiration for The Kyle Award. We gave Kyle his very own award. (We think it’s a pretty good likeness!) 

 

Best Practice Tips to Implement Our Strategy

How can you apply our strategy to enhance your experience with HubSpot Academy and HubSpot usage? Here are a few best practices to set your organization on the path to success:

1. Set deadlines. Since HubSpot certifications are important, be sure to set a reasonable deadline for your team to become certified. Give employees adequate time to go through the lessons, but make sure they are able to complete the training in a timely manner.
2. Make HubSpot certification a requirement. To really drive participation from your team, consider making HubSpot certification a requirement, not a nice-to-have. This mandate will help your team perform at top levels, encourage the use of best practices, and provide consistency with pre-sales processes.
3. Keep people motivated. A little encouragement can go a long way! Remember to make HubSpot training fun, not a chore. Remind employees why they are training and the benefits of obtaining their certifications quickly.
4. Celebrate achievement and success. Even after the training is long over, it’s critical to celebrate success. For example, if employees receive their certification, mention them in an email, or give them a cupcake. Be sure to recognize achievements! This ensures buy-in and appreciation from your team members.

While we’ve enjoyed success using HubSpot, we’re nowhere near done. We plan to keep learning and improving to grow and become more successful. With a partner like HubSpot and our friend Kyle at the helm, we’re sure others will carve out their own victories just like we have at Rokt.