Deals closing 15% faster. The ready leads go first.
Australia’s largest fitness training organisation had outgrown the way it used HubSpot. The answer was a sales process built around the leads that are ready.
- Client
- Project lead
Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering
- Industry
- Fitness education and training
- Platform
- HubSpot Sales, Marketing and Service
- Connected
- Databox, MessageMedia
- Personas
- 5 buyer personas
01 The briefPut structure into the flow from marketing to sales, so sales leaders have the data to manage their teams and convert more leads into customers.
A big business on a small set-up.
The Australian Institute of Fitness (AIF) is the largest fitness training organisation in Australia. It had adopted HubSpot early, and asked Neighbourhood to help it get the most from it, and to smooth the handover of leads from marketing to sales.
AIF's use of HubSpot had not grown with the business. Without training or awareness of what the platform could do, it worked against the company as it grew: unqualified leads, lost opportunities, and no clear view of how each team member was performing.
A discovery session found why the lead-to-conversion rate was dropping. Time and effort were going into leads at the top of the funnel that were not ready to buy.
It stayed that way because every lead looked the same. With no qualification or scoring, a lead ready to enrol got the same treatment as one that was just browsing, so the sales team could not tell which to chase hardest.
What the discovery session found
- No lead scoring. Every lead treated the same, sales-ready or not.
- A slow sales cycle. Dated, manual steps that made each deal take longer.
- Tools left unused. Content, internal documents and playbooks the sales team was not using.
- No clear reporting. No metrics to improve the process with evidence.
Who the buyers are, before how to sell.
Three pieces of groundwork came before anything was built: how marketing and sales hand over, who AIF is selling to, and what the HubSpot portal was actually doing.
How marketing hands over to sales, A workshop
Lead volume and quality, how much lead scoring was in use, which metrics each team reported on, whether a service level agreement existed, and every stage a lead moves through before buying.
The stages from first contact to purchase
Buyer persona workshops, Over a few weeks
Several workshops, with time between them to collect and collate customer information, to work out who AIF's buyers really are.
Five personas, added to the sales tools
HubSpot portal audit, Before any build
A full audit of the portal, and a review of AIF's marketing and customer service material, with recommendations for each.
Areas to fix before implementation
What the audit reviewed
Ticketing
How support requests were handled, with recommendations.
Chatbots
The chatbots in use, with recommendations.
Landing pages
A review of the landing pages, with recommendations, and an FAQ knowledge base set up and optimised.
Five buyer personas, and a pipeline built around them.
Sales chasing every lead the same way?
Rebuilt stage by stage, then automated.
With the sales team leaders, every stage of the old pipeline was broken down to what it really meant and what had to happen to move on. Then it was redrawn in Whimsical, a wireframing tool, and built in HubSpot.
Pipeline workshops with the sales leaders
Which metrics the sales leaders rely on most, which parts of each role could be automated, and the roles of every staff member, so the time saved reached as far through the team as possible.
The new pipeline in HubSpot
Built once the strategy was approved, with lead nurturing emails that move prospects through their buying journey faster and cut the staff hours spent reaching out.
Tasks and reminders that run themselves
Task automation shows the team where each lead is up to and reminds reps to follow up. SMS reminders through MessageMedia send each prospect a Google Maps link a few hours before their meeting, and reps see their meeting attendance rates.
Dashboards for every state
Databox dashboards for each Australian state, plus one board with conversion at every lifecycle stage, month on month. Each regional sales manager gets a daily email with the latest numbers.
The automation came after the understanding. Deciding what to automate was only possible once each stage of the existing process had been broken down.
| The job | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Which leads to chase | Every lead treated the same | Personas and stages that separate the sales-ready |
| Reaching out | Manual, one lead at a time | Nurture emails sent by the pipeline |
| Meetings | Up to the rep to remind | An SMS with a map link hours before |
| Knowing how each state is going | No clear reporting | A Databox dashboard and a daily email per region |
From a lead form to a booked chat.
The sales process, as published with the case study.
How the four goals turned out.
What AIF asked for before the project started, and where it stood once it was live.
Goal 01
Close deals faster, and more often
We rebuilt the pipeline stage by stage, redrew it in Whimsical and built it in HubSpot, with nurture emails moving prospects through their buying journey faster.
15%
less time from first contact to a closed deal. Sales and marketing now work to the same stages, and customers get a more personal journey from start to finish.
Goal 02
See new leads come in and how they progress
We set up task automation that shows where each lead is up to, reminds reps to follow up, and gives the whole team ownership of lead status.
Every lead
on the record, with the whole team owning its status. Reps are reminded to follow up and can see their meeting attendance rates, so every lead gets a follow-up.
Goal 03
An automated pipeline, so no deal slips through
We set up nurture emails, follow-up tasks and SMS meeting reminders through MessageMedia, all run from the pipeline.
10%
improvement in the conversion rate. Each prospect gets a text with a Google Maps link a few hours before their meeting. The sales team spends its time building relationships while automation handles the reach-out.
Goal 04
Reporting at the touch of a button
We built Databox dashboards for each state, a board with conversion at every lifecycle stage month on month, and a daily email to each regional sales manager.
9%
revenue growth, measured through the new reporting. Each regional sales manager sees the latest numbers every day, and the process is improved on that evidence.
Put together, AIF's sales team can now tell the sales-ready leads from the ones still browsing, and spends its time on the ready ones. Deals close faster, more of them convert, and revenue grew 9%.
Every state can see its own numbers, and HubSpot is now the one platform AIF needs to grow on.
“We engaged Neighbourhood for their expertise concerning Hubspot Sales & Marketing optimisation. The team are a wealth of knowledge, energy and pure optimisers. If there is a quicker, better way to do something in Hubspot, I am confident they know-how. They are providing our Sales and Marketing teams with more intelligence and we are looking forward to rolling out more projects with them and seeing the results.”
Jessica Bryant
Australian Institute of Fitness
Who ran it
Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering
Led the portal audit, the pipeline workshops with AIF’s sales leaders, the new pipeline and Databox dashboards.
HubSpot Certified Trainer, Multi HubSpot Impact Award winner, Founded Neighbourhood in 2015
Can your sales team tell which leads are ready?
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