QuoteWerks Support Portal

For HubSpot (or any other major cloud-based CRM) users:

1. Are we atypical in our need to have multiple Contacts and (often) multiple Companies associated with our Deals in HubSpot?
   
   
2. Are we atypical in our need to keep all existing Contacts and Companies associated with our Deals whenever we save a quote in QW and opt to update the existing Deal in HubSpot?

Why I ask:

We are in the commercial/industrial equipment industry and one Deal in HubSpot for us can be associated with various wholesale distributors, installing/bidding contractors, designing engineers, and even GCs who we have to nurture all throughout our very long sales process. We need all of these folks and their companies associated with the Deal in HubSpot for ongoing communications during the sales process.

However, if we let QW update the existing Deal at any point along the way, QW removes all Contacts associated with the Deal except the one in the SoldTo fields in the quote. If we change the SoldTo contact in QW (sending the same quote over to a different wholesaler, let's say), QW will remove all associated Contacts and Companies, except those in the SoldTo fields of the quote.

What behavior would we expect?

When we started with QW and Act! Desktop (horrible CRM platform by today's standards) back in 2010, whenever QW updated the Opportunity in Act!, it simply kept all associated Contacts and Companies regardless. If a new SoldTo contact came into play, QW simply added that Contact and their Company to the opportunity but left all others in place.

This seems to be the exact behavior anyone would expect, regardless of industry, since you would want a history in your CRM of the various potential customers/clients for a given project (opportunity/deal).

Current situation:

I'm being told that this is an out-of-the-normal expectation on our part, that every other QW customer except us is fine with all the associations being removed when updating their existing CRM deals from the QW side.

Perhaps there is another workflow we should implement to fill our needs and that's why I want to understand if we are the exception because our industry and industry needs don't match the typical QW user, or if the typical QW user is integrating/interacting between QW and their CRM in a very different way that makes this a non-issue.

Please chime in. Feedback is really appreciated.

I have a client I was speaking with yesterday.

They are looking at moving from ACT to Hubspot.

They are manufacturers/installers of Roof Hatches, Floor Access, Smoke Vents & Ladders, that sort of thing.

They raised with me their issue with how QW deals with similar scenarios. In essence, there is a massive building project that multiple people (not my client) are tendering for and, say, a Roof Hatch is required. My client are the best in the business at doing Roof Hatches so they end up delivering 10 quotes to 10 different people (that's one quotewerks quote, but with the SoldTo details changed).

With a move to Hubspot, using the QW integration, they'd have to do something (very ugly) like create a deal for one quote for one client and not for others. 10 separate deals would inflate their figures somewhat! Either that, or don't use the QW integration at all, which is not great either.

What they want is 1 quote, sort of 'tagged' to 10 people.

QW doesn't do that with Hubspot. I don't know off the top of my head, but I'd say it doesn't do that with most of the integration.

In my experience, this scenario is rare (I've heard of the requirement less than 5 times in 18 years), but there's at least one other company out there that would like this..

I can't think of a solution, without QW's integration with Hubspot being modified.

Not helpful, but feedback.

Hey Matt,

The scenario you describe is EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

Act! Desktop and Act! Web (as of 11 months ago because of our request to make it match the Desktop behavior) perform exactly the way we and your customer example would expect and need.

From a salesmanship perspective, I cannot fathom why the other way would be the standard. Even if a QW user only ever worked with one contact per deal, then instructing the integration to always leave all existing associations would have zero impact on those customers. It would appear to behave exactly as it does for them now because there aren't any other associations in their deals anyway. But for customers like us who work with multiple parties and bidders on a single project, we can't have it pulling every other association out every time we save the quote.

Think of real estate. If I'm a mortgage broker, I might be providing a mortgage quote to one real estate agent for one homebuyer, but I might want to associate my contacts at the various lenders I'm proposing, I would want to associate my contact at the title company perhaps, etc. Then every time I have to update anything on the quote, I lose all those associations from the Deal in the CRM?! That's crazy!

Then again, the finance world probably isn't looking to QW as a solution in the first place. Maybe it's a bad example.

I'm just saying there are lots of SALES organizations that understand a complex sales process and would need the functionality we're describing here, which was the standard operation in the Act! Desktop integration when we started with QW and Act! in 2010. I never expected anything different because it's all we'd known the whole time!

Attached is the fix that was implemented for Act! Web. The developers added this in Version 5.7 Build 4.11, implemented 7/22/22 which was the very next update after I requested the fix.

QW's help: Why would you leave Act! when we did this for you?

Um. Because Act! sucks! And HubSpot is a far superior CRM by today's standards. Also, the behavior I'm describing is a perfectly reasonable and basic behavior that any company doing technical sales (not selling t-shirts on Etsy) would expect. And since it's what the integration did for us standard for 12 years, why would I think it would suddenly do the opposite?

QW's solution: Everyone's on vacation. Switch back to Act! since it worked how you wanted.

That's all very fair and understandable. It's on QW to consider.

As a (totally janky.. like, this is awful..) workaround, could you (or have it automated) populate a QW field with some of the SoldTo contact information. 

Should that information then change, the 'new' details are appended to that field. Should that information then change, the 'very new' details are appended to that field. That field is pushed to Hubspot.

This is horrible, but it might be better than what you have today.

Oh, no. That wouldn't even solve the problem because we need the actual Contacts and Companies associated with the Deals so we can actually do our jobs as sales professionals (see all communication histories with those folks from all of our teammates and various projects, etc.). A field that contains some text to tell us who those folks are doesn't get the crosslinked data in the CRM in place. We still have to re-associate them anyway.

Here's our current process (and godspeed to the salesperson who forgets to make notes before they update a quote!):

• Salesperson gets a request for an existing quote from a different bidding company/contact
• They have to go into their existing Deal in HubSpot and write down all the associated contacts and companies
• Then they open the existing quote in QW and change the SoldTo. When they do, they answer "yes" to the pop-up asking if they want to keep the quote associated with the existing Deal in the CRM.
• They then send the quote to the requester, as usual
• Then they save the quote and update HubSpot so the new SoldTo contact is associated with the Deal
• Then they have to refresh the Deal in HubSpot and reconnect all of the previous contacts and companies to the Deal all over again. Sometimes there are 5-10 contacts and perhaps 3-5 companies as we have all the bidding companies, installing contractors, designing engineers, and sometimes project GCs associated with our Deals so we can properly service all of the players in a particular project
  
  

Everything you're saying is very logical, and gives good weight for this request to be considered. I get it, and agree with you. 

I just find that me asking questions/providing feedback and comments helps the dev. team.

I can only speak from my (one person, in a different continent) experience that this isn't perhaps as common across QW users as you might think. I get it and, as per a previous reply, I have a client that basically wants the same thing.

I guess my, totally ugly, idea of capturing the data was more for it to be a point of reference so you could ensure all the companies/contacts were 'put back' in Hubspot and no-one was missed off. Basically, negating your 2nd bullet point.

Sometimes, like with so much software development, it's the small features that give the biggest impact. I can't imagine how relieved you'd be to see the same option as the screenshot above being made available for Hubspot.

Oh, I totally get what you're doing, Matt and I appreciate that help and support, 100%.

I know I am expressing this as an expectation and not a "would like to have" kind of thing and that's because 1. it is essential to our sales process and business, and 2. it's the expectation that was set by our QW/Act! integration behavior experience for over a decade! It worked exactly this way the whole time! If only Act! were a competitive and comprehensive CRM as HubSpot and SalesForce and some of the other big names, we might have stayed. But they had fallen so far behind and we had wrung our hands over switching for about 5 or so years. We finally pull the trigger and LOVE HubSpot and then this basic functionality is missing and ruining our sales process. It's such a shame.

Meanwhile, HubSpot can send the quotes for us and included standard with our subscription is the "QuoteValet" features like approval signatures and payments. We could just use HubSpot, but we would lose some of the more robust order features from QW (like the Purchasing area) that we do appreciate and love.

But, there are other quoting solutions and several that are constantly advertised to me via our trade publications and such. I've just always been a staunch QW supporter and advocate. Unfortunately, this request hasn't been treated like all my others before, many of which should probably have been considered so much more egregious than this, really. But here we are.

We'll see what happens, I suppose.

Thanks again for all your help, as always. You're awesome, Matt!

Well, I am late to the game here, but we are about to do the same migration away from ACT to Hubspot for the same reasons. I am not sure what the folks over at ACT are doing, but updating the system doesn’t seem to be high on the list right now.

I am sure you have seen the recent updates have fixed this issue. I am glad I came across this post as I have not updated recently. It prompted me to check the update notes, and it was listed there as a fix or I would have been posting about this as well.

Glad this helped you, Ron. And I can confirm that yes, QW Support did in fact correct this behavior in the integration. I appreciate your post because we need more voices expressing these pain points or else QW Support believes they are mere feature requests, and not widespread difficulties that users experience.

With this fix, I can confidently and highly recommend the switch from Act! to HubSpot just in terms of the HS's superiority as a CRM and now the behavior of the integration from QW works as an experienced sales professional would expect to help them close more deals in a highly complex sales process with many various contacts in a deal.

Big thanks to the QW leadership and senior engineers for hearing and understanding this issue, which ultimately got us to the fix!