6 Steps to Set Up HubSpot (And What to Do After Day One)

If you're wondering how to set up HubSpot without making a mess of it - or spending hours clicking around trying to figure out what everything does - you’re in the right place.

This is your practical day-one setup guide: no fluff, no jargon, just the essential steps you need to get your HubSpot portal ready for action.

HubSpot is one of the most powerful and user-friendly CRMs on the market—but only if it’s set up correctly from the start. We've seen businesses fall into the trap of diving in too fast, only to end up with poor user adoption, duplicate records, and a disconnected tech stack.

At Axon Garside, we’ve supported dozens of B2B companies through successful CRM rollouts, including Eldapoint, whose implementation helped streamline their sales process and improve visibility across the board. Jonathon Phillips, Group Commercial Director, highlighted the improvement:

The quality of the data being recorded is night and day to where we were. It’s been absolutely fantastic.

That project was recognised with a HubSpot Impact Award - proof of what’s possible when you lay the right foundations.

This guide is built on everything we’ve learned from setting up HubSpot for clients in manufacturing, tech, and professional services. Whether you're brand new to the platform or rebooting a half-used portal, these first steps will set you up for long-term success.

But if you'd like support...

Our 5-Stage HubSpot implementation playbook is built for businesses looking to maximise the potential of the CRM.

Common challenges when completing a HubSpot Setup

While HubSpot is designed to be intuitive, a lot can go wrong in the early stages of setup if you don’t approach it with the right strategy. These early missteps may seem minor at first, but can lead to major adoption, reporting, and operational issues down the line.

A common challenge is treating setup like a checklist instead of a strategic exercise. Many businesses dive straight into importing contacts, building emails, or customising pipelines, without thinking about the long-term structure of their CRM. This often leads to inconsistent naming conventions, disjointed workflows, and properties that don’t align with reporting requirements. Once these patterns are embedded, they’re hard to untangle.

Poor data quality is another critical issue. We regularly speak with businesses that migrate historical contacts, deals, or companies from Excel or another CRM without properly cleansing them. The result? Duplicates, outdated lifecycle stages, formatting errors, and records that don’t meet minimum data requirements. When bad data enters HubSpot, it compromises everything from lead scoring to automation.

Permissions are also frequently overlooked. Assigning blanket super admin access for simplicity may seem convenient in the short term, but it creates risks, particularly around data visibility, property changes, and reporting structures. Setting role-based permissions is essential to ensure different teams can confidently use the platform without stepping on each other’s toes.

Then there’s the issue of a lack of internal alignment. Marketing, sales, and operations often approach HubSpot from different angles, with no unified view of how the CRM should be structured. If one team creates custom fields or lifecycle stages in isolation, it leads to a breakdown in reporting, handovers, and accountability. Aligning on shared definitions and processes during setup is non-negotiable for long-term success.

These challenges are why we always recommend businesses start with a structured audit. Our guide on how to conduct a HubSpot audit outlines what to assess, from properties and pipelines to user behaviour, before you commit to automation or campaigns.

It’s also worth considering a phased rollout. Our clients who follow a week-by-week plan—starting with core defaults, then gradually building out tools like workflows, scoring, and segmentation - tend to see higher adoption and faster ROI. This mirrors the best practice we share in our upcoming CRM implementation content and aligns with how HubSpot itself recommends onboarding.

The bottom line? A poor setup is one of the fastest ways to stall HubSpot’s value. Taking the time to get it right from day one avoids tech debt, team frustration, and the need to “start over” six months later.

HubSpot Implementation

If you’re looking for a complete roadmap beyond day-one setup, our guide to the 5 stages of a successful HubSpot CRM implementation walks you through everything you need—from initial mobilisation and portal configuration to long-term optimisation and continuous improvement.

It’s ideal for businesses that want a scalable, well-governed approach to rolling out HubSpot across marketing, sales, and service teams—without falling into the usual traps that slow down adoption.

Explore the full implementation framework and set your business up for sustainable CRM success.

Establish a strategy for using HubSpot

A common reason businesses struggle with HubSpot adoption isn’t the tool itself, it’s the lack of a clear, strategic plan for how to use it. Before you start building dashboards, automating emails, or importing contacts, take time to define what you want HubSpot to do for your business.

This starts with aligning the platform to your commercial goals. Whether that’s increasing lead quality, improving sales conversion, shortening the buying cycle, or enabling better visibility across marketing and sales, HubSpot should be the engine that supports those outcomes. Without this alignment, it’s easy to slip into the trap of using features for the sake of it, rather than building a system that delivers measurable value.

Next, define how your teams will interact with HubSpot. What does a sales-qualified lead look like? What does marketing need to know before handing someone over to sales? How will service teams log issues or trigger follow-ups? These questions aren’t just about automation—they’re about shaping a consistent, efficient customer experience.

You should also decide which teams or roles will be responsible for managing and maintaining HubSpot. In businesses where ownership is unclear, the portal can quickly become disorganised. Assigning internal “owners” for properties, workflows, and reports helps ensure long-term consistency and accountability.

At this point, we also recommend mapping your key use cases. These might include lead generation, content management, pipeline visibility, automated follow-ups, or customer onboarding. Identify what success looks like in each area, and use that to inform how you build out properties, workflows, and lists. It’s the difference between a well-oiled system and a CRM graveyard full of unused features.

For more structured guidance on this, our article on how to conduct a HubSpot CRM audit offers a detailed breakdown of what to consider when evaluating your current usage and future needs.

Ultimately, this strategy doesn’t need to be over-complicated, but it does need to be shared and documented. That way, your team knows what you’re building, why you’re building it, and how success will be measured.

6 basic things to prioritise on day 1 of your HubSpot set-up

Now that you’ve laid the strategic groundwork, it’s time to start configuring HubSpot in a way that sets your team up for success. Here are six foundational steps you should prioritise on day one, simple, practical, and essential if you want to avoid long-term CRM headaches.

1. Set Your Portal Defaults

Begin by configuring your company profile and account-wide settings. That includes time zone, currency, domain, logo, and contact information, core elements that will filter into branding across your portal. This also informs how your sales quotes, form follow-ups, and marketing emails appear.

It’s also the right time to define region-specific settings such as business units, GDPR compliance options, and tracking consent preferences. This is especially important for UK businesses operating internationally or across multiple brands.

2. Create User Roles and Assign Permissions

Avoid the temptation to give everyone access to everything. Instead, think about how different departments use HubSpot and tailor their access accordingly.

Sales reps might only need access to deals, calls, and tasks. Marketing might need lists, emails, and workflows. Senior leaders may only want dashboards. HubSpot’s permissions system is flexible enough to accommodate role-based access from day one.

For long-term governance, assign at least one super admin to take ownership of ongoing portal management. In our experience working with Bridge Coffee Roasters, a clearly defined internal CRM lead made a huge difference in keeping the system clean, structured, and user-friendly.

3. Clean and Import Your Data

Your CRM is only as good as the data inside it. Day one is the best time to cleanse your data before it hits your portal, because fixing it after import takes 5x longer.

Start by deduplicating contacts, removing stale entries, and standardising fields (like job titles, regions, and email formats). Ensure lifecycle stages are consistent across datasets so you don’t end up with conflicting definitions of leads, MQLs, or customers.

Once clean, use HubSpot’s import tool to upload segmented batches (e.g. contacts, then companies, deals). We go into more depth on this in our guide to HubSpot CRM migration best practices, which outlines the step-by-step process used in our onboarding programmes.

4. Build Out Your Sales Pipeline(s)

Even if your full team isn’t onboarded yet, your deal pipelines should reflect how your sales process actually works.

Create custom deal stages that mirror your buying journey, avoid default placeholders like “Appointment Scheduled” if they don’t apply. Add automation to reduce admin for reps (e.g. task creation when a deal moves stage, or internal notifications).

If you operate multiple sales cycles (e.g. direct-to-customer and partner-led), create separate pipelines for each. This allows you to keep your forecasting clean and reporting meaningful.

5. Set Up Your Lifecycle Stages and Lead Status

Lifecycle stages (Subscriber > Lead > MQL > SQL > Opportunity > Customer > Evangelist) underpin almost everything in HubSpot - from workflows and segmentation to reporting and scoring.

Make sure your team aligns on what each stage means. For instance, at what point does a lead become “qualified”? Who’s responsible for moving them between stages? Having these definitions documented on day one will prevent misreporting and missed handoffs later.

Complement this with Lead Status options that reflect your sales team’s real-world activity (e.g. “Open,” “Attempted Contact,” “Bad Timing,” etc.). These can be customised to suit your business model and mapped to your sales cadence.

6. Create Standard Properties and Naming Conventions

HubSpot comes with a large number of default properties, but you’ll likely need to create a few custom ones too. Start small and only create fields that serve a clear purpose. Avoid multiple versions of the same thing (e.g. “Industry Sector” vs “Industry Category”).

Clear naming is just as important. Every list, property, or workflow should follow a simple convention that anyone in the business can understand at a glance. For example:

• MQL - Downloaded Guide - Website
• WF - Lead Nurture - Post-Event

Standardising these now will save confusion and cleanup later, especially when new users join or your CRM scales with business growth.

Need a quick check that you’ve done all this right?

Our HubSpot audit guide outlines how to review your portal setup, from user permissions to property structure. It’s a great tool for sanity-checking your day-one configuration, or for fixing the gaps if you’ve already started and need to reset.

What Features to Set Up on HubSpot from Day 2–7

Once your portal defaults, users, data, and pipelines are in place, it’s time to start unlocking more of HubSpot’s real power. The first week is your opportunity to build momentum, rolling out high-impact features that automate busywork, improve lead quality, and deliver quick wins to your team.

Here are the core features to focus on between days two and seven.

Lead Scoring

If your sales team spends too much time chasing the wrong leads, lead scoring can be a game-changer. HubSpot’s built-in scoring tool allows you to assign values to specific contact behaviours and attributes, such as visiting key pages, downloading content, or having a certain job title.

This helps your team prioritise follow-up, improve pipeline efficiency, and align marketing and sales around what a “qualified lead” actually looks like.

We’ve broken this down further in our blog on HubSpot lead scoring, which outlines how to plan, build, and refine a scoring model that fits your sales cycle.

Automated Workflows

Manual tasks drain productivity and often fall through the cracks. HubSpot workflows help you automate everything from lead nurturing and internal notifications to lifecycle stage progression and task creation.

In week one, start small:

• Assign incoming leads to the right owner based on region or service area
• Create reminder tasks for sales reps when a deal goes inactive
• Send a follow-up email after someone downloads a gated asset

Meeting Links

Sales reps lose hours each week going back and forth to schedule calls. HubSpot’s meeting links eliminate that.

You can sync your calendar and allow prospects to book available time directly, whether it’s a discovery call, demo, or follow-up. It’s fast, professional, and reduces drop-off from form submissions. Reps can also create custom links based on pipeline stage, contact owner, or deal type.

Set this up in Sales > Meetings, and add links to email signatures, landing pages, or chatbots to streamline booking.

More on HubSpot’s meeting tools here.

Lists and Customer Segmentation

One-size-fits-all communication rarely performs well. HubSpot’s list tools help you build highly targeted groups of contacts based on lifecycle stage, deal history, engagement, or custom properties.

Start by creating:

• Active lists for prospects who’ve visited key pages but haven’t converted
• Static lists for campaign-specific cohorts, like event attendees or gated asset downloads
• Suppression lists to exclude contacts from workflows or email sends (e.g. competitors or bounced leads)

This segmentation will power your workflows, reporting, and email marketing efforts—and help you deliver more relevant messaging at every stage of the buyer journey.

You can explore the basics in HubSpot’s official lists guide.

Email Campaigns

By day seven, you should be ready to send your first email campaigns, whether it’s a welcome series, a nurture follow-up, or a re-engagement message.

HubSpot’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to build professional emails, but what matters most is the structure behind them. That means:

• Personalising by lifecycle stage, persona, or previous engagement
• Using clear naming conventions and goals
• Linking each email back to a defined campaign or workflow

Our B2B email marketing guide will take this further, but in the meantime, focus on getting your first sends live and learning from the results.

You can build these under Marketing > Email and use HubSpot’s A/B testing tools to optimise subject lines and CTAs from the start.

Set HubSpot Up for Long-Term Success

The first week of your HubSpot journey lays the foundation for everything that follows, so it’s worth getting right. By focusing on structured defaults, clean data, and clear user roles, you lay the groundwork for long-term success. Add powerful tools like workflows, segmentation, and lead scoring, and you’re not just setting up a CRM, you’re building a system that helps your teams align, scale, and grow.

But implementation doesn’t end after seven days. HubSpot is designed to evolve with your business. That means reviewing your setup regularly, optimising workflows, and introducing new tools as your team gains confidence.

If you’re already running HubSpot and wondering if it’s set up to support your growth, a structured audit is the best place to start. Our free HubSpot audit checklist will help you uncover gaps, fix inefficiencies, and unlock the full potential of your portal.

Or if you want expert help setting up, migrating to, or rebuilding your CRM from scratch, we’d be happy to talk. As a long-standing HubSpot Solutions Partner, we’ve helped dozens of B2B businesses, from manufacturing to SaaS, turn HubSpot into a driver of measurable revenue growth.

Ready to build a CRM that actually works? Get full visibility on what a strategic HubSpot setup or migration could cost - download our HubSpot CRM Pricing Guide.