Your team implemented HubSpot a few years ago. Maybe you hired an agency, maybe you did it in-house, maybe it was part of your onboarding package. At the time, it seemed to work fine.
But now? Something's off.
Your sales team doesn't trust the data. Marketing can't get clean reports. Workflows are firing when they shouldn't -- or not firing when they should. You have properties for "Trade Show 2021 Las Vegas" sitting next to "Tradeshow_Vegas_21" sitting next to "LV Trade Show." Your admin left six months ago, and nobody's entirely sure what half the automations actually do.
You're not alone. According to our data at Profoundly, roughly a third of customers fall into this category: portal re-implementations and optimization needed.
The good news? This is fixable. And it's way more common than you think.
This guide will help you recognize when you need this kind of help, understand what's involved, and set you up for success when you're ready to hit the reset button and get HubSpot working the way it should (again).
Not every HubSpot portal needs a full re-implementation. But if you're experiencing any of these situations, it could be time to bring in help:
This is the most common trigger. Maybe you've shifted from B2C to B2B. Maybe you've added new products, entered new markets, or changed your go-to-market strategy entirely. Your HubSpot setup was perfect for who you were three years ago -- but you're not that company anymore.
As Steven Dodd, founder of Elevated Sprocket Solutions, puts it: "It's not necessarily that your first implementation was incorrect, it's just that the system needs an update. It's like reorganizing or spring cleaning. Their strategy has changed, their management has changed, their reporting needs have changed."
You're a new VP of Marketing, Head of Sales, or Director of Operations. You've inherited a HubSpot portal that somebody else built, and you're not entirely sure what you're looking at. Previous employees made decisions that aren't documented. Workflows are running that nobody can explain.
Tyler Hart from Driftless Agency sees this frequently: "You have people who are inheriting HubSpot systems as they become marketing leaders, sales leaders, customer success leaders. They need somebody to help them interpret all of the things that are sitting in HubSpot that may have been left by a previous employee or weren't properly documented."
Think of it like a new executive bringing in a consulting firm to do a strategic audit. It's not about finding fault -- it's about charting the right course forward.
When was the last time someone pulled a report from and everyone in the room actually believed the numbers?
If the answer is "I don't remember" or "never," you have a problem. Clean, trustworthy data is the entire point of a CRM. If your team has given up on reports and started building their own spreadsheets, something fundamental is broken.
Walter Cervantes, who spent years at HubSpot before starting his own practice, has a simple test: "I like to go in and do an import test, and it'll tell me how many workflows and lists will be affected. If contacts in an import will go through 500 lists and 600 workflows, there's just so many things that could potentially go wrong."
If you've reached that point, it may be time to reset.
Too many custom properties. Too many lists. Too many forms. Too many pipelines. Everything feels duplicative and cluttered, and nobody's quite sure what's still being used versus what's just sitting there from 2019.
Riley McNaught, independent RevOps specialist and contractor, calls this out directly: "The best HubSpot portals are honestly simple because they've been intentionally designed that way to make it easier for you to scale and train your team."
If your portal doesn't feel simple, call Riley.
And nobody knows how anything works. This one's self-explanatory, but it happens all the time. The person who built everything is gone, and the institutional knowledge went with them.
The good news is, there’s help available…
Let's get tactical. Here's what you should expect when you bring in an expert to help with a portal re-implementation or optimization:
Before anyone touches anything in your portal, there needs to be a comprehensive audit. Think of this as the diagnostic before the treatment.
A good audit examines:
Should you pay for an audit?
Practices vary. Some experts offer initial audit work for free as part of building trust and understanding the scope. Others charge for audits and include full documentation and recommendations that you can take and implement yourself if you choose.
Either way, expect the audit to take anywhere from several days to a few weeks depending on organizational and portal complexity. The output should be clear documentation of what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to happen next.
Once the audit reveals the technical issues, it's time to talk about your business.
This isn't just about fixing broken workflows -- it's about aligning HubSpot with where your business is going. The best pros spend significant time understanding:
Steven Dodd emphasizes this point: "I spend more time documenting and having those conversations than fingers-to-keyboard dev time. That way I can build for what’s needed and avoid the client having to redesign things again as they grow."
Tyler Hart echoes this: "We're level setting with the team, everybody involved, and making sure that as we re-implement, we're doing everything right from the get-go, setting all the right boundaries, setting all the right SLAs, and making sure that process is the center of the conversation."
Only after audit and discovery does the implementation work begin. This typically includes:
This phase can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months depending on the scope of work. The key is doing it right, not doing it fast.
After talking with dozens of HubSpot pros who've done hundreds of these engagements, a few patterns emerged about what separates successful projects from painful ones.
Tyler Hart is direct about this: "We need the buy-in from key stakeholders. If we don't have that, it's hard to get people to follow processes."
Your role isn't to do the technical work -- it's to make sure your organization shows up, provides input, and commits to following the new processes once they're in place.
"What's your objective?" Steven Dodd asks. "I get lots of requests where people are like, 'I know I need something, but I just don't know what it is.' Just have a clear objective of how did we come to this point?"
You don't need to know the technical solution, but you should be able to articulate the business problem. Are reports inaccurate? Is sales wasting time? Can't scale without better data? Start there.
Tyler Hart: "What are we actually trying to do? Are we trying to get turnkey reports that leadership can just pull up and trust? Let's align on that before we get going."
Don't start with "I need 12 workflows rebuilt." Start with "I need our sales team to trust the data and stop keeping their own spreadsheets."
Riley McNaught's advice: "Start with clarity, not automation. Ideally, you have clearly defined and documented processes. The best HubSpot portals are simple because they've been intentionally designed that way." Simplicity scales.
Walter Cervantes warns about scope creep: "Part of the audit and all those things we do at the beginning are essentially to prevent scope creep. If your due diligence is not done at the beginning, or if the client doesn't provide enough information, we're definitely gonna end up in a scope creep area."
Be thorough in discovery. Share everything. It's much better to know the full scope upfront than to discover it halfway through.
Let's get specific about what typically goes wrong and how to fix it:
What it looks like: Hundreds of active workflows, many redundant or overlapping. Nobody's sure what each one does. Things break when you try to change anything.
How to fix it: Comprehensive audit followed by consolidation. Good pros will look for workflows that can be combined, identify what can be deactivated, and rebuild with clear naming conventions and documentation.
How to prevent it: Set governance rules for who can create workflows and require documentation for anything new.
What it looks like: "Trade Show 2021 Las Vegas" next to "Tradeshow_Vegas_21" next to "LV_Trade_Show_2021." Someone created a new property instead of using the existing one. Open text fields where dropdowns should exist.
How to fix it: Property consolidation, data migration, and converting text fields to structured data (especially for things like state, country, and close-lost reasons).
How to prevent it: Create a property naming convention and approval process. Make key fields (like state and country) dropdowns from the start.
What it looks like: Duplicate contacts. Company names spelled 24 different ways. State data that includes "MA," "Mass," "Massachusetts," "MASSACHUSETTS," …
How to fix it: Data cleansing workflows, deduplication processes, integration fixes to prevent future issues, and standardization rules.
How to prevent it: Set up data governance from day one. Use HubSpot's data quality tools. Match on domain when importing. Make critical fields dropdowns instead of text.
What it looks like: Data flowing in from ZoomInfo, Salesforce, a custom app, and manual uploads -- all creating duplicates and conflicting data.
How to fix it: Review every integration, establish clear data flow rules, set up deduplication processes, and potentially rebuild some integrations from scratch.
How to prevent it: Document how each integration should work, who owns it, and what data it's responsible for.
What it looks like: The admin who built everything left, and nobody knows why certain things were set up the way they were.
How to fix it: Forensic discovery by looking at user logs, workflow history, and property creation dates. Then rebuild with proper documentation.
How to prevent it: Require documentation for every major change. Use clear naming conventions. Keep a "change log" for significant updates.
You're bringing in an expert to do the heavy lifting, but these projects don't succeed without client involvement. Here's what the best clients do:
Your number one job is to get buy-in from stakeholders and keep them engaged. If people aren't showing up to meetings or providing input, the project will stall.
Don't wait for the expert to ask. If business priorities change, tell them. If a new campaign is launching, tell them. If there's internal pushback, tell them.
Steven Dodd: "Allow me to kind of sit, quote-unquote, on the board to understand where you're going. I'm not working on the here and now. If I'm seeing things that we can optimize for future growth, then I can give those recommendations."
If something isn't working, say so. If you don't understand why something was recommended, ask. The more transparent you are, the better the outcome.
Re-implementation isn't a "set it and forget it" project. You'll participate in discovery, review documentation, provide feedback, and ultimately commit to following the new processes once they're in place.
One of the most common questions: "How do we prove ROI on this?"
Here's how the pros think about it:
Walter Cervantes: "By simplifying and cleaning up bloat, you give teams time back. They're not spending half of their time trying to figure out who's on the CRM, who should I contact. Marketing isn't stuck wondering, should I send this email to this list or that list?"
Calculate how many hours per week your team is wasting on manual work, duplicate data management, or building external reports because they don't trust HubSpot. If you're giving back even 5 hours per week per person, the math works quickly.
When leadership can actually trust the reports in HubSpot, decisions get made faster and with more confidence. Bad data leads to bad decisions. Clean data leads to growth.
Steven Dodd: "Maybe you thought you were doing really well in your reports, but they were just completely inaccurate because the data was misskewed. Now we can see comparison data, and then we can really calculate the return on investment."
Tyler Hart points out the reverse ROI: "We've discovered ROI by finding that sales wasn't aligned with marketing, so deals were being created without the correct contacts. When we fixed it, 100% of sales was being attributed to the sales motion when we know marketing actually originated the conversation. That's insight we didn't have -- the data was in HubSpot, but it wasn't performing the way it should have."
Tyler Hart again: "What's the cost of doing it wrong? What have we wasted up to this point for team resources, for HubSpot not even being utilized? There's so much opportunity cost that's being wasted."
This is tough because every portal is different. Here's what to expect:
Many pros offer a phased approach:
This lets you start small, build trust, and expand as needed.
Some experts will quote a fixed price for a defined scope. Others prefer hourly billing, especially when the full scope isn't clear. There's no "right" answer, but make sure you understand:
Small optimizations might take a few weeks. Full re-implementations can take 2-3 months. The key variable is usually how quickly your team can provide input, review work, and make decisions.
The work doesn't stop when the project ends. Here's what should happen next:
Your team needs to understand what was built and how to maintain it. Good pros build this into the project.
You should walk away with clear documentation of:
HubSpot updates constantly. Your business evolves. Many companies transition from a re-implementation project into an ongoing retainer relationship for maintenance and optimization.
This isn't required, but it's worth considering -- especially if you don't have a strong in-house admin.
Maybe you're reading this thinking, "Can't we just fix this ourselves?"
Maybe. But here are signs you probably can't:
Remember: your in-house team knows your business. Pros know HubSpot. The best outcomes happen when both work together.
If you're ready to move forward, here's what to do:
Before you talk to anyone, write down:
The more specific you can be, the better.
Talk to your stakeholders. Do they agree there's a problem? Are they willing to invest time in fixing it? You'll need their buy-in.
Look for someone who:
Don't commit to a massive project on day one. Start with an audit or discovery phase. See how you work together. Make sure it's a good fit before diving into the full engagement.
The insights in this guide come from real conversations with experienced HubSpot professionals who specialize in portal re-implementations and optimization. If you're looking for expert help, here are four excellent options to consider:
Optimizing HubSpot CRM, Sales Workflows & Reporting
As a seasoned HubSpot expert with 3+ years of experience, Reilly specializes in helping B2B companies streamline their sales and marketing processes, improve automation, and drive measurable growth. She partners with teams to optimize HubSpot CRM (ensuring clean data and proper lifecycle tracking), automate lead management and sales processes, improve marketing performance, and create dashboards that provide real-time insights for data-driven decisions. Known for her focus on simplicity and intentional design -- "The best HubSpot portals are honestly simple because they've been intentionally designed that way."
HubSpot Expert/Solutions Partner | CRM Program Management & RevOps
Steven is the founder of Elevated Sprocket Solutions LLC, a HubSpot Solutions Provider with 5+ years of experience helping businesses across industries optimize their HubSpot ecosystems. With 10+ HubSpot certifications and a 100% 5-star client satisfaction rating, Steven specializes in CRM implementations, sales enablement, marketing automation, and custom API integrations. He's known for offering up to 5 hours of initial audit work to build trust and thoroughly understand client needs. Steven excels at auditing and re-implementation projects where the goal is to clean house and prepare for future growth.
Real-World HubSpot Expert Since 2016
Tyler has a full career of real-world HubSpot application in both agency and enterprise-level settings, starting in 2016 when HubSpot was "that free CRM." With experience supporting clients both as agency headcount and as an in-house enterprise admin, Tyler brings a unique perspective to every engagement. His clients say the best thing about working with him is that he feels like a member of their team rather than a transaction. Tyler is particularly strong at working with leadership transitions, helping new leaders understand what they've inherited and charting a path forward. His approach emphasizes process and team alignment above technical fixes.
RevOps & HubSpot Consultant | HubSpot Alumni | Making the Impossible Possible
Walter is a HubSpot & RevOps consultant with over 8 years of experience as a HubSpot admin and consultant, including time at HubSpot HQ itself. He specializes in CRM optimization, automation, and revenue operations, helping businesses streamline processes, improve lead management, and scale operations efficiently. Walter excels at custom workflows & integrations (automating repetitive tasks and integrating HubSpot with Zendesk, Salesforce, and other tools), lead routing & attribution, and setting up intelligent systems that keep pipelines clean and efficient. He's known for his forensic approach to audits and his ability to prevent scope creep through thorough discovery work -- perfect for complex, technical challenges.
At Profoundly, we make it easy to find and work with proven HubSpot experts who specialize in portal re-implementations and optimization.
Whether you need a comprehensive rebuild, targeted optimization, or just want someone to tell you honestly whether you need help, we'll connect you with the right pro.
Post a Project and get tailored proposals from vetted experts.
Talk to a Sourcing Expert if you're not sure where to start.
That's HubSpot help, Profoundly simple.