HubSpot Onboarding Accreditation

Preparation Guide

Updated for the March 2024 accreditation cycle

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January 30, 2025

Changes to Application Process

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• The application process for Onboarding now consists of one round that contains all the required items for the accreditation. Partners must submit all the materials before the April 18 deadline. One final decision will be made on June 20.
• There will be no follow up reminders if the submitted documents contain links that are not able to be accessed by the review team or if the reference requests are not completed.
• We are eliminating the “team of five” requirement for prerequisite certifications and the requirement to upload all the certificates to the application. Any full-time employee from the partner agency is able to have their certifications counted towards the required number.
• As improvements are being made to this accreditation, the French and Spanish versions of the prep guide and application are not available for this cycle only. However, documents submitted in French and Spanish are welcome.

Onboarding

About This Preparation Guide

This guide is designed to provide clear insights and criteria for the HubSpot Onboarding accreditation process, detailing the prerequisites and expectations for interested solutions partners, and offering strategies for developing a strong and relevant application.

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This guide is updated for each accreditation application window to reflect any changes to the process or requirements.

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Please carefully review this document to ensure your eligibility for this accreditation, and that your submission includes all referenced requirements.

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For details on HubSpot accreditations and the accreditation process for solutions partners, click here.

Onboarding

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Navigating This Preparation Guide

Jump to:

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• Eligibility Requirements
• Application Process
• Pre-submission Checklist
• Prerequisite Certifications
• Items to complete

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Onboarding Accreditation

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About the Accreditation

Obtaining the HubSpot Onboarding accreditation demonstrates that your solutions partner organization has first-hand experience in successfully onboarding new HubSpot customers onto the platform. In addition to applying the necessary product-specific knowledge, you have leveraged HubSpot’s onboarding methodology, “Objectives-Based Onboarding”, for your customers.

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If you have not completed onboarding projects for customers with Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise AND Sales Hub Pro or Enterprise, nor applied objective-based onboarding methodology, we recommend that you consider pursuing one of the other accreditation options.

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Onboarding Accreditation

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• Your organization has at least three full-time employees.
• Your organization has onboarded a customer with Marketing Hub and Sales Hub, both at the Professional subscription level (or higher) within the last 12 months.
• Your organization has experience with the objectives-based onboarding methodology.
• Your organization has experience with the Salesforce integration and other integrations or iPaaS solutions.
• Your organization is a Platinum, Diamond, or Elite-tiered HubSpot solutions partner.
• Meet the HubSpot Academy certification prerequisites (see the Accreditations Prerequisite Learning Path here).

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Organization Eligibility Requirements

Onboarding Accreditation

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Before submitting your application, please confirm that it fully meets the following criteria.

If a submission document does not meet these criteria, your application will be declined.

• All prerequisite certifications are complete and active at the time of your acceptance.
• Your organization is expected to complete the certifications required for this accreditation.
• Your submission documents are in English, Spanish, or French.
• All documents shared via cloud platforms, such as Google Drive, are able to be viewed and accessed by anyone who has the link.
• Since we use a team of judges, the link must not be restricted to any specific reviewer.
• If the reviewers do not have access to a document, no follow-up reminders will be issued, and the review will proceed with the materials currently accessible.
• Your documents satisfy the application criteria; they are correct and are the real-world documents used in the client engagement.
• You have received permission from your client(s) to share these documents with HubSpot.
• These documents are only shared internally with a small panel of HubSpot judges and accreditations team members. We will never share these documents without the permission of both you and your customer.

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Pre-submission Requirements

Onboarding Accreditation

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Prerequisite Certifications

Onboarding Accreditation

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Solutions partners need to have completed all required certifications and maintain their validity before the accreditation can be awarded. Expired certifications at the time of application will disqualify the entry.

These certifications validate the baseline knowledge and foundational skills solutions partners need to own in order to be qualified candidates for the accreditation process.

Solutions partners should ensure that full time employees in your agency collectively hold all required certifications in active status. This means that within your company, there should be at least three active Marketing Hub Implementation certifications, three active Salesforce Integration certifications, three active HubSpot Reporting Certifications, among others listed in the prerequisites.

Important note: These employees must have your partner domain email address in order to qualify.

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List of Required Certifications

Onboarding Accreditation

Certifications (3x each)

• HubSpot Implementation for Partners
• or both Marketing Hub and Sales Hub Implementation
• [HubSpot] Marketing Hub Software
• [HubSpot] Sales Hub Software
• Service Hub Software
• Platform Consulting
• Data Integrations
• Salesforce Integration
• Objectives-Based Onboarding
• HubSpot Reporting

Both versions are accepted

You can find the complete list of required certifications for each accreditation in the Accreditations Prerequisite Learning Path.

As several prerequisite certifications include practical exercises and/or practicum submissions, it is recommended to complete these certifications well in advance of the application deadline.

Grading for practical exercises includes a 1-day SLA.

Grading for practicum submissions includes a 7-day SLA.

Application Guide

The Onboarding Accreditation application consists of one round with five items to complete. Review the following information carefully to understand what these items require.

Onboarding Accreditation

• Overview
• First Item
• Second Item
• Third Item
• Fourth Item
• Fifth Item

Items to Complete

Onboarding Accreditation

Application Guide | Overview

Onboarding Accreditation

• A project plan and associated HubSpot Portal ID for a customer that you successfully onboarded using the Objectives-Based Onboarding methodology.
• An integration document that describes how you solved a customer’s integration challenges through the Salesforce Integration (UK and US-requirement only) or a migration or integration with another CRM (all other regions), and one additional use case using either a marketplace integration or an iPaaS solution.
• Contact information for a reference at your customer.
• A video case study providing a deep dive into an onboarding engagement.
• A practical exercise to create an action plan to address a fictional customer escalation.

When possible, you should submit documents you’ve used in actual customer engagements. Your focus should be on depth and clarity rather than volume as if you were communicating with customer stakeholders. You do not need to include details regarding the customer or your organization outside of what is required. Your submission should contain information from one to three customer engagements. You may use a single engagement for all the items should you wish, but it is not a requirement.

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Overview of Items to Complete

Application Guide | Overview

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When considering which onboarding engagements are the best fit, use the following guidelines to inform your selection:

• Is the customer at the Professional subscription level with both Marketing and Sales Hub?
• Have you held a successful kickoff call with this customer?
• Have you helped this customer identify, set, and prioritize objectives?
• Can you explain the HubSpot solution you recommended for the customer and how it met the customer’s unique business objectives?
• Can you summarize some of the challenges (product/technical and account management/communication) that you faced during the onboarding and how did you resolve them?
• Did you keep the customer on track and able to achieve their goals on time?
• Can you describe how you handled scope creep in the engagement?
• Did you set the customer up with a plan for continued success post onboarding?
• Did you create thorough project documentation, including technical solutions and recommendations for optimization?

Determining Best Fit

Onboarding Accreditation

Application Guide | Item One

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Upload a project plan and HubSpot Portal ID for a customer that you successfully onboarded using the Objectives-Based Onboarding methodology. The best submissions will demonstrate that the customer can meet their goals incrementally and realize value within 90 days of kickoff (“Phase 1”), rather than waiting for the conclusion onboarding to understand the impact and return on their investment in HubSpot.

Note: You will use this customer engagement for item four, so please select the engagement that best represents your approach to HubSpot onboarding.

Item One: Objectives-Based Onboarding Project Plan

Onboarding Accreditation

Application Guide | Item One

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Your plan should include the following information:

• The engagement start and end dates, list of Hubs onboarded, and subscription levels
• Number of users onboarded
• Customer company size
• Customer’s overall goals are clearly identified and articulated
• The 3-5 goals identified for “Phase 1” with clear start and end dates.
• Clear steps and activities outlined for the customer to complete in HubSpot, that correspond with each of the customer’s stated goals.

The customer selected for this engagement must have both Marketing Hub and Sales Hub at the Professional level or higher. Engagements referencing a Starter plan will not be considered.

Item Requirements

Onboarding Accreditation

Application Guide | Item One

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Submissions are reviewed for the following:

• All the required information (from previous slide) has been provided
• Customer’s goals are clearly & concretely identified, documented, and articulated in your project plan.
• Your scheduled work is anchored to the customer’s goals and is scheduled within a 90-day onboarding period (as evidenced by the project plan).

Review Criteria

Onboarding Accreditation

Application Guide | Item Two

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An essential component of onboarding is to help customers center HubSpot within their tech stack, which often requires integrations with the existing platforms or systems in use at the customer organization. We are looking for partners who understand integration fundamentals and can use the app integration ecosystem to address customers’ integration needs.

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Upload a document that describes how you solved a customer’s integration challenges through the Salesforce Integration (UK and US-requirement only) or a multi-object migration or integration (all other regions), and one additional use case employing either a marketplace integration or an iPaaS solution. Your use case should not include a scenario in which you simply had to turn on an integration.

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This document does not need to communicate developer-level understanding of integrations, but should cogently address the points outlined in the next slide. The customer selected for this engagement must have both Marketing Hub and Sales Hub at the Professional level or higher. Engagements referencing a Starter subscription will not be considered.

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Item Two: Integration Documentation

Onboarding Accreditation

Application Guide | Item Two

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You must provide following information in your documentation:

• The engagement start and end dates, list of Hubs, and subscription levels
• Clear articulation of the business use case for the integration
• Explanation of how the referenced integrations function
• Data flow diagram, complete with relevant components of the data model
• Explanation of the solution you designed
• Explanation of how the data was used in HubSpot.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Item Requirements

Application Guide | Item Two

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Submissions are reviewed for the following:

• You provided a clear and thorough articulation of the business use case for the connected integrations that also highlights any addressed customer concerns.
• You offered an explanation of how the Salesforce integration functioned for the customer (US and UK audience-only).
• You offered an explanation of how the specific App Marketplace integration or IPaaS integrations function for the customer.
• You shared a data flow diagram, complete with relevant components of the data model, that clearly visualizes the customer’s data model around HubSpot; this diagram should also pair with a clear explanation and articulation of the solution proposed.
• You offered an explanation of how the data was used in HubSpot.

Note: This upload should contain two separate integration use cases. Uploads missing one of these elements will not be considered.

Onboarding Accreditation

Review Criteria

Application Guide | Item Three

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Please provide reference information for a stakeholder contact from a customer specified in your application.

Once contact information has been provided, the system will send a brief form to complete that will solicit feedback from the individuals on the following domains:

• Identifying goals and addressing business needs
• Effective communication
• Time to value within the onboarding engagement

It is your responsibility to ensure that your selected reference contact complete the form by June 1. Applications without a submitted reference will not be considered for the accreditation.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Item Three: Customer Reference Info

Application Guide | Item Four

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For this case study, please create and submit a 15-minute (maximum) video elaborating on the onboarding engagement that corresponds to the project plan you provided for the Project Plan in Item One.

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Please note that even though you discussed this customer’s onboarding in the first item, you should not assume the reviewer has any prior exposure to your work with this customer. Please proceed as if this is the first time profiling this customer engagement.

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The customer selected for this engagement must have both Marketing Hub and Sales Hub at the Professional level or higher. Engagements referencing a Starter plan will not be considered.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Item Four: Video Case Study

Application Guide | Item Four

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This video should focus on specific aspects of the engagement that are crucial to your customer’s success but might not easily be articulated through documentation alone. In your submission, you should address the following scenarios:

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• Describe your approach on the initial kickoff call and the actions that resulted from that call.
• How did you handle times when the customer had more goals/objectives that could reasonably be met within phase 1 (the first 90 days)?
• Which HubSpot solution(s) did you recommend for the customer and how did those recommendations meet the customer’s unique business objectives?
• Share some of the challenges (both product/technical challenges and account management/communication challenges) that you faced during the onboarding and how you resolved them.
• How did you keep the customer on track and able to achieve their goals on time? How did you keep the project moving when the customer either didn’t engage or didn’t complete their assigned tasks on time?

Onboarding Accreditation

Video Case Study Requirements

Application Guide | Item Four

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6. Scope: Describe how you handled scope creep in terms of:

• The customer wanting to accomplish additional objectives in the same amount of time;
• The customer providing “bad” requirements that you had to push back on and recommend a different approach;
• The customer requesting requirements that are not included in their subscription level.
• How did you set the customer up with a plan for continued, post-onboarding success?
• Report on the measurable results that the customer realized as a result of your onboarding.

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If you are not able to identify a single customer engagement that covers all of the recommended scenarios, start with a customer that allows you to address the majority of the requirements and then use additional customer examples for outstanding items. Use your time wisely, as you are limited to the single video.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Video Case Study Requirements (continued)

Application Guide | Item Four

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Submissions are reviewed for the following:

• You articulated your approach on the initial kickoff call and the action items that resulted from that call.
• You thoroughly explained both the context and their approach to handling scope creep—specifically, customer goals and objectives that could reasonably be met within “Phase 1”, customer requirements that were poor or misaligned, and customer requirements that were outside of their purchased subscription of HubSpot.
• You clearly stated your solutions and links those solutions to specific unique business objectives.
• You thoroughly outlined both the technical and account management challenges that arose and your approach for finding a resolution.
• You provided specifics around your strategies for keeping the project on schedule OR techniques for keeping stakeholders engaged—depending on the example offered in the video submission.
• You shared your approach in developing customized plans for post-onboarding success.
• You described clear quantitative customer outcomes and success as a result of your onboarding project.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Review Criteria

Application Guide | Item Five

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Inbound Company Overview

Inbound Company, a SaaS organization with 200 employees, has purchased HubSpot's Marketing Hub Pro and Sales Hub Pro to align their Marketing and Sales teams. This strategic move aims to streamline operations and enhance team collaboration. However, a recent change in leadership with the introduction of a new Vice President (VP) of Sales, who has a preference for an alternative CRM, has posed challenges to the onboarding process.

During the initial onboarding, your team conducted three scheduled calls with Inbound Company over a three-week period. These interactions aimed to facilitate a smooth transition to HubSpot’s platform. Despite these efforts, it became evident that the relationship between your organization and Inbound Company was weakening, culminating in the client's complete disengagement after the third call.

Two weeks following the customers last communication, you received this email directly from the CEO.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Item Five: Practical Exercise

Application Guide | Item Five

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Imagine you are presenting a plan to your internal stakeholder team. Provide an overview of the escalation and an action plan that addresses the following areas:

• Recap the customer pain points and any assumptions you have about their challenges and impact on the onboarding process.
• This allows us to see that you understand common customer challenges and can clearly demonstrate how those needs may or may not impact the onboarding process. Include details like “What is the challenge?,” “When and why does this challenge commonly occur?,” “What are the potential methods to overcome the challenge?”

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• Explain your solutions to overcome the customer pain points and a timeline to implement the solutions.
• This allows us to understand your decision-making process and solve common customer challenges. Please include the solution itself (screenshots of real solutions when possible) and an explanation for why your solution is the right solution to help the customer resolve the challenge.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Practical Exercise Instructions

Application Guide | Item Five

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• Detail your organization's approach to “scope creep” and how your approach would apply to Inbound Companies escalation.
• This helps us understand how you handle a situation where the scope of work expected from the customer is not in line with the contract. We are looking for a high-level description of how your organization handles scope creep, identification of scope creep within the item, and an explanation for how your approach to scope creep would be applied to the situation in the item.

• How would you provide immediate value to regain trust of the customer POC?
• We are looking for your organization to create both long-term solutions, and provide immediate value to the customer given their urgency. When possible, describe solutions and provide screenshots of real solutions you have implemented that provide urgent value to customers.

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The format of this response should be a PDF or PowerPoint presentation. Please remember, while this is a fictional exercise, real scenarios like this happen every day. Your task is to provide enough context to help our judges feel confident in your organization's ability to manage escalations.

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Onboarding Accreditation

Practical Exercise Instructions (continued)