Anyone who works in sales or marketing can attest to the fact that there is always so much to keep track of. How many people have visited your company? How many have signed up for your email list? Downloaded content? Reached out for a demo? Knowing the answers for these questions ensures that (a) you monitor the health of your pipeline, and (b) that you follow up with qualified leads in a timely manner.
And while you may have started doing this with spreadsheets when your business was new, as it grows, you need a more efficient process. This is where HubSpot deals come in. They help ensure that no one falls through the cracks, and that you can verify the status of any prospect at any given moment.
What are HubSpot Deals?
A HubSpot deal is an ongoing communication with a contact. You can categorize each deal stage to track the progress of these communications — and you do so in accordance with your own company’s steps as leads move along the pipeline.
For example, let’s say that your first step as a lead moves towards a sale is to schedule an appointment with one of your sales reps. Then you send them a proposal and a contract. Then they sign the contract. All of these stages are parts of a deal.
HubSpot includes seven default stages: scheduled appointment, qualified to buy, presentation scheduled, decision maker bought-in, contract sent, closed won, and closed lost. However, you can customize these stages in your account settings.
Benefits of HubSpot Deals
While smaller businesses may think they’re fine by continuing to use more rudimentary methods of tracking leads, the practical advantages of using HubSpot deals are many:
Monitor Pipeline Health
Your business can’t live on a hope and a prayer. You have to be proactive about having a steady flow of leads coming in and moving along. This is crucial to help you identify any areas for improvement, such as reaching out for additional engagement, following up promptly, and focusing on prospects with a higher lead score.
Understand How Much Revenue Is Tied Up at Each Stage
Surely, you have quarterly revenue goals. Therefore, you have to ensure a minimum number of pipeline volume, interaction, and actual sales. In addition, you want to know whether a lead is stuck in a particular stage for an unusual amount of time and what you can do to remedy those bottlenecks.
More Accurate Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a useful tool to prioritize leads based on their likelihood of becoming a customer. And since you’re the one who’s assigning point values to each interaction, you want to ensure that number reflects a lead’s interest. If you notice that your sales team consistently fails to make a sale when reaching out to prospects with high lead scores, you need to revisit your scoring system.
Delegate Work Among Sales Reps
Even if you have sales reps who are complete rockstars, there are only so many hours in a day. Knowing how many people are in each stage of the pipeline enables you to better allocate your resources so that no one is left on the back burner because a particular rep is too busy helping someone else. You gotta strike when the iron’s hot, and making someone wait just one extra day can be the difference between closing that sale or having them go to a competitor.
Forecast Revenue
If the details of each deal stage is ironed out and is a true representation of how things move along your pipeline, you’ll be able to forecast whether you’re on track to hitting your revenue goals. Consequently, you’ll be able to gauge whether it’s time to reassess your strategies, provide additional resources, or grow your team.
Track Sales Team Performance
There are many reasons to track your team’s performance: identifying the stronger ones and compensating them accordingly are some of the obvious ones. But you also want to be able to gauge each team member’s work capacity. If you have too many leads and only a handful of sales reps, it may be time to hire additional people. In addition, if you notice the same issues coming up repeatedly, that may indicate that your training needs to be either more structured or updated.
7 HubSpot Deals Best Practices
Now that you know the benefits of using HubSpot deals, let’s go down a list of best practices. Ensuring that your sales team is well-versed on them is an essential component of this process.
1. Make a List of All Deal Stages Within Your Company
While it’s totally fine to stick with HubSpot’s deals default stages, these will only be helpful if they genuinely reflect your company’s sales processes. Even if most of them are the same and you think you’re good to go, get together with your sales team to create an accurate and exhaustive list. And always involve them in this planning, since they are in the front lines and understand this better than anyone else within your company.
2. Set Up Standardized Names for Each Deal Stage
There are several reasons as to why different team members may use different names for each deal stage: previous companies they’ve worked for, watching different video tutorials online, or simply going by what personally makes sense to them. However, this sets the stage for misunderstandings or miscommunications. Avoid this issue by coming up with standardized names for each stage of your deals, train them properly, and ensure that they can refer back to the nomenclature either through a shared doc or your company’s knowledge base.
3. Do a Database Search
In order to avoid duplication and confusion, prior to entering a new deal, conduct a search within your deals database to ensure that what you’re about to enter doesn’t already exist. This is yet another reason why having standardized names will help you work more efficiently.
4. Always Enter the Monetary Value When You Create the Deal
HubSpot lets you enter the monetary value of a specific deal. For example, you can include how much revenue a contract will generate throughout a specific term. If you don’t specify the term-length, HubSpot’s default setting is 12 months. Keep in mind that HubSpot can be used for more than one currency, so check to see that you’re entering the correct value. You can also set it up as a monthly recurring revenue.
5. Give Each Stage a Win Probability Percentage
As each deal moves forward along the pipeline, you should assign it a win probability percentage. For example, someone who scheduled a discovery call may have a 15 percent to 20 percent probability of becoming a client. By the same token, someone who’s already reviewed a proposal and requested a contract may have a 90 percent probability of closing that sale. Doing this will help you better forecast your revenue.
6. Enter a Realistic Close Date
A deal doesn’t require that you enter a close date. However, you may have to do so depending on which CRM you’re integrating with your Sales Hub. But in addition to that, you want to establish a realistic closing date (based on previous pipeline history) so that your sales and marketing team can do their lead nurturing and follow ups effectively. Remember, time is of the essence in this process. Letting too much time go by increases the likelihood of losing that sale.
7. Associate Each Deal With a Contact In Your CRM
Your customer relationship management (CRM) software has all the information you need to craft ultra focused, personalized communications with your contacts. This is what helps you tailor your pitch to best fit their specific needs. It also enables you to identify upsell opportunities. So you want to make sure that each deal is associated with objects in your CRM. This also lets you see all information relating to each deal in a centralized location — all past communications, previous purchases, and any issues that may have come up.
Get a Free HubSpot Audit
HubSpot deals make it a lot easier for you to track your company’s progress as you move towards meeting your quarterly revenue goals. But we also know that the platform comes with a learning curve, and that there might be a way to optimize its use. Let us help you with a free HubSpot audit! We’ll let you know what’s working, and actionable steps to modify what can be improved.
Alejandra Zilak
Alejandra Zilak is a content writer, ghostwriter, blogger, and editor. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism and a Juris Doctor. She's licensed to practice law in four jurisdictions and worked as an attorney for almost a decade before switching careers to write full time. She loves being part of the Bluleadz team and implementing SEO best practices with her content. When not working, she loves to read, write fiction, and long distance running.