Guide to aligning marketing and sales with HubSpot

When implementing HubSpot, one of the most important tasks is to define lead status. Get the sales team and the marketing team together and work to define the lead nurturing process.

Lead status versus Lifecycle stage

In HubSpot, there are two fields to identify the lead nurturing process: Lead status and Lifecycle stage.

In the documentation, HubSpot says that in general, the Lead status property describes the sub-stages of the Lifecycle stage, Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). This is more of a layman's way, because it actually explains more about what happens between Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and SQL.

The reason is that it is not possible in HubSpot to change the Lifecycle stage options, because there are fields that stamp the date when a lead moves from one stage to the next. This is a constraint of the tool, but very useful to know the sales cycle of your organization.

One of the constraints is that some companies operate with an extra step between the MQL and the SQL, which is called SAL: Sales Accepted Lead. In short, the lead is accepted by sales to go further in the process and qualified.

However, there is some detail missing from this story. When an MQL is converted to SQL, it is a win for marketing. The idea is not necessarily to produce MQLs, but MQLs that have been qualified by sales.

What happened to the unconverted leads? Will they remain MQLs until the end of time? The answer is yes.

This is when the sales team needs to update the Lead status field. This simple field is useful when the lead becomes an MQL. If it is never converted to SQL, the lead can be identified as unqualified.

Proposition

New

These are the new MQLs. This is the inbox that should be checked and emptied every day. No contact should be in this status for more than three business days. Ideally, you should use an automation to set the status to New when the contact becomes an MQL.

Actively Working

The sales team is currently trying to contact the prospect or is already in contact with them. The goal is not to generate a sales opportunity, but to determine if they are qualified. Again, automation is possible to update the status as soon as a first email is sent by a representative.

Qualified

The prospect meets your qualification matrix and an opportunity is being evaluated. This value will need to be updated manually. Therefore, an automation will have to be put in place to update the Lifecycle stage to SQL.

Check Back Quarterly

There may be an opportunity here one day. Contacts with this status should be checked quarterly. This value will need to be updated manually. Therefore, an automation will need to be put in place to update the Lifecycle stage to SQL.

Open Deal

A deal has been added to the sales funnel.

Dead Opportunity

Contacts with an opportunity that could have happened, but fell through, should be listed in this section and "rescheduled" from time to time.

Bad Fit

For whatever reason, leads aren't good for your business, so there's no need to keep chasing them. Don't waste time with these prospects - maybe add them to an email sequence as a final farewell.

Current Customer

To avoid accidentally working on current clients.

Closing remarks

It is therefore very important to align with sales. In a lot of companies, there can be competition around who produced the lead. In the end, you may never really be able to attribute it. It may be the operations team that does such a good job that it spreads throughout the industry.

For those curious about HubSpot, we invite you to contact us for more information about our HubSpot Implementation & Support Services.

For the skeptics out there, we offer 40 reasons to choose the HubSpot CRM platform in this article.