HubSpot Sales and Deal Pipelines Explained

Creating a sales pipeline is essential for any business, and HubSpot has a lot of great tools to help you do it. In this blog post, we'll show you how to create a sales pipeline using HubSpot and explain some of the benefits of doing so. Stay tuned - we'll be sharing more tips on using HubSpot to grow your business in the near future.

Let's get to it!

What are deal pipelines and stages in HubSpot?

Imagine a pipeline where an individual step represents each stage. You can see how far the prospect has gotten in your sales process and what they are doing at any given time, which offers valuable insight into their journey with you!

Each step can change depending on what you are trying to do. Every sales process is different for every business.

However, these are the typical deal stages of a sales pipeline:

Prospecting
Lead Qualification or Qualified Lead
Meeting or Call
Proposal
Negotiation
Opportunity Won
Post Purchase

Here is a brief description of each.

Prospecting

Through advertising, public relations, and other promotional activities, potential customers discover your business. Your marketing message is often targeted to potential buyers who tend to fit the profile of your existing customer base and ideal customer.

Lead Qualification or Qualified Lead

Provide your prospects with an e-book, whitepaper, webinar, or another form of lead magnet to determine if they are interested in learning more about your products and services. Once they take the offer, you can provide them with more value to continue the sales process.

Meeting or Call

Scheduling a meeting or call with potential buyers is the next step. At this point, you should determine if there is a compelling business case for the lead to receive a proposal.

Proposal

In the proposal deal stage, have your sales team describe how your company can help meet the potential customer's needs. Provide proof that the engagement costs will be offset by the prices you propose. As you prepare your proposal, remember to state your competitive advantages to set you apart from other vendors your customer may meet.

Negotiation

In this deal stage, expand or reduce the scope of work, adjust pricing, and manage expectations to achieve a mutually beneficial partnership.

Opportunity Won

You close the deal and move forward to provide the value the customer invested in.

Post Purchase

Once the sale is closed, your sales team should provide exceptional customer service during the onboarding process and regularly monitor the account's progress. You can upsell existing customers on premium solutions when the opportunity arises and cross-sell existing customers on new services.

The point of each stage is so that the sales team can know exactly how to interact with each lead in the HubSpot CRM. If your reps see where each lead is in the sales cycle, you can determine with accuracy how many people you need to engage with to hit your revenue numbers.

How To Create A HubSpot Pipeline

Now that you know about sales pipelines and deal stages, it's time to create your first HubSpot sales pipeline.

But before you create your first pipeline, you must first follow this steps 5-step formula outlined by Databox.

Step 1: Identify your target audience

Step 2: Map out your sales funnel

Step 3: Calculate how many deals you need to meet your sales goals

Step 4: Move-qualified leads through your sales funnel

Step 5: Win the deal

By focusing on steps one to three, you will offer value to the right leads. If not, you may experience a disconnect when it comes time to close the deal.

We filmed a video on this setup process below for those who are more visual.

Once you better understand who you want to target, you can follow the following steps below.

Note: You'll need to have the HubSpot sales hub package along with this article.

If you have the HubSpot Sales Hub, click on 'Sales' and then 'Deals.'

In this area, HubSpot will give you a templated pipeline. With this template, you'll see different deal stages like:

New Purchase
Follow Up Needed
Holding/Nurturing
Set Made
Bad Fit
Closed Won
Closed Lost

However, you can change these deal stages at any time. Alternatively, you can create a new pipeline from scratch if the templated HubSpot pipeline does not match your company goals.

You can have multiple deal pipelines with HubSpot. You are not limited to only one pipeline; many companies use multiple pipelines for different initiatives sales leaders may have.

To create a new pipeline, click on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner. That will bring you to the HubSpot settings.

In the left-hand menu, click on 'Deals' under Data Management.

Then from there, you'll see three tabs.

'Setup'. 'Pipelines'. 'Record Customization'.

Click on 'Pipelines.'

Then from the 'Select a pipeline:' dropdown, select 'Create pipeline.'

After you click 'Create pipeline,' give your new pipeline a name, then click on 'Create.'

Once you click 'Create,' you'll see HubSpot gives you default deal stages. You can change the deals or delete them.

You can also change the win probability percentage for each step.

Your reps can use the win probability when moving prospects from one stage to another. When it comes time to close the deal, the more touchpoints your reps have with prospects, the more likely they will convert. The win probability feature helps determine the odds of closing a potential prospect.

Now that you created your new pipeline, you can view it by going back to the 'Sales' tab and clicking on 'Deal's.

Then from the first dropdown next to the 'Deal' text, you'll be able to select the new pipeline from the dropdown.

How to add deals to the HubSpot pipeline?

There are two ways to add prospects to a pipeline stage; manually or automated.

To add a prospect to your pipeline manually, click on 'Create Deal' in the new pipeline.

From there, you can add the deal name, the deal stage, the amount of the deal, the close date, owner deal type, and so on.

This is neat for quickly adding a prospect on the go. However, it's not the best way to add a deal to a pipeline since it requires time on your part.

How to automate sales pipeline in HubSpot

You can automate deals in one or two ways by going to the deal settings, clicking on the tab that says 'Automate,' and creating a workflow for each specific deal stage.

Once you click on 'Create workflow,' you'll be able to add different actions for whenever a prospect reaches that part of the pipeline.

For example, if someone were to enter the 'Follow up needed' stage, we can send a text message, send an email, set a property value, or assign the deal to an owner.

The second way to automate the sales pipeline is by clicking on the 'Automation' tab in the menu and clicking 'Workflows.'

You can do something similar in this area by clicking the orange 'Create Workflow' button in the top right-hand corner.

When you click the button, you'll be able to create a new workflow from scratch.

What are popular HubSpot pipeline features?

Many features make HubSpot pipelines notorious. However, we think these are the most popular. Here is a brief explanation of how your marketing or sales team may use each feature.

SMS

One of the easiest ways to follow up with customers is through SMS. HubSpot has tons of different SMS platforms that connect with the CMS, so you can proactively reach out to prospects through workflows and automation.

Lead Scoring

From the first page viewed to the most recent closed deal, all your customer context is collected in HubSpot. Take advantage of all that context to reach out to the right people at the right time with lead scoring.

Customizing Sales Stages

You can customize HubSpot CRM sales stages based on how prospects progress through the sales funnel. An integral part of managing your sales pipeline with HubSpot CRM is understanding what needs to be accomplished for a customer to move to the next stage. HubSpot makes it easy, giving you complete control of the deal stages.

Deals Won By Pipeline

HubSpot shows you all the data you need so you can continue focusing on growing your business. The Deals won by pipeline feature allows you to see which pipeline gave you the highest ROI so you can double down.

Automated Emails

By automating workflows and automations, the sales and marketing teams can follow up on leads and prospects alike. HubSpot makes it easy to link your automated emails with your sales pipelines to get a comprehensive picture of your sales cycle.

How Do You know what HubSpot deal stages to use?

Depending on the company's type of sales methodology, the number of sales stages and names will differ across verticals.

To understand which deal stages you will need for your business, you must map out your sales process with your sales team.

Refer back to core steps needed to close prospects.