topic Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't? in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

MrBean — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 21:59:38 GMT

Anyone wanna brag about their best practices about using Custom Lifecycle stages?

Or be a rebel and argue against them?

Doing some CRM restructuring and wonder what the vast Hubspot Community thinks about this new feature. Cheers. happy posting

Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

Jnix284 — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 01:44:32 GMT

Hi @MrBean such a good topic, will definitely keep my eye on the other responses becaues I am a little conflicted on whether to customize or not.

my number 1 change would be to add a "lost" lifecycle - some way to move customers out of the "customer" stage so we have an accurate customer count without having to use a bunch of filters.

and we'll probably rename "evangelist" to "advocate" or something a little more commonly used.

90% of our leads come in as customers, they come in as direct purchases from the HubSpot Marketplace. For our purposes, MQL, SQL and Opportunity is a bit much, the question is whether to keep all of them and ignore them or remove any or all of them.

Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

kvlschaefer — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 12:48:42 GMT

Hi @MrBean,

This is a great topic!

I will add our community members to this conversation to see their thoughts on this.

Hi @danmoyle, @jolle, @crispyGTM, @Mike_Eastwood, @Phil_Vallender - Would you use custom lifecycle stages or the default lifecycle stages? Do you have any use cases for @MrBean?

Thank you!

P.S. Thank you for sharing your use case @Jnix284 🙂

Best,

Kristen

Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

crispyGTM — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 14:24:00 GMT

@MrBean I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS TOPIC.

I think you should 100% use custom lifecycle stages. Having a deep understanding of the customer lifecycle is one of the most fundamental aspects of a solid marketing and sales alignment strategy. One thing to note:

Custom does not equal complex.

You should not go crazy with adding 20 different lifecycle stages for your users. Keep it concise and ensure that every lifecycle stage is tied to a specific action or data point that can trigger a lifecycle to be changed. In my experience, I see lifecycle stages work best in tandem with lead statuses.

I view the difference between these two as a lifecycle stage being a classification, and a lead status being a condition. For example, someone could a be a sales qualified lead lifecycle stage but have a cold lead status if they haven't responded in 30 days.

The main thing that I would attempt to ensure with using both of these is to try to make every lead status and lifecycle stage based upon action/behavior or data. This will open a world of possibilities for re-targeting through marketing campaigns, closed lost recycling workflows, automated lead follow-up, and more!

Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

Phil_Vallender — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 14:43:53 GMT

Great question @MrBean and some great answers here already!

My general rule of thumb would be to only use custom lifecycle stages if you have a rock solid argument/business case for it that makes everyone's life easier, not harder.

HubSpot already did a pretty good job of describing the customer lifecycle in a logical, reliable way that has more or less stood the test of time. But subtle changes and augmentations, like those suggested, could really enhance it.

I'd avoid introducing lifecycle stages that encourage backward movement as I find this can really confuse teams and reporting - single direction of movement is usually the easiest for everyone one to understand.

Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

indiracatmedia — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 12:56:53 GMT

I love this question because we've been modelling custom lifecycle stages for our customers, and I'd say that depends on your business and the data model and processes in place.

Before getting on the route to customise the lifecycle of your contacts, you must ensure that your teams are aligned and that you can trust your data. I'd recommend having an 'Onboarded/Active or Live' stage, an 'MRR or ARR' stage and an 'LTV' stage to track the contact's journey after becomes a customer so you can quickly identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities as well as churn and be able to understand the whole revenue cycle.

Also, I'd use lead status along the lifecycle stage so you can avoid moving the lifecycle stage backwards but still understand; for instance, if the contact lifecycle is 'opportunity', but the deal then is lost for bad timing or budget, you update the lead status, and the contact would stay in 'opportunity' to eventually re-engage with or use continue nurturing with marketing activities.

Finally, in terms of reporting, once you have modelled your lifecycle stages, you should look at reporting time spent in each stage, conversion rates and volume.

I hope this helps @MrBean

Thank you!

🙂

Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

AllenHelms — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 13:53:54 GMT

We love the ability to finally change the Lifecycle stages to actually fit the model of each different business and the various customer journeys they are seeking to engage with or support.

In addition to some of the excellent earlier posts here (though I don't always agree with not adding a stage that might go backwards b/c in reality, customers almost never go in a straight line), here are a few of our findings that you might find helpful if you are considering customizing them yourself:

1. Start with renaming existing LC stages vs creating all new stages. This will allow you to get comfortable with the impacts and avoid losing historical data.
2. Decide what your default contact creation stage should be. In HubSpot it used to be "Lead" but we now often relabel this as "New Lead" for added clarity.
3. Consider combining Lifecycle Stages and Lead Status if your sales process is simple enough. This prevents users from having to keep up with two separate picklists that easily get out of alignment.
4. Remember that Lifecycle Stages still will not go backwards (without a deliberate workflow or manual intervention) so the order you use will be important for reporting.
5. Add a "Delete" LC Stage to help keep your CRM clean. Not all leads/contacts are good leads/contacts and this is an easy way for any user to mark them and clean them out regularly.

6. Keep in mind any important integrations that may be affected - especially if you are using the HubSpot-to-Salesforce integration.
7. If you are using non-english language settings in HubSpot, there may be some additional impacts to consider.

https://www.organicendeavors.com/blog/best-practices-for-implementing-hubspot-custom-lifecycle-stages

Allen Helms

HubSpot & Salesforce CRM Consultant

Organic Endeavors

Re: ~Custom lifecycle stages~ do or don't?

kvlschaefer — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 14:11:27 GMT

Thank you for sharing these tips with the Community, @AllenHelms!