topic Re: Multiple process / pipeline management in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Multiple process / pipeline management

SBanthia — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 13:48:39 GMT

Our new lead process and cross-selling have different steps.

New lead process includes leads from SEO / outreach who have expressed an interest in our services (in the consideration stage of the marketing funnel) and we have to convert them.

Cross-selling involves raising awareness and then getting onto the consieration and conversion stage.

So, there are overlaps between the two processes but there are also additional steps in the cross-selling process. Also, the information captured would be slightly (if not significantly) different.

From reporting standpoint, we would like both consolidated and specific reporting for each stream.

What is the best practice to organise this?
1. Have the same / different stages for new account closure & cross-selling?

2. Combine them in one / different pipelines?

3. How to manage the different info fields to be captured in two processes.

Appreciate that there is no right / wrong advice but some guidance and recommendation in terms of best practice in this situation / what to do would be very helpful. Thanks!

Re: Multiple process / pipeline management

LouiseHare — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 14:26:51 GMT

Hi @SBanthia,

As you said there is no right or wrong answer here, but my suggestion is to always create seperate pipelines when there is different steps between selling processes, which it sounds there is here.

Having seperate pipelines for each makes things much cleaner. Instead of having one huge pipeline with loads of stages, you can have a seperate and more refined pipelines for each. This will also give you a much clearer view of the journey that your different customer types are going through. In addition, you can customise the deal cards for each pipeline to show the most relevant information.

When it comes to consolidated reporting, if you decide to go with the above approach each deal stage will show separately. i.e. Even if the 2 pipelines share a deal stage name, the deal stages will show up as separate values with the pipeline name in brackets beside it.

I hope this helps, and please let me know if you have any further questions!

Thanks,

Louise

Re: Multiple process / pipeline management

Pranit — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:55:44 GMT

Hi Louise,

Thanks for reply. I am colleague of Shachi. Just for clarity:

Our sales stages are:

SQL -> Scoping -> Proposal -> Closing -> Win/Loss

and we have pipeline called "Sales Pipeline"

Our Cross-selling stages are:

Contact -> Lead -> MQL ->SQL -> Scoping -> Proposal -> Closing -> Win/Loss

and we do not have any pipeline for it.

As you can see, there are lot of overlap between current sales stages and Cross-selling stages, you will still recommed to create a new pipeline for cross-selling?

Re: Multiple process / pipeline management

LouiseHare — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 16:40:37 GMT

Hi @Pranit,

Thanks for providing some more context here, this makes things a lot clearer.

Based on the above I actually think that your current process with one pipeline is perfect. The initial stages that you have mentioned for cross-selling (Contact > Lead > MQL > SQL) are lifecycle stages instead of pipeline stages. They represent the different stages that your contacts go through rather than actual steps involved in the selling process.

If I were you, I would configure the lifecycle stage property to inlcude Lead, MQL and SQL and have the deal stages as Scoping > Proposal > Closing > Win/Loss.

If you go to Settings > Data Management > Objects > Contacts > Lifecycle Stage, you will see that there is some configuration you can do to automate the updating of the lifecycle stage property (you can also use workflows to update it too). Otherwise your users can just update the property manually.

I hope this makes sense. Let me know if you need any more help let me know.

Thanks,

Louise

Re: Multiple process / pipeline management

LouiseHare — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 12:03:22 GMT

Hi @Pranit,

If my reply answered your question please mark it as a solution to make it easier for others to find!

Thanks,

Louise

Re: Multiple process / pipeline management

Pranit — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 07:34:14 GMT

Hi @LouiseHare ,

yes, this indeed is the solution. I am not sure how to mark it as a solution. Can you please guide me?

Re: Multiple process / pipeline management

Pranit — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 07:40:20 GMT

Hi @LouiseHare ,

I have another question related to this:

Let us say a contact has passed through different lifecycle stages and became customer.

This contact (now a customer) then showed possible interest in another service whch needs to be explored. I am assuming it should be called new Lead from this customer. How this should be managed in Hubspot?

In other words, how do i enter new lead for the same contact who is already a customer?

Many thanks in advance

Pranit

Re: Multiple process / pipeline management

LouiseHare — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:53:29 GMT

Hey @Pranit ,

Something important to note about HubSpot is that email addresses must be unique - so you can only have 1 contact per email address. This differs from a lot of other CRMs where you can have multiple leads/contacts per email address.

So bearing this in mind, I would suggest that you use a Deal to represent any new 'leads' from existing customers. If a customer expresses an interest in another product/service, then another deal should be created for that customer. If this doesn't fit in with your current deal stages maybe you could add another stage at the beginning called 'Lead' or 'Prospect'.

Remember that the lifecycle stage property represents a contact's relationship with your business, and if they are already an existing customer they should remain as such even if they have shown interest in a new product/service.

Hope this helps answer your question! You should be able to mark my other response as a solution by clicking the 3 dots in the top right hand corner.

Thanks,

Louise Hare

Freelance HubSpot Specialist