Adding customers

Hi

I’m looking for some advice please.

I’m working for a client, who needs theircustomers who have bought from them before that are currently i Xero adding to Hubspot for a sales outreach email.

I’m unsure what lead status and lifecycle stage to use?

Thanks

Janet

Hi @JAspin9,

Would you have a bit more context about the sales process, which processes live in Xero etc?
Without any context: Lifecycle stage should always mirror how far a contact / company has gotten before. If these have purchased before, they would be lifecycle stage = customer.

Lead status, either in a contact/company property or in the lead object, should be new.

That said, there might be more nuance based on the processes involved, see above.

Best regards!

HI @karstenkoehler

Thank you. I’ve downloaded a list of contacts from Xero which I will need to check they have previously purchased.

A contact is created in xero and then a quote is usually created and sent followed by an invoice if they accept.

My client wants to utilise Hubspot for their CRM and create bulk reach out emails to a particular sector so I need to get the customers added to Hubspot.

Regards

Hi @JAspin9,

Thanks for posting in the Community!

@karstenkoehler is correct. For the new contacts that you’re importing, they will likely be set to “New” by default. Moving forward, the Lifecycle Stage should ideally reflect how far along the Contact or Company is in your marketing or sales process. Please keep in mind that this may look different for each portal, as every company may have a unique process. Since your team seems to have Quotes and Invoices that mark important milestones in your sales journey, it could be helpful to consider creating a custom lifecycle stage to represent these specific steps, especially if the default stages do not fully align with your process. You can create and customize lifecycle stages as demonstrated here: Create and customize lifecycle stages.

Additionally, I wanted to share a helpful post that includes several responses with useful insights to consider when developing your process for managing Lifecycle stages:

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Tips-Tricks-Best-Practices/The-age-old-question-How-do-you-manage-lifecycle-stages-between/m-p/1058539
I hope this helps!

Sam, Community Manager

I would treat anyone who has already purchased in Xero as a Customer for lifecycle stage, since that should always reflect their historical relationship. Lead status can safely stay as New or Open for outreach purposes. If quotes and invoices are key milestones for this client, I have found it helpful to keep lifecycle stages simple and use custom properties or deal stages to track those steps instead.

If they’ve already purchased before and are coming from Xero, I’d usually set the lifecycle stage as “Customer” rather than Lead, since they already have transaction history.

For lead status, many teams use something like:

  • “Open” if outreach is starting
  • “Re-engagement”
  • or a custom status for previous customers

Using Cloudify also makes this process easier because it can sync Xero customers, invoices, and financial activity directly into HubSpot while maintaining proper contact/company associations. That gives sales teams much better visibility for outreach and customer reactivation campaigns.

If they’ve already purchased from the business and exist in Xero, I’d typically set their lifecycle stage as Customer rather than Lead, since they already have a purchase history.

For lead status, it depends on your process, but many teams use something like Open, Re-engagement, or a custom status for previous customers being contacted again.

If you’re bringing customers from Xero into HubSpot regularly, tools like Cloudify can help by automatically syncing Xero customers into HubSpot companies, along with invoice and quote data on associated deals. That gives your sales team better context for outreach without manually importing and updating records.