AMA - Demystifying HubSpot's lifecyle stages, deal stages and lead status

[franksteiner79]

Hi @RHandler

There isn’t a “how to” guide for this, but I’ve put an example Workflow together for you and will explain why I chose that approach and some key considerations based on HubSpot’s features and settings.

Here is the workflow:

Workflow: Contact → Company Lifecycle Stage Sync

Key Considerations

1. Deal Settings

I would always use the option to “sync lifecycle stages” in the deal settings. This means when a deal is created, HubSpot will change the lifecycle stage of associated contacts and companies to Opportunity. When a deal is won, this changes the lifecycle stage of associated contacts and companies to Customer.

Deal Settings HubSpot: Sync Lifecycle Stages

I’d like to stress the importance of consistently and correctly associating contacts and companies on deals. Too often I see either companies or contacts missing on deals, or a number of contacts missing, especially on complex B2B deals.

2. HubSpot’s handling of LC stages

An important rule in HubSpot is that the tool will not set a LC backwards. The only way to do this is to clear an objects LC stage and then copy in another value. This is good for us as it means we can ignore the case of a company having an LC of “Opportunity” and us trying to copy the “MQL” LC stage of a contact into the company.

Error message: HubSpot not setting LC stage backwards

3. Workflow enrolment - “is known”

Hubspot WF enrolment triggerOur contact workflow enrollment triggers are:

1. The contact has an associated company AND
2. The contacts LC is known AND
3. The associated company (ignore the primary here, my test portal already has access to the flexible associations feature) doesn’t have an LC of Opportunity or above as that will be covered by the deal settings in point 1

The “is known” trigger has an often overlooked benefit as it also triggers when a value changes, which in combination with re-enrollment this essentially allows us to monitor and react to changes in values.

4. Workflow action - set property value

I then work my way down from SQL to Subscriber, checking which LC stage a contact has and then setting the corresponding LC stage for the company.

I did some quick tests and this works as intended. I’d also add that this is one way of doing it.

Another approach would be to “listen out” for specific LC stages at contact level have a WF for each and the trigger the “set property value” action.

Hope that helps.

Frank