Hi @EmilyRivera - I love a good read! Thank you for sharing this context and allowing us a peek into your HubSpot understanding. You are making great progress, and I would love to help continue your learnings!
For starters, lets dive into these properties.
- Lead status: the contact and company property that indicates where the contact or company is within a buying cycle as a lead. Learn about the difference between Lead status and Lifecycle stage.
- Deal stage: deal stages allow you to categorize and track the progress of the deals that you are working on. Learn more about setting up and customizing your deal stages. Ideally, these stages should represent the key stages that occur after a lead is qualified and a deal is created, which could start from “Qualified to Buy” rather than using earlier stages like “Appointment Scheduled.”
I would recommend that you customize your Deal Pipeline, for example:
- Qualified to Buy (e.g., 30%): After a meeting is attended and the opportunity is qualified.
- Discovery & Demo Completed (e.g., 40%): Once a demo or discovery call has occurred.
- Quote Sent (e.g., 60%): After a quote or proposal is sent.
- Negotiation (e.g., 80%): When the deal is in active negotiation.
- Closed Won/Closed Lost: The final stage, marking success or loss.
This approach helps avoid creating deals too early and ensures their pipeline starts with qualified opportunities.
From here, you could utilize the Lead Status for early stage tracking. For example, to address your desire for granularity without crowding up the Deal Stages, you can use these Lead Statuses to capture those earlier steps, such as:
- Meeting Scheduled
- Meeting Attended
- Bad Contact Info
- Left Company
This way, you can keep qualification details in Lead Status, which maintains clean Deal Stages focused on real opportunities.
It’s a dance - but I would be happy to continue a conversation more tailored to your unique account if you need!
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