How do you handle early quote requests when HubSpot Quotes require a Deal but the opportunity is not

Smart CRM & Sales Hub CRM
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Hi everyone,

We are currently reviewing our Lead and Deal process in HubSpot and would appreciate some advice from other HubSpot users who may have faced a similar situation.

Our current setup

We currently use the Lead object for early stage sales qualification/nurturing and the Deal object for qualified sales opportunities.

Our intended process is:

Lead → Qualify → Deal → Quote → Closed Won / Closed Lost

However, we have identified a process issue that is affecting both Sales adoption of the Lead object and our reporting.

What is happening in practice?

In many cases, a customer contacts our Sales team at a relatively early stage and immediately asks for a quotation.

At this point, the Sales representative needs to create a Quote for the customer.

Because the Quote process requires a Deal, the Sales representative creates a Deal directly rather than creating a Lead first.

The practical process therefore becomes:

Customer enquiry → Quote requested → Deal created → Quote sent

Sometimes the customer does not respond after receiving the quotation, or the opportunity does not progress further.

The Sales representative then closes the Deal as Closed Lost.

The problem this creates

We have noticed that our Closed Lost Deal volume is relatively high.

After discussing this with our Sales team, we found that a significant reason is that Deals are sometimes being created very early in the customer journey simply because a quotation is required.

Therefore, our Closed Lost reporting may include two different situations:

1. A genuinely qualified sales opportunity that was lost

and

2. An early stage enquiry where a quotation was requested but the customer never progressed/responded.

From a reporting and pipeline management perspective, we would ideally like to distinguish these two scenarios.

What we are trying to determine

We would like to understand how other HubSpot customers handle this situation.

For example:

  • Do you create a Lead first, and only create the Deal when the Lead reaches a certain qualification/quote stage?
  • Do you create a Deal immediately when a customer requests a quotation?
  • Do you use a separate pipeline or another mechanism to distinguish early quotation requests from qualified opportunities?
  • How do you report on quotes that were sent but never progressed without inflating your Closed Lost opportunity numbers?
  • What approach has worked best for maintaining a good Sales user experience while keeping Lead/Deal reporting accurate?

We would particularly appreciate examples of how you have designed this process in HubSpot and any best practices you would recommend.

Thanks in advance!

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Hi @CFernando23,

I probably wouldn’t require Sales to create a Lead first in this case. If a Deal is still required to generate the Quote, this adds another record and an extra step without solving the reporting issue. It may also explain why Sales is currently bypassing the Lead process.

I also wouldn’t create a separate pipeline unless quotation requests follow a genuinely different sales process. Moving Deals between pipelines can add unnecessary complexity and split the reporting.

One possible approach would be to add two stages at the beginning of the existing Deal pipeline: Quote Requested / Not Yet Qualified and Qualified Opportunity. After that, the Deal could continue through the existing sales stages.

A Deal would be created in the first stage when a Quote is required. It would only move to Qualified Opportunity once it meets the company’s agreed qualification criteria. If the customer does not progress after receiving the Quote, the Deal could be closed as lost with a reason such as “No response after quote.”

For reporting, qualified opportunities could be filtered using “Date entered Qualified Opportunity is known.” This would show whether a Deal ever reached the qualified stage, even if it is now Closed Won or Closed Lost.

This would keep the Quote process simple while separating early quotation requests from opportunities that were genuinely qualified. The main requirement would be to clearly define what qualifies a Deal to enter the “Qualified Opportunity” stage.

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Hi @CFernando23

Since HubSpot won’t let you create a quote without a deal, reps will always skip the Lead step when a customer asks for pricing on day one. We stopped fighting that and changed how we set things up instead.

We use Leads only for early conversations where nobody has asked for a price yet. Once a customer wants a quote, the rep creates a deal straight away.

To keep those early quotes from cluttering our real pipeline, we put them in a separate ““Quotation”” pipeline. If the customer replies and the conversation moves forward, the rep moves the deal into our main Sales pipeline. If they go quiet, the deal closes in the Quotation pipeline as ““No response.”” Our main pipeline’s Closed Lost number now only shows deals we actually worked on and lost, which is much more useful.

If a second pipeline feels like too much, you can keep one pipeline, add a ““Qualified”” stage, and only count lost deals that reached that stage.

A couple of other things helped. We made the lost reason mandatory and added an option like ““No response to quote,”” so these are easy to filter out. We also set up a simple workflow that reminds the rep to follow up after a few days of silence and closes the deal if there’s still no reply.

Now we look at two numbers separately: how many qualified deals we win, and how many quotes turn into real conversations. That gives us a much clearer picture than one big Closed Lost number.

I hope this helps you out. Please mark it as Solution Accepted and Like to help another Community member.
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