How do you manage Lifecycle Stage updates for contacts added to deals mid-stage?

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

Hi HubSpotters :waving_hand:

I’m looking for advice on how others handle Lifecycle Stage updates for contacts associated with deals, especially when contacts are added after a deal has already progressed.

Context

In our current setup:

  • When a deal moves from one deal stage to another, all associated contacts are automatically updated to Lifecycle Stage Opportunity.
  • When a deal is Closed Won, associated contacts are updated to Customer.

This works well when contacts are associated early in the deal.

The Gap / Challenge

The issue arises when:

  • Sales associates new contacts to a deal that is already in progress
  • The deal does not move stages immediately after
  • As a result, the newly associated contacts do not get updated to the correct Lifecycle Stage

Because of this:

  • Contacts associated with an active deal may remain in earlier lifecycle stages (e.g., Lead or MQL)
  • This creates inaccurate Lifecycle Stage journey reporting at the contact level

Our Rule

  • Any contact associated with a deal should be Opportunity
  • Any contact associated with a Closed Won deal should be Customer

Question for the Community

How are you handling this scenario?

2

Hi @marie9423498,

This can be solved quite easily be deactivating the default lifecycle stage automation in the settings and creating workflows which handle updating the lifecycle stage: Create workflows

Specifically:

  • Contact is associated to any Deal where create date is known → Use ‘Edit record’ to update lifecycle stage to ‘Opportunity’
  • Contact is associated to any Deal where ‘Is closed won’ is True → Use ‘Edit record’ to update lifecycle stage to ‘Customer’

Keep in mind that this will skip all previous lifecycle stages for a contact and that there is a case for first moving them through all previous stages so that conversion rate reports show accurate conversion rates.

Best regards!