Hi everyone, this is my first post.
For a little bit of context, we are a SAAS company, many people have managed hubspot during the last 5 years or so.
I’m currently working in implementing a lead pipeline, we are now working mainly at “contacts” object, but this approach doesn’t let us count the leads properly, as we sometimes rotate the contact between different people.
We have a team of 20 people prospecting and my approach for continuous improvement is to start “soft”, by implementing the lead pipeline parallel to the existing methods. Currently we create deals from contacts, whenever some properties are marked it triggers a workflow that creates the deal.
I need a solution that keeps creating the deal from contact, but it associates the existing lead to the deal if it exists and if it doesn’t exists as a lead, it needs to be created in the lead pipeline.
My users need training, still. I don’t want to use the native automation to create the deals from the leads, as we have 2 different “qualified” stages and this automation we don’t know it it will create the deal when reaching the first part of the qualification process..
Any advice is much appreciated. I’m not a hubspot expert, but I’m a continuous improvement expert and my approach is to make changes gradually and not stress the users.
Hey @PNorambuena - first off, welcome to the Community!
Thank you for sharing all of this context. It’s helpful in ensuring we get you the best insight possible on best practices in your use case. To do so, I’d like to tag in some Community experts. @karstenkoehler, @danmoyle, and @franksteiner79 - any thoughts for @PNorambuena and team?
Shane, Senior Community Moderator
Welcome to the Community @PNorambuena! This is a great example of how this community can help each other. I think the Leads object can help your team as you all build your sales process. Here are a few thoughts from my time helping teams understand HubSpot (trainer and consultant here, not a sales person).
Given a 20‑person prospecting team and your desire to start “soft,” I’d think through some scenarios. First, define when a Lead should exist. Pick the moment in your existing contact‑based process that means “this is now an active, owned prospect we want to track in the lead pipeline” (maybe when a “Prospecting status” or custom “Qualification step” property hits a certain value). This lines up with how HubSpot intends the Lead object to be used for active prospecting and qualification, separate from contacts as a database.
A couple of use cases for this include when a contact property prospecting_stage becomes “Working” or “Attempting contact,” or, when a specific form submission or enrichment threshold is reached. That condition will be the trigger for creating or checking for a Lead.
Secondly, you could keep your existing “create Deal from Contact” workflow. You can keep your current contact‑based workflow that creates a Deal when your “qualified” logic is met. This is in line with common advice: do prospecting and pre‑qualification on Leads/Contacts, then create a Deal only when there’s a proper opportunity, not at first touch.
To the question on how to handle “associate existing Lead or create one,” let’s think about it with two main options.
Option A: HubSpot + external automation (cleanest logic)
If you’re open to using Make or Zapier (or a small custom API script), you can implement your desired behavior almost exactly. High‑level flow (event‑driven):
- Trigger: New Deal is created (from your existing contact‑based workflow).
- External automation looks up:
- primary contact on the Deal
- any Lead records associated with that contact
- If at least one Lead exists:
- associate that Lead to the Deal via CRM associations API or the iPaaS HubSpot modules.
- If none exist:
- create a new Lead associated to that contact
- then associate that Lead to the Deal.
I’ve seen other users in community call out that this sort of “associate lead to deal automatically” pattern needs API/iPaaS today.
This fits your continuous improvement approach for a few reasons. You don’t change user behavior yet, you preserve your existing “create Deal from Contact” workflow, you start building Lead history without breaking reporting, and you can evolve your logic later (e.g. allow multiple Leads per Contact over time).
​
Option B: All‑native, but with compromises
If you must stay 100% native for now, here is a pragmatic pattern (with trade‑offs).
Use a contact‑based workflow to create Leads by creating a contact‑based workflow:
- Enrollment criteria: your chosen “this is now an active prospect” condition (e.g. prospecting_stage in a certain set).
- First if/then branch: “Has associated Leads is greater than 0?” (check using the contact filter on associated leads, which HubSpot supports for lists/filters). If no such filter is available in workflows in your portal yet, see the API/iPaaS note again; there are limitations.
Here are your workflow actions.
If “no associated Leads”:
- Action: Create record → Lead (native “Create record” action can create leads in a contact‑based workflow).
- Set lead owner = contact owner, give it initial lead stage, and maybe copy key contact fields (persona, segment).
If “has associated Leads”:
- Do nothing (you accept that the Lead and Deal might not be formally linked yet, but the Lead exists for counting).
- This ensures there is at least one Lead for any prospecting‑worthy contact without changing your deal workflow.
The next consideration is to keep deals and leads conceptually aligned rather than technically associated. Given the workflow limitations, you may not be able to automatically associate every Deal to its Lead natively. Instead, you:
- Use consistent properties:
- same owner, segment, and qualification flags on both Lead and Deal
- contact is the “join” between them.
- Use reports that count Leads and Deals via the contact or company relationship instead of requiring direct lead–deal association.
This is weaker than your ideal (no “single record chain” from Touch → Lead → Deal), but it’s a gentle, low‑risk way to start using the lead pipeline and counting leads properly.
I want to come back to handling your “two qualified stages” concern. HubSpot’s native “create deal when lead reaches qualified” setting is indeed very rigid: it creates a deal when the lead stage hits the configured threshold and doesn’t understand multi‑step qualification. Given you have two separate “qualified” steps, you’re right to avoid that setting and instead:
- Use your own Lead stage path (something like Engaged → Initial Fit → Fully Qualified).
- Trigger deal creation from your existing contact‑based workflow using a compound condition:
- Lead exists, and
- Lead stage = your “second qualified” value, or
- Contact’s internal qualification properties all reflect the final qualified step.
This way, you control exactly when a Deal is created and don’t rely on the “one‑size‑fits‑all” native automation.
And finally, as a trianer and consultant, this is (in my opinion), the most challenging but important thing to work through. Change‑management and training tips. Here are some tips, advice, or best practices to hopefully help manage this part and keep stress low for your users.
- Start with a small slice of reps. Pilot the Lead pipeline with 3–5 reps who are more process‑minded, measure impact, then roll it out. Best practices for prospecting emphasize using leads for SDR/BDR work while keeping the deal pipeline clean.
- Anchor training in “what’s in it for them.”
- Leads = clear, personal “to‑do queue” of prospects.
- Deals = only when there’s real opportunity, so their pipeline and win‑rate metrics look better.
- Avoid new manual steps at first
- With the automation patterns above, the team keeps working in Contacts and Deals while you quietly build up Leads in the background. You can later teach “if you’re working a new sequence or campaign, check your Leads view.”
- Add visual guardrails.
- Give them custom views like “My Active Leads” and “My New Leads this week.”
- Simple dashboards: Leads created, Leads by owner, conversion from Lead to Deal stage.
Hopefully this helps give you some inspiration to empower your team well, and build an effective lead management system in your HubSpot. Cheers!
I would make the transition around operating rules first, then object structure.
For a SaaS team with prospectors and reps, I’d define:
- when a contact becomes a Lead
- who owns the Lead vs the Contact
- what counts as first real sales touch
- when the SLA clock starts
- what happens if the Lead is assigned but untouched
- which reports managers actually use every day
The risk is recreating the old contact process inside the Lead object and still not knowing whether high-intent leads were worked fast enough.
I’d also keep a simple exceptions view: assigned but untouched, contacted late, contacted but no buyer reply, and engaged/booked. That tends to be more useful operationally than just tracking object migration completeness.
I like your gradual rollout approach. With 20 prospectors, introducing the Lead object alongside your current process can help with adoption and reduce disruption.
That said, before building additional automation, I would take a step back and evaluate the overall process and reporting goals. From your description, it sounds like the main challenge is accurately tracking prospecting activity and ownership changes, which is one of the reasons HubSpot introduced the Lead object.
A few questions I would consider:
-
What is the primary goal of implementing Leads? Better reporting, ownership tracking, qualification, or all three?
-
What criteria define a Lead versus an Opportunity in your organization?
-
At what point should a Deal truly exist?
If Contacts are being used as Leads today, it may be worth mapping your current process and defining clear exit criteria for Contacts, Leads, and Deals before adding more automation.
My concern is that creating Deals from Contacts while simultaneously creating and associating Leads could add complexity and make reporting harder in the long run. If the Lead object is going to become the source of truth for qualification, I would consider gradually moving active prospects into a Lead process and using lifecycle stages and qualification criteria to determine when a Deal should be created.
Since your company has had multiple HubSpot administrators over the years, a CRM audit and process mapping exercise may reveal opportunities to simplify the architecture before introducing additional workflows.
Just my perspective, but I would focus on process design first and automation second. Once everyone agrees on what a Contact, Lead, and Deal represent, the workflow decisions usually become much clearer.