AMA - Lead Management with Sales Hub | April 1-5, 2024

[ncarbone]

 

Hi Folks, 

Nick here from Sales Hub Product Marketing along with Nidhi, Will and Zachary from the Sales Hub Product Team. 

At INBOUND last year we introduced the prospecting workspace and the leads object, as well as several other brand new features that help sales reps manage their leads and upcoming sales activities in one place. In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap!

Since INBOUND, here’s what we’ve launched to make leads and the prospecting workspace even better…

• Suggested activities in the prospecting workspace
• Enhanced lead visibility and bulk actions in the workspace
• Lead record ownership improvements
• Lead creation by associated property
• Several new default lead properties, including lead type
• [Coming Soon] New leads API endpoints
• [Coming Soon] Flexible automation for leads
• [Coming Soon] Custom properties for leads
• [Coming Soon] Enhanced lead reporting capabilities

Now we’re back, about six months later, and we’re excited to hear what questions you have about the prospecting workspace, the new leads object, and lead management with Sales Hub!

Our AMA will take place right here in the Community forum from April 1st - April 5th!

[benesch_e]

Hi @WNHughes I have a business unit that works almost exclusively with distribution, the team will do some qualification of the lead but ultimately pass it on to the distributor is the contacts wants to purchase. I have another business unit that does direct sales and create deals in HubSpot. One business unit can associated their deals but the other one can't. having the option is nice becasue i can tie revenue to a lead when it is possible. 

[03874]

What are you doingto accomodate for the instance of contact-contact referrals, for instance: 

The contact you've been prospecting for 6 months finally refers you to their colleague who is willing to meet. 

Will we be able to transfer lead ownership to the referred contact (Allowing the lead to retain all the touches and date from the previous contact? We'd love to keep it a 1-1 relationship between leads and contacts. Thus, I think transfering the lead object to the referred contact would make the most since. we could then also track that.  

[ncarbone]

This is an interesting point! I see what you mean about keeping the context of a conversation with a lead when it switches from one contact to another. However, I'd argue that we'd still want to keep the leads separate and open a new lead for that colleague or referral. 

• If they're at the same company, the context of the first conversation (and all the relevant emails, calls and other engagements) will be logged on the contacts' shared company record.
• It's still a new lead, and the first one technically didn't convert. If it were me, I'd still  disqualify that first lead (with a disqualification reason like "Wrong POC") and open a new one to keep my reporting as accurate as possible.

Running it this way opens up some cool reporting possibilities for ABS/ABM-style situations like this. For example, in the custom report builder, you could build a "leads per qualified company" report that shows the average number of leads it takes per company to reach a qualified deal.

What do you think?

[QPizenberg]

Hello @ncarbone !

Thanks a lot for this AMA, it can be really useful!

1. One thing that I don't understand is why the leads are not treated exaclty like deals? Maybe I am mistaken but to me they are supposed to have the exact same purpose as a deal but before in the pipeline (it's linked to the message of @benesch_e). Something to add then, would be the possibility to kill the Lead Status from the Contact Properties, as well aw the "MQL" and "SQL" stages that become redundant.

2. Could you provide a bit more best practices regarding the set up of the Leads? For example, I am a bit divided between creating the lead via the Company or the Contact because 90% of my new Outbound leads come from scraping companies and 90% of my new Inbound leads come from contact forms on my website. Therefore, both would be valid but it is quite complicated to link all of it (Lead - Company - Contact - Transaction). Also, could it be possible to put Leads in sequences and not just Contacts because it adds up difficulty in the process?

That's all for now on my side!! And thanks again for the chance to discuss the matter with you 🙏

[ncarbone]

Hi @QPizenberg, great questions, here are some hopefully great answers...

1. Correct - leads were built to track the prospecting process that occurs before deals are created in the pipeline. We're going to add more features in the near future that bring leads closer to deals (and other objects) - custom properties, API endpoints, flexibile automation, etc. - but leads are intended to be sort of a hybrid between a task and an object!

Leads feed into the prospecting workspace, and are designed to be a lightweight data layer on top of contacts or companies. We don't necessarily want to add too much "bulk" to leads, but we do want to continue to add funtionality (e.g. discrete lead ownership that just went live) that provides customization and flexibility to fit more complex use cases.

Also 100% agree that leads make lead status obsolete and provide opportunities to streamline lifecycle stages!

2. I think setup will vary based on each customer's use case and process, but auto-associations between leads, contacts and companies help keep everything synced up. For B2B (especially inbound), I think I prefer creating leads from the contact side. Leads will still auto-associate with companies, provided the contact has one! For ABM/ABS, I think company based leads make sense up until you identify actual individuals you want to reach out to. I could see how this might get messy, though! Tagging @WNHughes from Product for visibility - I think improvements to associations and labeling in the future will help here?

[LJMcIntosh]

I have a question when it comes to the prospecting Workspace, specifically the leads tab. Are there any plans on being able to add a label (hot, warm, cold) from the contact record?

[NBhanu]

Hi @LJMcIntosh! we currently don't have plans on being able to add/ edit a label in the leads association card from the contact record but thank you for sharing this feedback! Can definitely see the value of having this functionality - we'll investigate the feasibility and hopefully share an update soon.

[jaybaum]

Ohhhh do I have questions!

1) With custom lead properties, will we be able to customize which show on the "Create a Lead" form? 

2) With custom lead properties, will we be able to edit which show on the lead record/popout sidebar?

3) Any plans to "fix" automated lead stages? Currently, the stages sync with all activities - even if those activites are not associated to the lead. Meaning, if the contact is a known customer and service reaches out to them, it sets their lead as "attempting". When the contact replies, it sets it as "connected". If the contact/company has multiple associated leads open for whatever reason, all of the leads will sync together. Even if these activities are completed by people who may not be the lead owner. My fix? Create lead-specific associations where you can associate activities to specific leads - just like contact/company/deal/ticket/custom object records. Choose the specific lead record you want to associate to when logging an activity rather than the contact/company as a whole. 

4) Any chance we'll see lead support in the email add-ins? My users have asked several times if they can create a lead record within the outlook add-in. Many create deals and tickets this way. It'd be super beneficial. 

5) Will we see advanced notification and permission options for leads? They're non-exsistent from the admin side. It seems like "view prospecting workspace as another user" is the only option. 

- If a user gets assigned a lead, or re-assigned a lead they get no notification.

- All of my users are able to pull in leads via lifesycle stage. I'd like to only give this permission to some users, not all. 

- All of my users are able to edit lead settings/stages. Not good.

6) Will custom / admin-promoted views become a thing on the lead index table? It's always a struggle to onboard users when their views are setup different. 

[WNHughes]

Hi! I have answers!

1. Yes, you should have access to customizing the create form in the next couple weeks

2. Definitely something on our radar. It won't ship initially with custom properties in the next couple weeks, but is definitely something on our roadmap.

3. Thanks for providing such detailed feedback on this issue! We're hoping to provide more flexibility with activity syncing in the future.

4. Thank you for the feedback! We're actively investigating this and hope to have an update soon.

5. Yes! Both notifications and permissions are under development. We hope to have updates soon.

6. Yes they will! Hoping to have it within the next few months.

Thanks again for this feedback Jaybaum. Keep it coming!

[benesch_e]

Hi!

1. Will we be getting the ability to have specific pipelines. (I work for a company that has multiple different business units and there is some customer overlap, it is extremely helpful to identify things by pipeline)

2. Will there ever be a lead home page like contacts, deals, tickets. My managers tend to grumble that it is not easy to see what the individual's on their team are doing with their leads and coach them appropriately. A kanban style board for leads might be nice too...

[WNHughes]

Hi!

1. Yes! Support for multiple lead pipelines is definitely on our roadmap. In the interim, I'd suggest checking out the new lead type property. You could use this to segment your leads if the different lead pipelines have a similar process.

2. Yes! This is also definitely on our roadmap. We plan on launching more functionality for admins and sales managers later this year.

[YoelBA-GDS]

I'm curious about importing Leads. Can an import update Lead properties?

[ncarbone]

Not yet, but we're working on it! Right now, a good workaround would be importing a CSV of contacts or companies + properties, and then using a workflow to automatically create (or update) lead records. 

[PamCotton]

Hey @ncarbone, thank you so much for sharing this with us!

Can't wait for IN24!

Kindly,

Pam

[ncarbone]

🙌 🙌