Create the best pipelines

[AurelAZ]

Hi everyone, 

I am struggling with the pipeline stages that I have defined as follows: 

"Demo Scheduled > Demo Completed > Pre-sales Trial > Proposal sent > Proposal Confirmed"

My issue is that the Pre-sales Trial is a paying one, which itself generates revenues.

In this scenario, when the pre-sales trial is confirmed I will have to move the card that has a certain amount of € to the proposal stage, that will have a different new amount.

What should I do??

1/ Replace the pre-sales price by the new proposal price?

2/ Make the sum of the 2 cumulated prices?

3/ Have a distinct pipeline for my pre-sales trials??

I am afraid to lose track of my different quotes sent and accepted/rejected and I don't know what is the best practice when I have multiple confirmed offers within the same pipeline...

Hope my question is clear,

Thank you for the precious help!

Thank you for the help!!

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @AurelAZ,

In my opinion, I would opt for having two pipelines for the two stages of the deal. This will enable you to see how much revenue you are receiving for each portion of the deal, as well as ensure you don't lose the data around the revenue specifically from the pre-sale trial. 

There are some good suggestions around general pipeline management outlined here.

@Hawk-Steve , @Yeti_Mike do you have any thoughts or suggestions for @AurelAZ? 

Thanks,
Jenny

[Yeti_Mike · Accepted solution]

Hi @AurelAZ and thanks for the shout out @jennysowyrda,

Is this Pre-sales Trial Stage a "required" stage in the pipeline or do you have deals  that can be created and closed won with out being in that stage? 

If most or all of your deals pass through that stage, you may want to capture the revenue from that stage in a separate property on the deal. You could also create a workflow to date stamp the date it hit that stage to another field. These two fields could be useful in your reporting.  Once the deal progresses past that point, you could continue the deal on with the full amount. If you go this route, and are recognizing revenue from deals that pass through this stage but don't ultimately become Closed Won, you may want an additional closed stage to denote that even through it was ultimately lost, revenue was recognized. Then later on you could run campaigns against contacts related to those deals that weren't an outright loss. 

If these two sales cycles are fairly separate and not related, two pipelines may be a better bet so you can track each sales cycle accordingly.  Hopefully this helps.

Best regards,

Mike

Head of Marketing and Operations

Measured Results Marketing | HubSpot Diamond Partner

Check out our HubSpot Services

[AurelAZ]

That is SO helpful, thank you very much! 

Based on your answers, I will definitely opt for 2 separated pipelines.

The first one will be called "pre-sales trials" and the second one "sales".

In this perspective, some new questions come out of my mind:

1) For the trials that will then go to the sales pipeline

> Should I create a brand new deal card associated with the same company into this new pipeline?

> How to effectively measure the percentage of trial to sales?

2) For our sales that are won without passing by a trial

> how can this be "tracked" in my analytics? I would like to see if this "no trial" depends on the type of the customer for instance

3) For the companies that will make multiple trials before eventually going to sales

>> should I create as many deal cards as trials? 

Hope my questions are as clear as your answers are! 

Bonne nuit,

Aurélia 

[Hawk-Steve · Accepted solution]

Hey @AurelAZ 

I may have some good input into the dual pipeline approach as Jenny and Mike have already suggested.

As my company works alongside other companies to identify skill gaps and deliver apprenticeships. There was definitely a call for 2 different pipelines, A - that focused on the employer (a generic sales pipeline) and B - which focused on bringing a learner onboard to the training (completing the setup of funding/finances etc).

I created a workflow (deal based) that triggered when a deal on pipeline A entered a certain stage, creating a new deal on pipeline B. Copying contact/deal properties over to the new deal. (Before sales pro, I did this with a regular workflow and created tasks for the owner to transfer details over).

I created a couple of extra fields to help track stuff in B from A:

• Completed Pipeline A? - Yes, No
• Pipeline A price - £X

Some organisations don't need to complete pipeline A. So just like your instance with trials, we can skip and track this if needed.

------------------------------

Should I create a brand new deal card associated with the same company into this new pipeline?

>> should I create as many deal cards as trials? 

I'd personally create the new deals and associate them with the company, its pretty easy to track deals against company association anyway so you don't have anything to lose. Typically a company would only go through a trial once and buy multiple times.

> How to effectively measure the percentage of trial to sales?

> how can this be "tracked" in my analytics? I would like to see if this "no trial" depends on the type of the customer for instance

I'd use the created deal property "Completed Pipeline A" to create a custom report to work out percentages and help track analytics alongside other deal properties like type.

Hope this helps?

Steve

[jennysowyrda]

Thank you @Hawk-Steve and @Yeti_Mike! Great insights! 🙂 

[AurelAZ]

AMAZING!!! 

Extremely helpful, I hope I will be able to help you in return one day 🙂