How to track lifecycle status for repeat customers

[Yo_Be_Low]

Many of our customers are repeat customers - they inquire & buy, and then later inquire and buy again.  The Lifecycle property, which is unmodifiable, allows me to specify if the contact is a Subscriber, Lead, Customer, etc., and the Lead Status property allows me to identify what stage of the sales process the contact is at, e.g. 

But when an existing customer inquires about a new sales opportunity, if I change the Lifecycle property back to Lead, I've lost that this is an existing customer (without having to sift through a bunch of prior interactions). How have folks dealt with this?

I suppose I could create a new property called Existing Customer, and a contact either is or isn't, and leave the Lifecycle property to reflect the contact's status at the moment. Or is there a smarter way to deal with this?

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @Yo_Be_Low,

I would generally recommend to not touch or revert the Lifecycle stage property. Resetting this property causes issues in reporting especially. When it's set to "Customer", it will still be correct for a repeat customer.

There are a few ways you could approach this then. Since Lead status is really meant to be a sub-phase of the Lifecycle stage "Sales Qualified Lead", you could either say that this Lead status property applies for repeat prospects as well or create an additional property for this. The additional property however would not reflect a 3rd or 4th go-around. So maybe adding new values to the Lead status is the best option for you here.

Another way to look at this is by incorporating the deal objects. This of course only works if you're using deals in HubSpot. HubSpot Academy Professor Kyle Jepson has explained the relationship of Lifecycle stage, Lead Status and Deal type (which reflects new and existing business) in this community thread. By labeling deals as "Existing business", you'll be able to easily identify existing customers in your deal view and get a good understanding of your existing business pipeline and forecast as well.

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!

[webdew]

Hi @Yo_Be_Low ,

The solution that you are having in your head is also gonna work for you or you can make some small changes in order to help yourselves in longer terms. Its surely not possible to keep track of your lifecycle stage to get back to opportunity and keeping the track whether the customer is an existing or a new one !

What you can do is as follows : 

Keep LIFECYCLE STAGE to CUSTOMERS
Keep lead status to OPEN DEAL or you can customise this also.
There’s a deal type property that has two options; New business or existing business

This can tell whether your customer is an existing or a new one ! this option lets you create a list of customers who are re-ordering.
This way your records are detailed and are more segmented.
Here’s an already asked question https://community.hubspot.com/t5/CRM/Lifecycle-vs-Lead-Status/td-p/8737

Hope this helps!

If we were able to answer your query, kindly help the community by marking it as a solution.

Thanks and Regards. 

[Lucila-Andimol]

Hi @Yo_Be_Low hope you are diong well.

It depends a bit in what you are trying to do/see

but normally with lifecycle stage= customer + last deal date is enought to know that is a recurrent buyer.

Let us know if you have more info in what you are trying to acomplish/ any report in particular?