Leads & Deals or Deals only?

[Luna2]

Hello everyone,

We run a B2C business where 100% of our leads (prospects) are inbound. 

We are considering HubSpot Sales Hub and are facing a discussion whether to use Leads for early stages (New/Attempted/Connected/SQL/Disqualified) and Deals for actual revenue related opportunities (Pending Offer/Offer Sent/Negotiation/CW/CL) but even though it looks great on paper I have received some feedback that it's confusing to work with 2 separate objects day to day. (Essentially as soon as the Lead gets to SQL stage, it closes and becomes a Deal).

Considering a single sales rep manages around 10 NEW leads per day and has 100+ active prospects, what would be the best way to utilize the way sales reps should work? 

Another option I thought about is to work with deals only (i.e. Contact fills in a form, it automatically creates a deal with a pipeline stage NEW and the sales rep moves the deal all the way to CW/CL depending on the outcome).

This would simplify the way sales reps should work but I think would complicate reporting, given that roughly 50% of contacts/leads are disqualified on avg. 

Our goal is to work through tasks, but it's so confusing having tasks on 2 different object, I struggle to create onboarding material which would simplify the workflow of the sales rep and be simple and clear, which has led me to rethink the whole Lead+Deal setup.


Anyone faced a similar dilemma?

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @Luna2,

This mostly depends on your definitions and tasks-to-be-done for each lifecycle stage (lead, MQL, SQL etc).

For example, there are companies handraisers are considered SQLs, and establishing the first touchpoint (making a call) qualifies them as an opportunity. Leaving aside how much sense that makes, in that scenario I would not use the lead object as it would indeed just complicate things.

If however there steps associated to qualifying a MQL or SQL, then I would indeed recommend working with the lead object:

• It allows there to be multiple leads per company which could turn into one eventual deal.
• It allows you to track disqualification of early-stage contacts without polluting your deal pipeline.
• It allows you to do effective forecasting on your deal pipeline.

There are more nuances to this, but they really depend on your step-by-step sales process and lifecycle stage definitions.

Best regards

[Luna2]

Hi @karstenkoehler ,

Thanks for your swift response!
I appreciate the answer -  we are 100% inbound b2c so Company object is not going to be used at all.
50% of our total incoming leads(prospects) are going to be disqualified as not SQL, hence the headache in deciding which way to go. 

My question is mostly related to the best practices of working with multiple prospects and tasks, rather than reporting, so if you have any insights on the best practices on how sales rep should manage their day-to-day and what to prioritise, that would be great. 

[karstenkoehler]

@Luna2 I would have to better understand your sales process (steps, lifecycle stage definitions) to do that. If you share that context, I can elaborate.

[Luna2]

Sure. 

Current setup is
Lifecycle: MQL/SQL/Customer/Other
Lead stages: New/Attempted/Connected/SQL/Disqualified
Deal pipeline (when Lead is marked as SQL it automatically creates a Deal):
Pending offer/offer sent/negotiation/CW/CL.

All of the leads come via inbound - sales reps call them to qualify/disqualify (50% ratio on avg); once qualified they nurture them further until a sale. 

The whole problem of deciding whether to go with Leads+Deals or Deals only is that due to high velocity and amount of leads each sales rep gets per day we are not sure what would be an effective and efficient window to work from day to day (is it the lead list, deal pipeline, task list in the CRM tab or task list in the Sales Workspace, or would it be something completely else?)

Thanks again.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@Luna2 what exactly are sales reps doing when they receive a contact / when they qualify a contact? What you shared is unfortunately too high level to make a recommendation – it's a bit of a black box currently as to what is behind each lifecycle stage, lead status etc.

Generally, both leads and deals can be managed nicely in the sales workspace. There are tabs for both leads and deals, so it's not a lot of switching around. Unless the SQL stage is super short (and I can't currently speak to that due to lack of context), I would recommend using the lead object. Sales reps could review their new SQLs, qualify, disqualify. Qualified SQLs would create deals which would be managed just one tab away.