CRM

PlanetPluto
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

What is the best way of using these two properties when an existing customer is re-ordering. Any advice appreciated.

 

Thanks

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1 Accepted solution
KyleJepson
Solution
Inbound Professor
Inbound Professor

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hey @PlanetPluto,

 

I love this question. The answer depends entirely on how you're using these properties. Here are my thoughts:

 

Lifecylce Stages

I agree with @roisinkirby that you should keep this set as Customer. Here's why:

 

Let's say a current customer is reordering, so you change their Lifecycle Stage from "Customer" to something else (for example, "Opportunity"). And let's say later on you want to see a list of all of your current customers--how would you do that? If you made a list of everyone whose Lifecycle Stage is "Customer," you wouldn't see the customer who is reordering. To include them in the list, you'd have to include everyone with a Lifecycle Stage of "Opportunity"--but that means your list would include all of the opportunities who have never been customers.

 

So changing Lifecycle Stage is probably going to cause some confusion. Let's look at some other options:

 

Lead Status

It's worth noting that the options in the Lead Status property can be customized. If you're using the default options, it would make sense to leave Lifecycle Status as "Customer" and then change the Lead Status to "Open Deal." That way, you can easily generate a list of all customers who are re-ordering. This is probably the best option.

 

If you've customized your Lead Statuses (or if you want to customize them), you could have an option specifically for customers who are reordering. You could call it something like "Re-order" or "Upsell" or whatever makes the most sense to your team.

 

There's actually one other option I should mention as well:

 

Deal Type

There's a deal property called Deal Type that has two options: "New Business" and "Existing Business." This enables your sales team to label their deals based on whether they're happening with new customers or existing customers.

 

The advantage here is that this let's you create a list of deal that represent re-orders. The previous two options will let you get a list of customers who are re-ordering, but using Deal Type let's you see a list of the actual deals. So if that's what you're looking for, this would be the way to do it.

 

I hope that helps--let me know if you have any questions!

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18 Replies 18
KyleJepson
Solution
Inbound Professor
Inbound Professor

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hey @PlanetPluto,

 

I love this question. The answer depends entirely on how you're using these properties. Here are my thoughts:

 

Lifecylce Stages

I agree with @roisinkirby that you should keep this set as Customer. Here's why:

 

Let's say a current customer is reordering, so you change their Lifecycle Stage from "Customer" to something else (for example, "Opportunity"). And let's say later on you want to see a list of all of your current customers--how would you do that? If you made a list of everyone whose Lifecycle Stage is "Customer," you wouldn't see the customer who is reordering. To include them in the list, you'd have to include everyone with a Lifecycle Stage of "Opportunity"--but that means your list would include all of the opportunities who have never been customers.

 

So changing Lifecycle Stage is probably going to cause some confusion. Let's look at some other options:

 

Lead Status

It's worth noting that the options in the Lead Status property can be customized. If you're using the default options, it would make sense to leave Lifecycle Status as "Customer" and then change the Lead Status to "Open Deal." That way, you can easily generate a list of all customers who are re-ordering. This is probably the best option.

 

If you've customized your Lead Statuses (or if you want to customize them), you could have an option specifically for customers who are reordering. You could call it something like "Re-order" or "Upsell" or whatever makes the most sense to your team.

 

There's actually one other option I should mention as well:

 

Deal Type

There's a deal property called Deal Type that has two options: "New Business" and "Existing Business." This enables your sales team to label their deals based on whether they're happening with new customers or existing customers.

 

The advantage here is that this let's you create a list of deal that represent re-orders. The previous two options will let you get a list of customers who are re-ordering, but using Deal Type let's you see a list of the actual deals. So if that's what you're looking for, this would be the way to do it.

 

I hope that helps--let me know if you have any questions!

vy
Contributor

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Thanks. your reply help me a lot! it helps me to understand lifecycle stages, lead status and deal types, and how to use the opitions of them. thanks so much!!

yfundora
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hey @KyleJepson ,

 

I like your answer, but we're thinking to create a new property "Re-order status". That way our account management team can work with these statuses throughout this process. We can have New, Working... as values of this property. So for new sales, we will have "Lead status" and for existing customers "Re-order status".

 

Do you think it is a good idea too?

0 Upvotes
snehamaikama
Member

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Can we get lifecycle stage and lead status using hubspot API. If yes could you guide me

0 Upvotes
KyleJepson
Inbound Professor
Inbound Professor

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Yes! There's an API call specifically for getting all contacts who were in a particular lifecycle stage at a given point. You can find the documentation for that here: https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/methods/contacts/get-lifecycle-stage-metrics-for-contacts

 

Alternatively, since lifecycle stage and lead status are both contact properties, you can use the normal contact property calls to get or update values in those properties: https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/methods/contacts/contact-properties-overview

 

I hope that helps!

0 Upvotes
Flo
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hi Guys, 

 

thank you for shipping this valuable "feature" 🙂

 

I do have a question centered around reporting on lead status.

We are planning to use Lead Status as part of your pre-sales process during the SQL stage. With custom states like: New, Contacted, not ready yet and unqualified. 

 

Now I'd be interested to see what percentage of SQL convert from lead status "new" to "not ready" (or any of the status beyond new, for that matter) for example.  How would I be doing that?

 

All the best

 

Florian

0 Upvotes
doroncoh
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hi Guys (and @KyleJepson),

Thanks for the tips above.

An issue I'm concerned about:

So let's assume we use LyfecycleStage = Customer for those exisiting clients (including those we'd like to upsell to).

 

Now we'd like to sell another service to existing customers, but still don't know who among them has an intent to explore buying the new service. We won't create a Deal (since it's too early to create a deal when an intention hasn't been identifyed acording to Hubspot's best practices as we understand them; even if we did - that would result in hundreds or thousands of deals - most of which would never progress).

 

Which leaves us working with the Lead Status field. This raises the following questions:

  1. What should be the Lead Status the first time LifecycleStage changes to Customer (and before any new upsell opportunity is offered by us to the client)?  Should it just stay "in progress"? I know we can customize the field - but I guess there's a good reason for Hubspot not to include "Customer" at the Lead Status field.
  2. What should be the Lead Status field after we offer another service to that customer? Specifically - we're building a SmartList and are nurturing this list (with calls, emails) until we spot a true opportunity - at which point we'd like to create a new Deal.
  3. What happens to the Lead Status if the new Deal is Lost? Moving it to unqualified seems odd... as it is still a customer (based on a previous deal). Moving it to "in progress" (or any other Lead Status you'd expect a LifecycleStage=true customer to be in per question #1 above) means that we'll keep nurturing that lead which clearly said "no" to that upsell (which is a no-go...).
  4. What happens to the Lead Status if the new Deal is Won?

Thanks,

Doron

 

KyleJepson
Inbound Professor
Inbound Professor

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hi Doron,

 

Rather than trying to figure out which default lead status would work best for each of these, I'd recommend looking at your sales process and asking yourself what you want your team to do in each of these circumstances. For example, when a deal is lost, what do you want to happen next? You might have different answers based on why the deal was lost. Maybe if it was lost to a competitor, then you want to have your team check in 11 months later when the contract is about to expire, but if the deal was lost because the prospect decided not to buy anything, then you'll want to have them circle back in 6 months. If that's the case, then I would recommend creating two new lead statuses: "Closed Lost - Competitor" and "Closed Lost - No Decision." You could have each of those trigger workflows to make sure the appropriate actions get taken.

 

The default lead status aren't intended to represent any sort of recommended best practice. They're just meant to be a helpful starting point. Personally, I don't think anyone can get the maximum value out of using the lead status property without customizing it. The default terms are too broad and generic to be especially helpful.

 

I hope that helps. If you'd like to hear ALL my thoughts on the topic, check out this lesson I just released: Designing Your Sales Process in HubSpot. It talks about the interplay between deals and lead status, and also has a quick example of how to build automation using lead status.

 

Let me know what you think!

 

Kyle

dmaxwell
Contributor | Partner
Contributor | Partner

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

@KyleJepson 

Very useful post (and corresponding lesson you created).  Thank you.  

We are just in process of mapping our retail sales process into HubSpot and weighing pros/cons for where to leverage lead status vs. deal stages as it relates to moving from potentially cold call to sales inquiry to real opportuinty and this was very helpful.

If we decide to use Lead Status for pre-Deal related activity;  'Deal Open' once deal is created, was curious if you have any recommendations on setting Lead Status once the deal has been Closed (be it won or lost).  

ie. 

LifeCycleStage - Customer, Deal Stage - Closed Won, LeadStatus - ?

or

LifeCycleStage - SQL/Opportunity, Deal Stage - Closed Lost, LeadStatus - ?

Understand this will depend on what we want to occur after deal is closed (be it lost or won); and for Won, we are looking at a status for sales activity required related to communication until delivery (this is more required, factual, inspectable and buyer centric; although not directly part of deal stages).

For closed-lost; struggling to understand best approach for LeadStatus as it would require both judgement from individual sales reps on the ‘why’, and depending on the ‘factualness’ of this data, may not get used.  Is it better to move LeadStatus back to blank, or put something like - Closed-Deal?

KyleJepson
Inbound Professor
Inbound Professor

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hey @dmaxwell,

 

I love your thinking here! I think if you try to use Lead Status both pre-sale and post-sale, it's going to end up having so many options in it that it'll get overwhelming. I'd recommend using Lead Status pre-sale only. Here are some thoughts post-sale:

 

Closed Lost - There's a default property called Closed Lost Reason. By default, it's a text field, which isn't super helpful, but you can change it into a dropdown property to standardize the responses. This will make reporting a lot easier, and it'll also open up opportunities for strategic automation. For example, if one of the options is "Bad Timing - 6 Months," you could have that trigger a workflow that waits six months then assigns a task to the sales rep to check in again. This workflow could also update Lead Status to show that this is the beginning of a new attempted sale.

 

Closed Won - There are a couple of options here. One is that you could create a custom property called something like Delivery Status and use that to track the progress. But I think there's an even better option here based on what you said. Since you have stages that are required, factual, inspectable, and buyer-centric, it sounds like what you really need is another pipeline--but instead of a deal pipeline, I'd recommend using tickets. Then whatever team is responsible for the communication can have a nice board view to see how each delivery is progressing and manage the communication appropriately.

 

I hope that helps! I love brainstorming these kinds of things, so if you have more questions, I'm here for it 🙂

 

Kyle

SpubHot
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Good questions! Would you have any insights on those too, @KyleJepson ?

0 Upvotes
GidonJ
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hi all. I have a similar situation and would love to hear your thoughts regarding what is recommended to do (within the statuses) if a retention agent is trying to up-sell and is unsuccessful. 

 

Thanks 

 

G

0 Upvotes
roisinkirby
HubSpot Product Team
HubSpot Product Team

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hey @PlanetPluto great question!

 

Could you confirm with details, exactly what you mean by 'an exisitng customer is re-ordering'?

 

Thanks!

0 Upvotes
PlanetPluto
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Hi

Say client X goes through the sales proces, purchases and becomes a customer. Presumably I tag client X in the Lifestyle Stage as "Customer". If the same client wishes to order again, do I leave the Lifestyle status the same and just change Lead status to "New". I'm a beginner so not sure how to use these 2 properties. Thanks

0 Upvotes
roisinkirby
HubSpot Product Team
HubSpot Product Team

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Ah I see! Thanks for clarifying. 

 

My advise would be to leave that contact as a Customer, but I'm going to loop in some our experts here to share their knowledge and expertise on lead scoring and the inbound sales process.


@cbsembler @KyleJepson do you have anything to add to the above? Thanks!

 

0 Upvotes
PlanetPluto
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Thank you for your quick response. It is very reassuring to know that this kind of support is behind your product. In practice it seems that the progress of contact/company moving through the sales funnel is inextricably linked to the progress of the "Deal" during the first sale. However, after that first sale and they become a customer, additional individual "Deals" can have a life of their own and move through a process independently. Looking forward to further responses.

Thanks

Jeff

roisinkirby
HubSpot Product Team
HubSpot Product Team

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

Thanks @PlanetPluto 🙂

 

Just so we can deliver an answer that's right for you, could you please confirm which HubSpot tools you are using? HubSpot Sales, HubSpot Sales Pro and/or our paid Marketing Product?

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PlanetPluto
Participant

Lifecycle vs Lead Status

SOLVE

There doesn't seem to be a menu item which tells me which version. Can you direct me. It is the free product at the moment. Thanks

0 Upvotes