Looking for best practices on deal lifecycle

[Edyta7510]

Hi All, 

I'm looking for best practices for the following kind of B2B deal: 

- it starts with a "Lead" status (it may have an associated value, estimated by the deal owner). 

- it progresses through stages, the value gets updated, owner logs associated notes, emails, documents. 

- it arrives at a certain stage of the pipeline (Request for Proposal - RFP). 

- RFP was won, contract signed, but it's only at this stage when it becomes clear what are various line items, total value, etc. It is impossible to store it all within the same deal (as for us we also apply custom properties like delivery date, etc - which may be different or each line item. 

- This would mean we need to break the deal down into multiple deals to track various moving pieces. How do we make sure the original information associated with the "master" deal remains documented? 

- we keep the original deal as closed won with the amount set to zero? 

I hope I'm not the only one wondering about that. 

Many thanks for any tips!

Edyta

[dianalcont · Accepted solution]

Hey @Edyta7510 - have you considered building out a "delivery" pipeline?

I've seen some clients do the following:

• keep the original pipeline to track the initial projected value of the deal
• delivery pipeline to track milestones in a project build and with that each stage of that process is weighted to account for payments (for forecasting reports)
• if it makes sense (and isn't part of the original scope) - an upsell/cross sell pipeline might make sense.

What I wouldn't do is revert a deal back to a $0 dollar value. It might be valuable to see the deviation from the original amount to the final total.

Let me know if you want to dive into this deeper!

Diana

[Edyta7510]

Hi @dianalcont ! 

Thanks so much for your input, it really sparked my curiosity. 

I've never considered building more than one pipeline in fact - as we're just starting with HubSpot, I really wanted to keep it simple at first with a single pipeline and custom deal properties updated for Closed Won deals to reflect delivery (I'm actually using 2 custom properties "Fully recognized revenue - yes/no" + "Recognized amount" which is getting updated based on deliveries (can be 1,2,3 per deal - no rule). 

I was afraid that creating another pipeline at this point would make it more complex for users (team used to track all their data) in a simple xls spreadsheet so far. 

So wanted to take it step-by-step. 

I would be however very interested to explore more advantages of having multiple pipelines - can you refer to any existing articles? case studies on that? 

Big thanks!

Edyta

[dianalcont]

I love the way you think @Edyta7510 - simple is always better and it's very easy to get wrapped up in the functionality you get with HubSpot.

I like the custom properties you have set up - thank you providing that extra insight.

I don't have anything on hand that I can point you to but I'll share with you why I like multiple pipelines and why I think it actually keeps things from getting messy.

1. Gives you a great visualization of where things are in the sales process (and development or delivery process)
2. Gives you awesome insights on process bottlenecks and friction points for both your sales team and your customers during the delivery phase.
3. Keeping and managing data in HubSpot allows you to have a centralized source of truth
4. Reporting is where HubSpot shines. You can build a report and isolate data from each pipeline to help your team keep track of sold amount versus recognized amount and anything else your team needs to understand (visually) about your process.

email me at dcontreras@digitopia.agency if you want to set up a call where I can explain how this would work.

Best,

Diana