Sanity Check on Process for Renewing Customers/Churn etc.

[kbjornaas]

I have read through some older posts (2016/17) and they recommend a different process for this so I wanted to get a sanity check on my process for managing existing customer deals in case HubSpot functionality changed. 

Some notes:

• I will have a single sales pipeline 
• We will leverage "Deal Type" for Renewal and New to differentiate in reporting
• We will use Status (Account/Lead) to mark customer status Active/Churned which get timestamped with a custom date property

PROCESS:

1. When we mark a new account closed-won, the lifecycle stage is updated to Customer and using a workflow to mark the account status as "Active Customer" 
2. A renewal opp is auto-generated for that customer with a close date out 12 months and type = Renewal
3. If a deal with type = renewal is closed-lost we automate lifecycle to update to 'Other' and Status to "Churned Customer"

When we report on churn we SHOULD be able to use Lifecycle Stage Timestamps and/or close dates with Deal Type to calculate churn by the number of accounts and revenue, net add, net lost etc.

Will this work? Or do I need to create separate pipelines for customers/renewals? I want to be able to report total revenue in one report and then differentiate new and renewal using type. 

[louischausse]

We've built a Recipe to handle Renewals. A Recipe is a small process that you can install in your HubSpot portal. This doesn't require any third-party tool.

Here's a video of how it works:

Watch the video!

Renewal deals are created automatically for each closed-won deals with a known contract end date. Then, a task is generated with a reminder date XX days before that contract end date to notify the deal owner (or another user of your choice) that the renewal is coming soon.

Other settings and configurations are also available to suit your use case.

If you are interested, we can have a chat to setup this recipe on your HubSpot portal.

Learn more here

[jphilbrook]

@kbjornaas What did you end up doing? 

[AMass]

Hi there - how did this workflow end up working for you? We're considering pursuing something similar. We're having a terrible time trying to track active/churned customers. Thanks!

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

While your explanation is very well written, you'd be best advised to communicate your customized account/use case with your HubSpot Customer Success Manager. That person may be the best source of advice for your customized account/use case -- i.e., other than your in-house HubSpot expert or 100 questions back-n-forth here.

[kbjornaas]

I've barked up that tree. Turns out we are quite custom in our process and it's typically not that helpful since we don't model the typical customer they run into. Coming here to see if someone has found a better way. Other posts related to calculating churn are old and new functionality has since been released. Hoping someone can provide a fresh take. 

I am our in house expert and have worked with HubSpot for years so fairly sophisticated with the reporting. This is the first time our entire GTM team/process is being supported by HubSpot so would like to here from people in the same boat rather than the generic responses I typically get from HS.