Separate Lifecycle Stages for Contacts & Companies

[SMcCarron7]

Can anyone explain why Lifecycle Stage is a company object property but tied/configured to the contact object? This is really confusing in managing B2B and account-based marketing/sales motions.

I cannot seem to find a way to create separate lifecycle stages for companies vs contacts. The closest I can find would be to use Lead Status, but then I have two properties on the contact object instead of one on company and one on contact.

For example -- our companies could progress through the following lifecycle stages: Prospect -> Opportunity -> Customer // Do not engage; where as contacts within those companies could progress through the following lifecycle stages: New -> Engaged -> Open Deal -> Customer -> Nurture // Do not engage

I see the ability to sync stages across companies and contacts (which I wouldn't want to do) which makes me think it's a mirrored property on both objects, but only customizable once. Why would you have duplicate properties that could be unsynced but not actually separated?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @SMcCarron7,

From what you're describing, "New", "Engaged" etc are typically considered to be a lead status, not a lifecycle stage. @franksteiner79 has explained the difference really well here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Ask-Me-Anything-and-Panel/AMA-Demystifying-HubSpot-s-lifecyle-stage...

The reason why the lifecycle stage is the same on contact and company is that one shows how far an individual contact has gotten, the other where the entire company stands. While that might not be suitable for all HubSpot customers, at least that's how it's intended. And yes, in this setup, three fields would have to be maintained to store all the information you want to store, lead status and lifecycle stage on both contact and company. Manually or via automation workflows.

HubSpot has noticed that this might not be the leanest way to track where a contact currently stands (lead status) and how this information is linked with lifecycle stage at contact and company. This is where the new prospecting area comes in: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospecting/use-the-prospecting-workspace

Here reps can create leads for contacts and track the status of these leads visually (not within the "Lead status" property). This status tracking can be linked directly to the contact lifecycle stage.

To some extent, things are getting more confusing now but I'd recommend reviewing these updates and seeing if they solve your issue.

Hope this helps!

[SMcCarron7]

Thank you!

The referenced article is a good explanation and the prospecting workspace is an interesting feature. It appears the field and object relationships as developed in Hubspot's current features emphasizes different "user" workflows (e.g. marketing vs sales) rather than different company/contact relationships. 

Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status both describe a contact's relationship with your company and allow sales teams to use Lead Status to organize activities and marketing or service teams to use Lifecycle stage to organize activities. However, neither field accurately describes a company's relationship with your firm. Hubspot's Lifecycle Stage defaults (e.g. subscriber or MQL) don't make sense as stages for a company and is odd and confusing when displayed as a company property.

For Hubspot customers like myself, leveraging account-based marketing/sales motions and/or serving enterprise firms, the difference between teams' activities is less important than managing different degrees of relationship with companies and the (many!) contacts within them.

For example, it's quite common to have many subscribers, leads, MQLs, and SQLs all from the same company. Does the company's Lifecycle Stage field default to the "highest" incremental value when synced with contacts, in this case SQL? And if those SQLs are from a particular regional territory within our prospective customer or only 1 of several divisions we sell into, the reports, automations, and workflows quickly become unsusable.

I can leverage workaround solutions, but it seems an unnecessary complication. If the Lifecycle Stage property refers to contact's relationships, it should not be connected to the company object.

Ideally, there would be separate properties on each object to describe those objects' relationship in your business logic with the option to sync them. 

I appreciate the response and the reference material!