Stage 0 deal stage for inbound and outbound

[KerrinBarker]

Hi HubSpot Community,

I have recently moved to a new company that uses HubSpot as their CRM. They have tradionally built their new sales pipeline from inbound website requests and have decided that those inbound requests should automatically create a deal in HubSpot (even though they may not all be qualified). This creates what I will refer to as a 'Stage 0 opportunity/deal' as the company has not yet been qualified to do business with us (through discussion with a salesperion) and therefore we are required to gather further info to asses whether there is a 'real' opportunity.

I have a Salesforce background so typically I am used to only creating opportunities when a lead/account has qualified to do business with us i.e. the pre- qualification happens before an opportunity is created.

That being said, we plan to execute an outbound strategy from this year and I am struggling to identify WHEN to associate a contact/company with a deal for OUTBOUND  (note: the deal creation trigger for inbound was filling in a webform to contact sales). If we cold call or sequence a contact/company - I am not sure how to apply the stage 0 opportunity entry criteria.

Any guidance or best practice would be appreciated.

Kerrin Barker

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @KerrinBarker, rather than try to align outbound leads with the stage 0 for inbound leads (which I agree shouldn't be deals yet), I would see if you can get the sales team processes aligned around using the new Prospecting workspace to manage leads (unlike salesforce leads, in HubSpot, a contact doesn't have to ever be a lead and the same contact can be a lead multiple times).

Ideally your inbound leads could move to this process in the future too, so that all leads are qualified before creating a deal - which the lead stages can trigger automatically once qualified.

Happy to help if you have questions about prospecting, it's a huge improvement for sales teams to manage and qualify leads before reaching the pipeline.