Understanding The CRM

[sarahchapman]

The main components of the HubSpot CRM are objects, records, and properties.

Objects: represent the different types of relationships and processes your business has. All HubSpot accounts use five standard objects: contacts, companies, leads, deals, and tickets. There are additional objects, such as conversations, products, quotes, and depending on your HubSpot subscription, calls, payments and custom objects. All objects use the same framework, which enables you to segment or report on them. Learn more about each object below:

• Contacts
• Companies
• Leads
• Deals
• Tickets

Records: a single instance of an object, where you can store information in properties and track interactions. You can associate records between objects to understand how they are related.

Properties: the different fields where you can store information on a record. There are default properties included in your account for each object, but you can also create custom properties based on your business needs.

• Default contact properties
• Default company properties
• Default deal properties
• Default ticket properties

For example, John Doe is a contact record and his email address, johndoe@email.com is stored in the Email contact property. His company, Orange Inc., is a company record, which is associated with the John Doe contact record. As John interacts with your sales and support teams, you can create and associate leads, deals and tickets with both John and his company. You can also log any interactions you’ve had with John, such as emails and calls, on the records. To better understand your existing object relationships and data, learn how to view an overview of your data model.

Lifecycle stage: lifecycle stage is a contact and company property that helps you to categorize where they are in your marketing and sales processes. Using the Lifecycle stage property helps to determine where a specific contact or company is in your processes, and to better understand how leads are handed off between marketing and sales.

The Lifecycle stage property contains the following default stages as options in sequential order:

• Subscriber: a contact that has opted in to hear more from you by signing up for your blog or newsletter.
• Lead: a contact or company that has converted on your website or through some other interaction with your organization beyond a subscription sign up.
• Marketing Qualified Lead: a contact or company that your marketing team has qualified as ready for the sales team.
• Sales Qualified Lead: a contact or company that your sales team has qualified as a potential customer.
• Opportunity: a contact or company that is associated with a deal (e.g., they're involved in a potential deal with your organization).
• Customer: a contact or company with at least one closed deal.
• Evangelist: a customer that has advocated for your organization.

• Other: a contact or company that does not fit any of the above stages.

You can also customize the default options or create your own stages. Learn how to create and customize lifecycle stages.

Lifecycle Stage and Leads: The Lead object in Hubspot is meant to help you track the sub-stages within the Sales Qualified Lead Lifecycle Stage and is managed in the Prospecting Workspace. (Note: the Lead Object was created in 2023 and is meant to replace the old “Lead Status” contact and company property. Learn more about this here).

Lifecycle Stage and Deals: The Deal object in Hubspot is meant to help you track the sub-stages within the Opportunity Lifecycle Stage and is managed in the Pipeline tool.

Check out these trainings for a better understanding of the CRM:

• The Anatomy of Your CRM
• Getting Started With HubSpot CRM
• Understand Lifecycle Stages