Greetings! I wanted to share a tutorial I made for others who might be looking to create an iron-clad follow up system in Hubspot that prioritiizes each task that will keep you closest to your hottest be-back opportuntites in a hierarchy of prioritization that works.
My idea for Hubspot is to add the "Task Queues" menu you find in the task window when creating a task...and adding it as an option when creating automated tasks through use of workflows in the Deal Stage Automation screen. More on that later, but in the meantime...I have a workaround that works awesome if you need organized workflow for your follow up that you don't have to do much with.
Recently, Hubspot added High, Medium, Low and None priority choices for Tasks when it only High and None priority choices were available previously.
While that is a much needed improvement for basic priority tagging, this tutorial I hope will help others like myself who need a more robust hierarchy of prioritizaiton and an automated system that automatically plugs people in the hiearcharcy as you work, saving time and energy trying to constantly think our way through. Hubspot provides it all, you just might need a little assistance explaining how to combine the features. At least that's where I found myself last October when I signed up.
We all know what it feels like to stay on top of our follow up and sometimes it can be difficult to choose from your list at-a-glance and try to quickly determine/remember who is the single most important person to call at any given moment...and who is the next, and the next.
Especailly if you have a large number of people to keep track of, all having their own unique circumstances and timelines to close the deal.
I wanted a system that I could customize for my follow up that allows me to spend most of my time being closest to the hottest follow up that has the best chance to become a comissionable transaction.
Hot follow up can get cold fast if we aren't staying on top of all we have to do at any given moment to maximize our time and efficiency.
Important tasks/calls can easily fall through the cracks.
I also needed a system I didn't have to contstantly think about and waste time determining who is the next most valuable person to call to maximize production during what little downtime I have between appts.
Basically, the less time I have to spend thinking and organizing priority calls that I can direct Hubspot to do automatically, the more time I have to dedicate to other growth objectives.
Who is this for?
I am a 100% commissioned sales rep and work as a sole, independent contractor. I work by myself and don't have a team. I only use the Sales Hub Starter with no add ons to successfully create this system.
I have to rely on my own efficiency to stay productive and ultimately succesful at growing revenue in my consulting business. I KNOW anyone would benefit from this system out there who generates/pays for/receives warm leads who are curious about your services and it's your job to reach back out to their inquiries and present services to sell.
It's for closers, and if you're like me, you want to spend less time doing unneccessary things and more time closing deals since we don't eat unless we bring revenue through the door.
After nearly 18 years of my profession, I've gotten really good at my craft. However staying up on my follow up can be a struggle at the level I'm performing at [very high call volume] and finally found features within Hubspot that allow me to do it.
I hope other folks in various sales roles, maybe even sales management in enterprise solutions may benefit from this tuturial to maybe help structure/re-structure workflow for their teams.
So here it goes.
The first step is to configure your "Deal Stages" in the Sales>Deals>Board Actions>Edit Stages screen and determine your Deal Probabilities and Properties if you haven't done so already like this:
Next, you want to take advantage of the "Queue" feature in "Tasks" and this is where you will identify your custom Hierarchy of Prioritization.
Personally in my business of consulting in the commercial support services industry, I have follow up with prospects before they sign a contract, but also after.
Everything hinges on a contract first before we can be paid, so in the section below, I have identified my Hierarchy of Prioritization along with my defiinitions of each queue category (you obviously will need to customize it how you see fit):
1 - Critical [definition: a contract has been signed, but I still need to colllection forms, media, payment...anything to complete the contract so I can turn it in and be paid on it.]
2 - Urgent [definition: a contract has not been signed, but we've agreed to specific dollar amount for the contract. Additionally, if I've set a specific date for follow up, but no specific time...it goes here as well. A prospect may be out of the country and not back until a specific date, but has agreed to a specific dollar amount. Or maybe a prospect has to pull funds from another business account and the bank may have a 2 week hold, or other issue where there is committment on the money, but you need to schedule a specific date for follow up.]
3, 4, & 5 are High, Medium and Low [definition: To me, this means "temperature" of the prospect when it comes to their committment and ability to pay and you designate them accordingly. For example, a High or HOT prospect is somebody who is interested and needs another meeting to make decision after involving decision maker, allocating the budget, etc, but can't commit to a specfiic date yet and doesn't have committment on a specfic dollar amount. Mediums and Lows become prospects who are committed, but there are issues before decisions can be approved that only you can determine.]
The point is, when you are stacked back to back with 10, 1 hour long appts in a day and you only have so much time in between appt downtime to follow up and you have 100 calls to make on top of your presentations you've setup for yourself, it's essential to work them in order of priority that works for you and for me that is "Critical to Low."
However, it's many times the High, Medium, and Low prospects where we could miss out on opportunity to get a contract signed and close a deal by not following up in a timely, structured manner since we didn't give them that much priority in the first place.
When there are only so many hours in a day and timezones of propsects/existing clients matter for proper follow up too and you find yourself sometimes spending 14 to 16 hour days servicing folks, we can easily proscrastinate on the lower priority stuff which is important to do, but "not right now."
Add in an unorganized way of trying to remember everything or having to indiviudally click on each client profile and read all the notes again and determine which one is best...time can fly. It's those "important," but not "urgent" tasks that can bite us in the butt later if we are aren't following up properly...because there are buyers in there and they are looking for a coach to keep them committed to the change/solution they know they are seeking. It's why they contacted us in the first place.
We basically want to be able to ask ourselves at any given moment throughout the day, "What one follow up call do I make right now that is going to have the most positive impact on my business and have the best chance to create revenue?"...but have Hubspot automate that for us so we don't have to think it or even ask it.
Below is a graphic I made that gives you an idea of the goal of this Hierarchy of Prioritization in my business. Obviously the general of idea of the direction we want to take prospects will the be same, but again, you will have to identify the custom names of your "priority menu" and what they mean to you.
Anything that gets you paid and paid the fastest right? And if we are quickly closing and processing deals, there is more time to close more in teh shortest cycle possible. At least we share that in common because that is the only way to drive revenue up....more deals.
I bookmark my Tasks homepage in Hubspot in Google Chrome. Aside from my appointment setting calls from new leads and my pre-set appts for the day to present my services to prospects, below is what it looks like to start my day with my follow up.
I immediately click on 1-Critical and click on the orange "Start Tasks" button Hubspot gives you to work them until complete. I love this feature since it works them in that order and you just blast through them.
And of course, once complete, I click on 2-Urgent and click on Start Tasks and do the same thing, not having to think about it!
And at this point, I'm sure you get the picture. Task Queues allow you to customize your follow up for you.
Now a quick word about automation. Let's go back to your Deal Stages that you designated for your workflow. Here is where you can tie in your Task Queues and automate everything.
If you go to Sales>Deals>Board Actions>Edit Stages and then click on "Automation" next to where is says "Configure"...you'll see this:
So as you'll notice, I've customized worklfows for my needs in my business. I've designated which "Task Queue" I've added to the workflows I've created in it's title.
Once my deals reach these stages, Hubspot will automatically generate a task for me since I created these workflows. You simply click on "Create Workflow" and you'll get a screen to setup a task/call/etc. I create automated tasks and get this screen:
You can title the task, designate it how far out date and time wise you want Hubspot to create the task for and it will generate it. Now you'll never have to manually create a task for prospects/clients that move through deal stages where there is always a specified task/follow up. It eliminates the repitition for you.
Now in the priority drop down menu, it does give you the option of High, Medium, Low and None, but it can't differentiate between what you define as important tasks.
This is where the Task Queues come in.
Now there is currently NOT a drop down menu to choose from your task queues when setting up automated workflows, [HubSpot: Maybe this is something you can implement in the future :)] ...but there is a work around and it doesn't take very long.
So here is what you do. When a new prospect is entered into/moved through the deal stages and it creates an automatic workflow, simply wait a few seconds after entering the deal stage and hit refresh on your browser.
The automated task from your workflow you created will show up and look like this:
Now all you have to do is manually add the task queue so it will be in the hierarchy of prioritization you've designated. Simply tap on the task to open up the entire window, then down below you will see a drop down menu of the task queues you've customized for yourself:
Once selected, you're done and can move on, not thinking twice about anything and returning your task screen to immediately do the next task you've designated Hubspot to line up for you.
[Hubspot: Ideally, this "Queue" drop down menu we see when manually creating a task would be excellent if it was programmed into the "Create Workflow" window as an option when customizing automation of task workflows in sales pipelines.]
So this is my idea for Hubspot to hopefully work on while in the meantime, users can hopefully use this system or a customized hybrid system by using these work arounds.
I hope this helps somebody because it's made a world of difference for me, my time and my money.
If anyone sees ways I can improve my system or further automate it, please definitely hit me up!
Thank you to Hubspot for all you do in providing this ingenious software for us. You're appreciated!