Revert Lifecycle Stage to Lead when an Opportunity is Closed Lost

[fmacpherson]

HubSpot doesn't have the ability to revert the Lifecycle Stage to Lead for Opportunities that have been Closed Lost. 

If a contact is associated with a Company where there has previously been an Opportunity which was lost, that contact's Lifecycle Stage will automatically update to Opportunity, even though it is not currently an Opportunity.

I've tried to get around this using workflows to clear the Lifecycle Stage and set it back to Lead if an Opportunity is Closed Lost and no active Opportunity exists, but contacts Lifecycle Stage are still updated by HubSpot recognising a past Deal due to the Contact-Company sync.

Once an Opportunity is lost we no longer consider there to be an Opportunity for that contact, so it would be really helpful if HubSpot could automatically update the contact's Lifecycle Stage to Lead once an Opportunity is Closed Lost. Currently having the Lifecycle Stage set to Opportunity for non-live opportunities is affecting our reporting and workflows.

[JonathanM]

Completely agree--Lifecycle logic that is rigid and only goes in one direction is a challenge.  Like the OP, I want to keep my historical lost deal data without having the company/contact permanently stuck at "Opportunity." We have the Salesforce connector, and so it seems our choices are:

1. Sync deals w/SFDC (a good feature) but then keep companies/contacts with 'closed lost' deals eternally at lifecycle "Opportunity."  (This means lots of workarounds, like new custom fields to identify "Opportunity" contacts & companies who arent really Opportunities anymore.) 
2. Don't sync deal data at all...which would mean going into HS to manually move companies and contacts to "Opportunity," "Closed Won," and "Closed Lost"
3. Delete historical deals so HS stops forcing the "Opportunity" stage 

None of these are viable.  Hubspot, this is a real disconnect with the ways B2B buyers engage: it can sometimes take two or three budget cycles before they buy; interest waxes and wanes in the interim; new bosses and budget owners come into the mix; a stakeholder leaves the company; etc. Sometimes you have to start all over.  Because of the platform's rigid internal rules, we're unable to use Lifecycles with any nuance, plus the data we see in Hubspot is less trusted than it could be.   Please address this!

[LP79]

YES PLEASE HUBSPOT!

We have this same problem. I am currently having to manually go through 227 contacts to manually change the lifecycle back to Subscriber, where deals have been lost and there is no opoortunity for us at this time. As such these are no longer considered leads by the business, but subscribers to communication. They will go back to lead when we see a marketing action that warrants the lead going into our pot.

This is very frustrating and makes reports on pipelines very difficult.

I have tried workflows - ideally I would like one that ran daily that went along the lines of if a deal stage is set to Closed lost - all associated contacts are changed to Subscriber. Equally I would like one that did the same when a deal is won and changed the contact to Customer.

This is a very real problem in the system for me. We only use HS for new business opportunities for sales. After thsi we only market to customers but use another CRM to track account deals.

[CorbinAssembla]

The only way I know of to manage this is to disable some of the default HS settings and completely control how and when lifecycle stage is set using workflows. Admittedly, a lot of effort went into standing this up and HubSpot could probably take some actions to simplify the entire process.

1. Disable the default Sales account setting "Sync lifecycle stages to associated contacts and companies."

2. Disable the default Companies account setting "Lifecycle stage sync"*

3. Create a unique workflow to manage each contact/company lifecycle stage independently. For example, your "Lead" workflow will contain enrollment criteria for every interaction that you want to result in a Lead. You could have a workflow which labels a Contact as an "Opportunity" when an associated deal is created. Another workflow can reset the contact's lifecycle stage and kick back to 'Subscriber' whenever an associated deal's "deal stage" = 'Closed Lost'. To be most effective you'll want to create some overlap in later-stage workflows in the event a contact skips directly from Subscriber to Opportunity (i.e. to capture Lead -> SQL -> Opp). 

*If you disable this setting this will allow you to track multiple leads per company. If you want to treat all contacts at a company as part of the same lead then you can leave this setting enabled.

As far as retaining the lifecycle history from previous trips down the lead funnel, we're managing that in a separate SQL database. We loaded in the lifecycle stage property history file into a db and then regularly pipe in updates via webhooks. This allows us to report on all changes through time by contact, not just those from the latest funnel excursion. If you wanted to acheive something similar strictly through the app I think you'd need to create dedicated fields like "first lead date, second lead date, third lead date" which would be a data management nightmare.

[JorgenDavidson]

There needs to be a solution for this!

[mitchellkp]

Lifecycle is too rigid (only goes one way). If a Deal goes to a closed lost stage, then the associated Contact's Lifecycle stage needs to be "reset" or cleared.

BTW, the Evangelist option should be in a different field/property associated with their support of you regardless of them being a customer (industry influencer, analyst, etc.)

[mitchellkp]

Thanks to Carina at Impact ->  You can CLEAR the lifecycle stage with workflow

Workflow based on lost deal stage(s) -> clear contact property Lifecycle stage.

That's all I need. You can subsequently set a new Lifecycle stage.

[fmacpherson]

Hi @mitchellkp I have tried using the 'Clear' functionality a number of times to resolve this and reset the Lifecycle stage, but eventually the Lifecycle Stage 'Opportunity' is automatically picked up for any contacts who are associated with a Company that has a 'Deal' associated with it, regardless of whether that Deal is still open or closed.

[jonnoprice]

It is possible to do this. 

1.) create a company property called "Lifecycle Rollback" - radio option with "YES"

2.) create a company workflow called "MQL Rollback"- that listens for Lifecycle change to MQL. Action is to update the "Lifecycle Rollback" to YES.

3.) create similar workflows for Lead Rollback, SQL Rollback, etc.

4.) create a contact workflow that listens for company Lifecycle Rollback changed to YES. Clear the associated contacts Lifecycle. Copy the Company Lifecycle to Associated contacts Lifecycle.

[corbin-ecm]

Hi, it's Corbin again (now with a new company). The problem with the solution proposed by jonnoprice is that clearing the lifecycle stage resets the dates that are used by HubSpot for historic reporting. The issue raised by JonathanM is that most don't want to lose that data for reporting purposes. Ideally, HubSpot would use its own property history values to build reports over time but as long as it relies upon "became a lead date", "became a marketing qualified lead date", etc. then this will remain an issue.  

[Phisher]

My reply to this is idea is that I am flabbergasted that this issue, impacting so many users, has been in exsistance for all this time and Hubspot has done nothing to rectify it. Essentially, this issue means that Hubspot is not a viable solution for any company that has churn (SaaS, PaaS, DbaaS, mobile service, publications, training, thousands more).