by:
jbogaert
What is it?
HubSpot is adding a new object to Sales Hub called ‘Leads’. Leads transform how sellers can manage prospecting and qualification efforts for both inbound and outbound demand gen motions inside of HubSpot. Managing leads happens from the ‘leads’ tabs inside the prospecting workspace.
Note: Leads do NOT replace contacts. Instead, leads are secondary objects (like deals or tasks) that can be associated with contact and/or company records.
Why does it matter?
Prospecting reps have a hard job: they have to organize all the information about their assigned leads, figure out which ones to prioritize, execute excellent outreach, and remember which data in the CRM to update. Oh, and they have to do it all under the pressure of a monthly quota.
We heard from our customers that the default lead status contact property lacked depth and flexibility. By adding a leads object to HubSpot, prospecting reps can now organize, prioritize, and engage their leads efficiently all in one place. This leads to a more effective workflow, better connections with prospective customers, and ultimately more pipeline.
For managers and ops, managing and tracking leads inside HubSpot means better insight into sales process performance and lower data maintenance costs.
How does it work?
In the top navigation, go to ‘Sales’ and then ‘Prospecting’ to enter the prospecting workspace. Click on the second tab ‘Leads’ to access the new lead management tools.
Leads are a brand-new sales object (like tasks or deals). They don’t replace contacts, companies, or even lifecycle stages. Instead, just like deals, leads will always be associated with a contact and/or company. Leads signal the potential to sell to someone in the CRM. It allows sellers to easily keep track of their prospecting opportunities and efficiently manage all the activities needed to qualify them.
Leads set-up
If you haven’t set up leads in your portal yet, click on the “Start using leads” button. Lead records can be automatically created from contacts and companies based on their lifecycle stage. Carefully review your existing workflows and select a lifecycle stage that fits your sales process.
Note: We recommend that leads should be created when they are ready to be worked by sales; not before. For instance, if your marketing team hands off leads to your sales team, this should be after marketing considers them qualified (MQL).
Creating leads
Even though there is automation, you will still be able to create leads manually or through separate workflows (from any contact or company record). To add a lead manually, simply navigate to a contact record and click on ‘+add’ underneath the leads section on the right sidebar, or select one or more contacts on the overview page and click the ‘+create leads’ button that appears in the toolbar.
To create leads from workflows, add the action ‘Create record’ to your workflow and select ‘lead’ as the type of record. In addition to this, you are now also able to create lead-based workflows.
Because leads are an association, you can create multiple leads for one single contact or company record to track multiple qualification attempts over time or to signal their potential for different sales pipelines.
Note: Just like your tasks, the prospecting workspace will only display leads that are assigned to you.
Managing leads
When you click on a lead, you’ll notice a tracker that indicates how far along the lead is in the pre-sales/qualification pipeline.
There are four default lead stages: New, Attempted, Connected, and lastly Qualified or Disqualified. These stages come with built-in automation that moves leads from one stage to the next:
- Attempted: leads will move into this stage when the sales rep has tried to reach them either through email, phone, or another channel.
- Connected: leads will move into this stage when the lead has responded to the rep’s outreach either by responding or answering the call
- Qualified: to qualify a lead, manually set the lead stage to ‘qualified’ to let a deal creation panel appear that helps your reps seamlessly convert the prospect into pipeline.
- Disqualified: to disqualify a lead, manually set the lead stage to ‘disqualified’ to let a disqualification reason pop-up appear.
Note: In settings, you can customize the lead pipeline and create new stages, rename existing ones, and turn off the automatic deal creation panel, or disqualification requirements.
Lead reporting
To report on your leads, we have added a new out-of-the-box lead funnel report to sales analytics. Access this report by going to ‘Sales’ in the top navigation bar and click on ‘Sales Analytics’. Then look for the ‘lead funnel’ report under ‘Coach Reps & Teams’. You can also easily access it from inside the prospecting workspace. Simply go to the ‘Leads’ tab and click on ‘Actions’, then select ‘View lead funnel report’.
The new out-of-the-box lead reports offer deeper insights into how effectively your sales reps work their leads. Additionally, the lead journey report offers a more holistic view of your overall lead conversion rates and pipeline performance.
Note: by default, the lead journey reports will be based on lifecycle stages. You can replace these with the new lead stages by changing the filters in the right-hand sidebar.
Who gets it?
Lead management in the prospecting workspace is available on Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise to users with an assigned Sales Seat.
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