Sales Pipeline Strategy For Rescheduled Appointments

[hubspothopper]

Hi - I am setting up our first full pipeline and a couple strategic questions:

1. I assume the goal is to setup a pipeline that is linear in so much that all prospects move sequentially through each step? 

(vs a pipeline organizing lots of different options within the pipleline, were prospects jump around)

2. How then do you organize Rescheduled Appt or no show? 

For example, here is the pipeline I am considering:

• Connect
• Appointment scheduled
• Appointment completed
• Follow Up Scheduled
• Follow Up Completed
• Won
• Lost (never contact again)
• Lost (longterm nurture)

Should I create another deal stage for Reschedule Appointment? 

Thank you! As I know this is a bit of a nuanced/philisophical question on pipeline structure, and so interested in your thoughts and experience 👍

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @hubspothopper,

Customizing your pipeline as you described works perfectly well. If it makes forecasting more meaningful, I don't see any reasons why you shouldn't do it.

Best regards!

[hubspothopper]

Hi Karsten, 

And one question is, it seems that for deal closing forecasting I need these 3 steps:

Appointment Completed - as really this means appointment conducted by no follow up scheduled, which is a much lower close rate

Follow Up Scheduled - higher close rate

Follow Up Completed - highest close rate as stage just before closing

And so the Appt Completed stage is really the bucket for everyone not progressing to the next stage.

Does this make sense?

Thank you! 

[hubspothopper]

Amazing feedback Karsten 👍.

You're a rock star 😉

Let me work this through and I'll update with any progress.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @hubspothopper,

Welcome to the HubSpot Community!

---

@hubspothopper wrote:

the goal is to setup a pipeline that is linear in so much that all prospects move sequentially through each step? 

---

I would agree with that. Eventually, it comes down to personal preference: You can make a lot of things work in HubSpot. Some work better, some worse.

Looking at your pipeline, I'd remove the "completed" stages – or rename them to better fit the tasks associated with this phase. If the only purpose of the "Appointment completed" stage is to document that the appointment is completed, you could also skip that phase and move a deal to "Follow-up scheduled" directly. If a deal is in the next phase, it must've completed the previous one by definition.

Let's look at HubSpot's default stages:

Appointment scheduled (20%)

Qualified to buy (40%)

Presentation scheduled (60%)

Decision maker bought-in (80%)

Contract sent (90%)

Closed won (100% Won)

Closed lost (0% Lost)

There aren't any stages for completion. Moving a deal to the next stage is synonymous with the completion of the previous stage.

Regarding your question on how to keep track of rescheduled meetings; this is what call outcomes and tasks were made for. Of course you could use deal stages for this but it would make meaningful reporting almost impossible since not all deals move through these stages.

Similarly, I wouldn't create two "Deal lost" phases. Whether someone does not want to hear from you ever again (and wants to be opted out or have his personal data deleted entirely and immediately) or is eligible for nurturing can be determined looking at the Closed lost reason, for example. On a contact-level, there is the property Lead status which can be customized and is very useful for this. Deals with a Closed lost reason of "Bad timing", "No budget" etc., could be enrolled in a deal-based workflow that creates follow-up tasks one or two years later or marks the associated contacts for nurturing.

Hope this helps!