Handling Outbound and Inbound leads

[HeJoh]

Hello,

We are enthusiastic HubSpot users. Though, we experience some minor challenges with handling outbound leads. 

Is there any best practise to use and combine the lifecycle-stages/lead-status/deal-stages for Inbound AND Outbound leads?

For example: We have an outbound list of b2b-contacts that we contact via e-mail. This is the task of our sales reps. So, are those outbound leads already considered SQLs? (Even though they haven't shown any interest yet?) How should we handle the lead-status here since it is a sub-category of sales qualified leads? And what would you do if one of those outbound leads disqualify? Should we set the lifecycle-stage to "other" in this case since it's not considered a lead anymore?

And would you recommend setting up two different Deal pipelines for outbound and inbound leads?

Thanks a lot in advance and have a nice day!

Johannes

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @HeJoh,

Welcome to the HubSpot community!

First off, I would recommend not to create separate pipelines for inbound and outbound contacts. Pipelines begin when contacts are marked as an opportunity. As long as its the same sales process, it doesn't matter where they're coming from. You would only create different pipelines if the deal stages differ. (With different pipelines, you'd inevitably have a harder time reporting on your outcomes.) If at some point you want to compare deals by inbound/outbound, you could do so by looking at the Original source property of the deal.

Regarding your question whether outbound contacts should be marked as sales-qualified leads: I wouldn't say so. If you simply have the contact details but haven't contacted this lead before, they're simply a lead. You don't have an idea about fit (how well does our product fit their needs?) or intent (how interested are they in our product?). If, after a first call, those two things can be confirmed, you could mark that contact as a sales qualified lead (and update the Lead status) or if things go particularly well as an opportunity. The SQL phase makes sense in companies where outbound is done by BDRs or SDRs and, after some pre-qualification, handed over to more senior sales reps.

(One could of course argue that the fit could be confirmed or researched before the first call and hence marking the contact as SQL is justified. This really comes down to personal preference.)

How you deal with disqualified leads depends on the disqualification reason. You could use the Lead status property here and add an additional option "Disqualified". Additionally, I'd recommend a custom property Disqualification reason with defined options. (Free text is nice and all but you won't be able to run reports on that.) If the disqualification is due to bad timing or budget, the contact could stay a SQL and be followed-up with after some time. If the reason is however a bad fit, yes, I'd recommend setting the Lifecycle stage to "Other".

Hope this helps!

[07994]

Hello Karsten,

Thank you for your detailed answer! I have a few follow up questions:
1. You mentioned that if the disqualification's reason is a bad fit, you'd recommend setting the Lifecycle stage to "Other". Why not set it to "Unqualifies"?

2. In our company as you mentioned in your example, we have SDR emailing cold emails and cold calling leads and if the leads expresses intrestd the SDR schedules a demo with the BDR. At that point (prior to the demo call) would you mark that lead as MQL? 

3. If your answer to the above question is "yes", at the point the lead is marked as MQL, would you nurture this MQL with marketing emails? (sending webinar invited, blog posts etc?) .
4. In our startup we only send marketing emails to "Marketing contacts" so in this case, since the source of the email in offline (generated from Zoominfo), that MQL will be marked as "Non Marketing Contact". So in case you think it's beneficial to nurture this outbound MQL how would you recommend doing that? What is the best practise?
Than you so much!!!!
Sharon