How are people managing outreach activity?

[gotmike]

I understand that HubSpot CRM was built for the "inbound" world, but given the growth of the product over the past few years, it seems like it can be used for outbound prospecting more easily than in the early days.

I'm curious how people are using it for this effort. I'm thinking of a separate deal pipeline for outbound prospecting with deal stages like: targeted, reached out, contact made, meeting set, meeting complete, follow-up.

But then (theoretically) you will end up with a ton of people in the "Follow-up" stage and what's the best way to manage some huge number? Should this stage be broken up into monthly, quarterly, annual?

Another question is whether these should be "deals" at all? Should I be building contact lists for this instead? And if so, what properties are best to use for tracking these efforts.

Just looking for some ideas here as we add to our sales and marketing efforts on the HubSpot platform.

[Connorj13]

Mostly Sales Pro, but I heard Salesloft has a HubSpot connection coming soon. 

[CJ_24K]

This is something we've come across recently too. Partly out of a drive to more efficiently manage outbound & inbound activities in one place. We don't use deals and pipelines for initial outreach though. What we've found works well so far is creating contact views (and lists) based on a custom 'Outbound' or 'SDR' property flag - then using prospect lifecycle stages to manage conversations, up until there is an active opportunity, at which point we create a deal in one of our existing pipelines.

This gives us measures like volume of deals created, average SDR flagged deal close rate and average SDR deal value to base performance metrics from.

One thing we have been struggling with is whether to treat outbound contacts as a 'part' of the database or transitory. Currently we treat these as transitory, removing from the CRM after 6 months of inactivity. This seems to encourage our sales reps to actively keep  conversations alive and more actively work towards engagement.

[jSharma43]

Grand total

[AlexandruEnache]

Hi Mike, 

I would not encourage you to use a pipeline for your outbound prospecting efforts, but a clear way to segment the leads that are engaged by your outbound team. A great idea is to add a custom lead source and include the option 'Outbound Prospecting'. 

Then you might want to consider adding a lead status option for these contacts, such as 'SDR Owned Contact' or 'Outbound Contact'. Once a meeting is generated for these segmented contacts, it might make sense to have 'Meeting Scheduled' as the first stage of your sales pipeline. Because of the lead source you've set up before, you can now track the meetings and revenue resulted from prospecting. 

I hope this helps! 

[jSharma43]

Good

[JVasquezCabez]

Actually, it should no be set up with deals. Its recommended to use contact records in a specific  Lifecycle stage and asigned to prospecting reps. There is an upcoming launch of a feature that allows custome lifecycle stages: https://developers.hubspot.com/changelog/upcoming-customized-lifecycle-stages-for-contacts-and-compa...

[jSharma43]

1. Great
2. Good condition

[Ruthy]

Customer outreach is always about making sure that clients know the products that we offer to them and give ideas on how the products will benefit them.

[gotmike]

yes i know, this was more about finding out "how" other users are working within hubspot to manage the process.

[CSam1]

A lot of things change due to Covid. Reaching out to clients have been challenging. Still companies try to call clients and give them opportunities to grow their business 

[gotmike]

understood. again, this was more about how to use the software.

[CSam1]

Customer outreach is always about making sure that clients know the products that we offer and give them ideas on how the products will benefit them.

[RFDMSolutions]

Hello @gotmike, 

One thing we have helped with clients with who were looking for support in their sales process is to create a separate lead generation pipeline for your Leads, MQLs and SALs. So you can see how you are progressing with outbound efforts. We also create customized list views in Contacts to highlight their engagement and categorize them as needed for campaigns. Then we create custom reports and dashboards to help break down the lead management reporting. We also want to ensure proper visibility for marketing and sales teams. 

Happy to chat more in detail if you like. 

[gotmike]

yes, so we are trying this route for now, b/c we like the "board view" that you get with deals and stages. the problem with lifecycle stages is that you don't really get this view as far as i can tell, so it's not as intuitive that you are moving them "down the path" so to speak. deal view makes perfect sense,  but it is kindof annoying to have to create ANOTHER record just to track basic prospecting and outreach.

custom list views are also nice, but it can get awfully cluttered awfully easily IMHO.

[Josh]

Hi @gotmike,

While inbound is at the core of HubSpot, I don't believe the CRM was built only to support inbound leads. There are a ton of features that support outreach activity. Here are my favorites:

• Use Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status together
  • You might have an MQL that you've attempted to contact but haven't heard a response
• Combine the above with reports
  • Last activity report
    • All MQLs with Attempted to Contact status in which the last activity was...
  • Vary these reports around the cadence of outreach for your team
• Use tasks for follow-up
• Use sequences with a mix of outreach styles (email, phone, LinkedIn, etc.)
  • Don't allow it to skip a stage if one of the tasks is incomplete
• Use the Targeting (ABM) tool
• Create rep activity reports tracking outreach
• Use custom-properties for other elements you need to track for outreach, but don't overdo it - too many properties can become a burden for reps to complete, especially for high volume prospecting

I don't typically advise creating a deal for early-stage prospecting. In this stage, there will be a high amount of failure, which should be anticipated. Creating a deal for this type of activity is usually extra work and something extra to manage. I typically would advise to create a deal when something becomes an actual opportunity. You've connected with the prospect, they have something they want to solve, there is potential that you can help them solve this problem.

There are certainly more aspects built for prospecting. I'm looking forward to seeing other input here as well!

Josh
 

[gotmike]

---

I don't typically advise creating a deal for early-stage prospecting. In this stage, there will be a high amount of failure, which should be anticipated. Creating a deal for this type of activity is usually extra work and something extra to manage. I typically would advise to create a deal when something becomes an actual opportunity. You've connected with the prospect, they have something they want to solve, there is potential that you can help them solve this problem. 

---

@Josh -- so what type of workflow do you have here? like how do u filter/focus on the correct prospects? is this a contact view you are using?

[Josh]

Hi @gotmike,

To filter/focus on the correct prospects I would use a combination of reports and active lists that pull the right contacts based on last engagement. The Dashboard would be "home base" as it can pull all of this into one spot as well as tasks.

To get a more granular focus on filter/focus I would use lead scoring.

Josh 

[gotmike]

i guess i was kindof thinking maybe it makes sense to attach a bunch of contacts or companies to a single deal with a combined strategy? like "contact investors in chicago" or "set meetings with LA conference attendees" and then add 50 targets to that deal, and then if/when one needs to move to the next level, i can move them into their own deal. i feel like this may make the email tracking weird though? dunno. or maybe it's good b/c u really do get a feel for where they came from?

[gotmike]

here's an example... the Lifecycle Stage of a contact starts at Subscriber, then goes to Lead and then to MQL. technically, someone i'm reaching out to is QUALIFIED, but they really aren't a LEAD per-se, at least not in the early stages. so i'm curious how to use a field like this. seems like someone must have a best practices guide or at least some helpful hints on how to work these early pre-lead stages while prospecting.

[Josh]

Hi @gotmike, 

I think the difference here is your definition of MQL vs Lead. Lead is before MQL. The step you are referring to would be SQL. 

It might be helpful to talk through this if you're open to it. Here's a calendar link.

Josh