How to create a cyclic lead process? Or make contacts who become active become open again

[Wiebke]

Hei, I was searching the forum but couldn't really find an answer and I hope someone could share their best practice here. I am looking at our lead process. It all starts pretty clear:

Contact becomes active - gathers points - eventually MQL/SQL and lead status open. Cool.

Sales calls and in the call the person says they are not interested at the moment.

At this point I am stuck. In the past we had (in a different system) a rather complex set-up that would set the score to 0 (we had a formula and custom properties) when the status changes to nurture. But I feel that wasn't the most clean solution.

The question is: What to do with contacts who don't want anything now but might become active later. How could we get them open again? And not just after one action but similar to what happens with the scoring? Or maybe there is a whole different way that I am not seeing. 

[Bryantworks · Accepted solution]

Hey @Wiebke, 

I've done this with a few different solutions based on the contact and on the deal.  Both can be automated or just be trained with your team.

The first is training, teach the team to mark their lead stats as a "Not right now" or something similar, then set a task to followup in X days.

The second is automation, if on a contact I created a "Followup in" property where a user picks a set range (30, 60, 90 days).  A workflow picks that up and gives the owner a task to followup with that contact in that time period.  The same goes for a deal, if a deal sits in a "Not right now" stage, the user is required to put in a followup period of the 30, 60, 90 days which does the same as the contact workflow.

Hope this helps!

[JPullan]

Hi @Bryantworks ,

Just have a follow-up question building on your suggestion here.

Is it possible to prevent Lifecycle stages happening in HS in the follow-up period by the Sales rep?

I'm working on the Lead recycling process (working across Salesforce and HubSpot) and am trying to figure out how, once a Sales rep hits 'Not Right Now' and sets a timeframe to next engage with a Lead how marketing can prevent the Lead from re-qualifying and popping up before that period has lapsed if that Lead responds to further marketing content.

Currently using Lead Scoring to drive MQL status which triggers the handover to Sales.

Really appreciate your thoughts.

[Bryantworks]

Hey @JPullan, 

Good thoughts here, what I would do is add a tag or another field that is set via workflow when a Lead Status is equal to "Not Right Now", say "Delay from Remarketing" and make that a Single Checkbox.  So you'd have a workflow that does the following:

1. Lead Status = Not Right Now

2. Set "Delay from Remarketing" to "Yes"

3. Delay X days

4. Clear property "Delay from Remarketing"

Then adjust your lead scoring to give anyone with "Delay from Remarketing" as a "Yes" to be some large negative number so they won't qualify for an MQL notification.

Would this work?

[JPullan]

Hi Chris,  thanks so much. Makes sense.

[maggiebutler]

@Bryantworks this was really helpful advice. Do you have a template that you use, or a formalized / documented process to creating this lead process? How do you do documentation on this at your company?

I'm starting a new community board this week for operations folks and this would be a great topic to discuss or thing to share; I'm looking for thought leaders with ideas like yours. Please, let me know if this interests you! I'd love to tell you more. 

[Bryantworks]

Hey @maggiebutler,

Certainly interested!  I don't have a document to link this for my own company as I do this sort of operations/admin work for several other clients/users.  Generally, I live in the word of GDocs or GSheets for this work with other clients.  Happy to hop on a call to discuss (or I could drum up a quick GDoc for use case)!

[maggiebutler]

@Bryantworks I woudl love to chat. I have a cool idea for the Gdoc/Gsheet and maybe you think it's cool, too! My email is mbutler@hubspot.com, please shoot me a note or message me on here so we can connect - thank you, looking forward to it!

[Wiebke]

Hi, thanks for the answer. It's a really good idea. The case I was looking for if in the phone call there is no real conclusion as when to follow up. The use case I am out is slightly different. 

We want to somehow highlight those who were MQL, but they weren't looking for a solution. And then say 6 months later they become active, sign up to webinars, cruise the website and then I want that they almost become 'open' again. Just like they do the first time via lead scoring.