How to exclude some contacts from becoming leads?

[PAtlan]

I have two main types of contacts: one are "normal" clients, and the other are freelancers we work with. They are differentiated using a custom property with two values. ("Type Contact" can be "Expert" or "Client")

I'm starting to introduce the new "Prospection" tool to my sales team, but I need to make sure that NO "Expert" type contacts get pulled in as leads.

For now, my workaround is that my "Expert" contact get immediately assigned a Lifecycle phase of "Expert" which is at the end of the Lifecycle, so they never become "Prospects" .

Unfortunately, it seems that "Experts" who fill in a form on our website get pulled in as leads regardless of the lifecycle stage. Is there anyway to remove them automatically (maybe through a workflow?)

Thanks!

[PAtlan]

Hi Karsten (seriously, when do you sleep!),

I'm sorry if my terminology is a bit vague. My contacts have a lifecycle (New / Prospect / Qualified Prospect/ Client / Expert / Other) . And from this lifecycle I pull leads by default from the Prospect stage. 

Expert is near the end so that when I create a contact that is an Expert, they immediately go to that stage and hence DON'T get pulled in as prospects. 

But it seems (maybe i'm wrong) that contacts which exhibit activity such as filling a form on a website get pulled in as leads regardless of their lifecycle. 

I may misunderstand the process 🙂

[karstenkoehler]

---

@PAtlan wrote:

Hi Karsten (seriously, when do you sleep!),

---

👀

What do you mean when you say "get pulled in as leads"? Which HubSpot tool are you looking at? Can you share a screenshot?

[PAtlan]

Here are a few screenshots to show what I mean: 

 I've set up my CRM to pull in leads from the "Contact Potentiel" lifecycle stage of contacts.

 when a contact reaches that stage, they become a lead. BUT - other contacts ALSO become leads when - for example - they fill in a form on our website. This is suboptimal because some of these contacts fill in a form but are NOT clients ... (they have the type Expert)

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

---

@PAtlan wrote:
For now, my workaround is that my "Expert" contact get immediately assigned a Lifecycle phase of "Expert" which is at the end of the Lifecycle, so they never become "Prospects" .

---

How exactly is this happening? If a workflow is doing this, then the prospecting tool is very likely faster than your workflow. That's why the leads are being generated.

If you don't want this, you would have to switch off the prospecting tool setting that automatically pulls in leads.

Instead, you would create a contact-based workflow that creates a lead ('Create record' workflow action) after a short delay of 1-2 minutes.

This time would be enough for your 'Expert' workflow to run. Your new workflow that creates the lead could exclude all contacts with lifecycle stage 'Expert'.

[PAtlan]

AH! yes - 

I'm starting to understand that a Lead is a new type of record, not just a "status" for a Contact. So yes, your way of looking at it makes perfect sense. 

I'm going to play with this for a minute. Thanks so much for the insight.

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @PAtlan,

Just to confirm, you have contacts with lifecycle stage 'Experts' (a stage that is after 'Lead') and those contacts, when submitting a form, are set back to lifecycle stage 'Lead'?

Or does this mean that you see these contacts in a list, filtered view etc where you wouldn't like to see them?

---

@PAtlan wrote:

Unfortunately, it seems that "Experts" who fill in a form on our website get pulled in as leads regardless of the lifecycle stage.

---

Best regards