How to fix mistakes for sales reps Not Following up correctly + Deals Pipeline?

[PMelkonian]

Silly (long winded) 2 part question:

In my line of work, telco sales, a customer is never really closed lost, more like a 'no for now' situation.

They could just not be ready, busy, contract is too far out, in which case we contact them again in X months. Alternatively, the resign with their current carrier or competition, but we'll contact them again in Y months, same as previous example except it's a couple of years instead of a couple of months.

Let's say a sales rep in a sales cycle with a prospect which doesn't proceed. What are the best practices to make sure we follow up with them in either:

- A few months if it's just not the right time
- In a few years, resigned with the incumbent.

How we've currently been doing it is:

- Ask everyone to create a task to follow up at the right time. Here's the problem. Sometimes the reps just don't do it, forget to do it, or they're not strong reps and get let go etc. Bottom line, I want to mitigate this as much as possible to not let future leads slip throug the cracks.

Which leads me to part 2 of the question:

- To combat reps making mistakes (sort of), any time a customer fits any of the above contact in future scenarios (not the right time, contract, incumbent etc.), I have them move the opportunity in the sales funnel to ‘Lead’. This way we have some sort of way to say ‘ok this prospect isn’t with us yet’ and truthfully, it’s to mitigate the chance that a rep didn’t assign a task to follow up in the future. The obvious problem with this is my deals funnel is a disaster. HUGE amount of companies in the ‘lead’ stage with the rest of the funnel as well.

What’s the best way to limit the damage from sales rep error, in order for us to NOT miss out on great opportunities for future sales?

Also, if I’m reading into the way the pipeline is supposed to be used correctly. ONLY deals that are currently in-flight should be there right? For example, deals that we’ve recently contacted and are hearing us out with an expected 30-90 day close?

I’m assuming I should NOT have future opportunities/leads that may be interested down the line but could be months/years away from becoming a paying customer? Where do I store these to make sure we don't miss out?

[KlemenHrovat · Accepted solution]

@PMelkonian great question. 

In my experience, creating a task in HubSpot as well does not guarantee a timely follow up, especially when this is a long term follow up with a "closed lost" deal. These are typically perceived as low probability by sales reps, who simply prioritize the recent and active communication. But I agree there is a huge potential to follow up on the communication, especially if it was not a hard NO as you mentioned. 

To mitigate the fact that reps just don't do it, we started developing Sellestial, the best follow-up system on top of HubSpot. We developed it to prevent missing any sales opportunities and make it super easy and effortless for the rep to stay on top of each and every one. Happy to chat over Zoom to see if that could also help you. Here is my scheduling link: https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/klemen-hrovat/meeting30

In your concrete case, did you think of creating a "fake" pipeline, where you would create a Lead deal for the one that is closed lost but matches the criteria you described? That way, you can keep your primary pipeline clean.

For us, I close lost deals, follow up with them, and if I manage to reengage them after, let's say, 90 days, I would open a new deal. In that way, the sales cycle is more accurate. 

[jforte · Accepted solution]

Hey @PMelkonian nice challenge here!!

A lot of the answers here will be "it depends" it will be up too you and your company to set the framework that best fits your reporting needs but anyway here's my suggestion.

Things to solve:
1. Be sure no lead is forgotten;
2. Set the best prospect journey framework;

1. Be sure no lead is forgotten:

[1.1] First conversion: Here I suggest you to use sequences and a property to track the status of prospects on this "stage" (qualified, qualifying, unqualified, dormant).

Everytime a prospect raises their hands you'll set an MQL Date stamp and change the status to qualifying and enrolling on a qualification sequence that will be sent to a specific SDR.

On that qualification sequence the SDR will have several tasks and it needs to end up on 1 of this status.
- Qualified (SQL) if they are able to qualify them (automatically set when the SDR sets the SQL date)
- Unqualified if it's a trashy email or any other reason that will reject that prospect (manually set by the SDR)
- Dormant when the SDR is not able to reach the prospect (automatically set when the sequence ends without success).

As soon a prospects has dormant as their status another workflow should set a future task - on the date of that future tasks the prospect should pass from Dormant to Qualifying.

[1.2] Cold Deal:
Now let's imagine that the prospect was actually qualified, passed to an AE and had a deal created but than got out because was desengaged, it was not the right time or selected other vendor.

The deal should be set as lost, one of those categories should be selected and the prospect should pass to dormant. Than depending on the lost category it should set a closer or longer date to try to re-engage.

[Extra] Pro Tip:
If a a dormant prospect re-engages with your brand on a way you know it shows high buying intent (like going back to your pricing, integrations or features page several times) your workflows should ignore the future date and alert the SDRs to reach that prospect ASAP.

2. Set the best prospect journey framework:

[2.1] Your framework:
Ok on this example, similar to what you've mentioned we are saying that a prospect can have several buying cycles and that is a mess to track.

My advice would be to work on a attribution model that only allows 1 MQL and 1 SQL moment but than could have several sales cycles with diferent end points.

i.e: John asked for a demo in Jan 2023 (MQL Date: Jan 2023), was qualified within the sequence (SQL Date: Jan 2023) and a deal was created and handoff to an AE. The sales didn't went through since we selected other vendor - deal was set as lost (Closed Lost Date: March 2023) a task to re-activate this prospect was set to Sep 2023 but in the meantime John showed high intent behaviour - your SDR got an alert and reached him. John's company is now a customer.

On your reports you will be able to see that an MQL/SQL converted from channel X had their first sales cycle in Jan 2023 but didn't went though, than it had a second sales cycle and closed.

This way you'll be able to attribute the deal to the right channel, have the real deal velocity (from first conversion) and understand in average how many sales cycle each one of your prospects needs to have to become a customer.

As said at the beginning a lot of what you asked depends on how you want to manage your pipeline but I hope this fits your needs 🙂

[AllanFormigoni · Accepted solution]

A lot of great suggestions here, but also adding my two cents. Here’s a two-part framework we’ve seen work well:

1. Don’t let reps be the system

a) Asking reps to create tasks is hit-or-miss, as you noted.

Instead use HubSpot workflows to auto-create future tasks or reminders based on deal stage and close reason. For example:

• If “close Lost – timing” → delay a task 90 days for SDR re-outreach.
• If “chose competitor" → delay it 9 months and include a property to track the incumbent contract's expected end.

b) Use custom properties to track follow-up intent

e.g., “re-engage date”, “follow-up reason” or even a dropdown with preset re-engagement windows. This adds structure and visibility for managers.

c) Leverage intent triggers

If your site has decent traffic, set up workflows to alert reps when a closed-lost contact revisits pricing or integration pages for example.

2. Treat the pipeline as “active selling only”

You’re right: your pipeline should reflect in-flight deals only. Everything else muddies reporting and burns AE brainpower. Instead, you can create a “re-engage” pipeline (or lead queue) outside your primary sales pipeline. This gives you:

• A way to hold “not now” accounts with a plan for later
• Clean forecasting and deal velocity reporting
• A shared backlog of warm future opps for new reps or SDRs to work

If you want to go even further: tools like Arrows let you create deal-specific follow-up pages (sales rooms) inside HubSpot. You can auto-fill them with call notes, collateral, and next steps and even get alerts when your old contacts re-engage months later. It takes the human error out of “set it and forget it.”

Happy to share more if helpful, but sounds like you’ve already got a great handle on where the gaps are.

Allan @ Arrows

Learn more about generating one-click follow-ups from your HubSpot deals →

[Jaycee_Lewis]

This is gold @AllanFormigoni! Thank you 🙌 

[jforte · Accepted solution]

Hey @PMelkonian nice challenge here!!

A lot of the answers here will be "it depends" it will be up too you and your company to set the framework that best fits your reporting needs but anyway here's my suggestion.

Things to solve:
1. Be sure no lead is forgotten;
2. Set the best prospect journey framework;

1. Be sure no lead is forgotten:

[1.1] First conversion: Here I suggest you to use sequences and a property to track the status of prospects on this "stage" (qualified, qualifying, unqualified, dormant).

Everytime a prospect raises their hands you'll set an MQL Date stamp and change the status to qualifying and enrolling on a qualification sequence that will be sent to a specific SDR.

On that qualification sequence the SDR will have several tasks and it needs to end up on 1 of this status.
- Qualified (SQL) if they are able to qualify them (automatically set when the SDR sets the SQL date)
- Unqualified if it's a trashy email or any other reason that will reject that prospect (manually set by the SDR)
- Dormant when the SDR is not able to reach the prospect (automatically set when the sequence ends without success).

As soon a prospects has dormant as their status another workflow should set a future task - on the date of that future tasks the prospect should pass from Dormant to Qualifying.

[1.2] Cold Deal:
Now let's imagine that the prospect was actually qualified, passed to an AE and had a deal created but than got out because was desengaged, it was not the right time or selected other vendor.

The deal should be set as lost, one of those categories should be selected and the prospect should pass to dormant. Than depending on the lost category it should set a closer or longer date to try to re-engage.

[Extra] Pro Tip:
If a a dormant prospect re-engages with your brand on a way you know it shows high buying intent (like going back to your pricing, integrations or features page several times) your workflows should ignore the future date and alert the SDRs to reach that prospect ASAP.

2. Set the best prospect journey framework:

[2.1] Your framework:
Ok on this example, similar to what you've mentioned we are saying that a prospect can have several buying cycles and that is a mess to track.

My advice would be to work on a attribution model that only allows 1 MQL and 1 SQL moment but than could have several sales cycles with diferent end points.

i.e: John asked for a demo in Jan 2023 (MQL Date: Jan 2023), was qualified within the sequence (SQL Date: Jan 2023) and a deal was created and handoff to an AE. The sales didn't went through since we selected other vendor - deal was set as lost (Closed Lost Date: March 2023) a task to re-activate this prospect was set to Sep 2023 but in the meantime John showed high intent behaviour - your SDR got an alert and reached him. John's company is now a customer.

On your reports you will be able to see that an MQL/SQL converted from channel X had their first sales cycle in Jan 2023 but didn't went though, than it had a second sales cycle and closed.

This way you'll be able to attribute the deal to the right channel, have the real deal velocity (from first conversion) and understand in average how many sales cycle each one of your prospects needs to have to become a customer.

As said at the beginning a lot of what you asked depends on how you want to manage your pipeline but I hope this fits your needs 🙂

[PMelkonian]

Holy smokes - thanks for the detailed answer! I'll have to read it over a few times, but super helpful 🙂

[KlemenHrovat · Accepted solution]

@PMelkonian great question. 

In my experience, creating a task in HubSpot as well does not guarantee a timely follow up, especially when this is a long term follow up with a "closed lost" deal. These are typically perceived as low probability by sales reps, who simply prioritize the recent and active communication. But I agree there is a huge potential to follow up on the communication, especially if it was not a hard NO as you mentioned. 

To mitigate the fact that reps just don't do it, we started developing Sellestial, the best follow-up system on top of HubSpot. We developed it to prevent missing any sales opportunities and make it super easy and effortless for the rep to stay on top of each and every one. Happy to chat over Zoom to see if that could also help you. Here is my scheduling link: https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/klemen-hrovat/meeting30

In your concrete case, did you think of creating a "fake" pipeline, where you would create a Lead deal for the one that is closed lost but matches the criteria you described? That way, you can keep your primary pipeline clean.

For us, I close lost deals, follow up with them, and if I manage to reengage them after, let's say, 90 days, I would open a new deal. In that way, the sales cycle is more accurate. 

[BérangèreL]

Hi @PMelkonian and welcome to the Community!
We are so glad to have you here!

Great detailed post and thanks for asking the Community!

I'd like to share these resources that might be of interest to you:

- The solution from @MFrankJohnson on this post "Best practice for follow up tasks"
- The solutions from @johnelmer, @Yeti_Mike, @loganrivenes on this post "MQL and sales follow up best practice"
- The solutions from @JessicaBaskey and @KlemenHrovat on this post "Managing 2000+ Monthly Leads: Looking for Your Best Tips to Streamline Prospecting"

Also, I'd love to ask our Top Experts to join this discussion: Hi @johnelmer, @JessicaBaskey and @TomM2 do you have additional tips and/or advice to share with @PMelkonian, please?

Thanks so much and have a brilliant day!

Best,
Bérangère