Setting up a sales pipeline in HubSpot is crucial for tracking the progress of deals through each stage of your sales process. This blog post, part of my comprehensive HubSpot setup guide, will walk you through how to create and customize your sales pipeline to align with your business processes. By the end of this post, you'll understand the key components of a sales pipeline, how to set it up, and how to manage it effectively.
What is a HubSpot Sales Pipeline?
The HubSpot sales pipeline is a tool that helps you track deals as they move through the stages of your sales process. When an opportunity arises with a lead, a deal is created, and the stages of your deal pipeline provide a global view of each opportunity, including the next steps with the prospect and the financial forecast of your activities.
There are two main views for displaying these deals:
- List View: Similar to the contact or company pages, providing a straightforward list format.
- Pipeline View: Offers a more detailed and visual representation of where each deal stands.
Setting up your sales pipeline is one of the most crucial customization aspects of your HubSpot portal. Each business is unique, and HubSpot’s flexibility allows you to tailor the pipeline to fit your specific sales processes.
How to Set Up Your Sales Pipeline
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Navigate to Pipeline Settings:
- Go to the settings icon in your HubSpot portal, then navigate to Data Management > Objects > Deals. From there, click on the Pipelines tab.
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Creating Multiple Pipelines:
- If your business offers multiple products or services, each with a different sales process, it’s beneficial to create multiple sales pipelines. For example, if your company sells weight loss products to both B2B and B2C markets, you should create separate pipelines for each market. This helps in tailoring the sales process to the specific needs of each target group.
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Customizing Pipeline Stages:
- The first step in customization is defining the stages of your sales process. Each stage should reflect a step in your buyer's journey. For example:
- New Deal: When a new opportunity is identified.
- Quote Sent: A quote has been sent to the prospect.
- Quote Signed: The prospect has signed the quote.
- Closed Won: The deal is successfully closed.
- Closed Lost: The deal did not close successfully.
You can rename these stages to match your sales process terminology and delete any unnecessary stages.
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Setting Deal Probabilities:
- Each stage can have a probability percentage assigned, which reflects the likelihood of closing the deal. This feature is useful for financial forecasting, as it helps you project potential revenue. For example, if a deal in the "Quote Sent" stage has a 40% chance of closing and is worth $10,000, the weighted forecast would be $4,000.
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Saving Your Pipeline Configuration:
- After setting up your stages and probabilities, click Save to ensure your configurations are applied.
Automations and Task Management within Pipelines
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Setting Up Automations:
- While full automation capabilities are available in HubSpot’s Pro and Enterprise tiers, the Starter package allows for basic automation like task creation and sending emails. Automations can be triggered when a deal moves to a new stage. For example, when a deal is created, you can automatically assign a task to the deal owner to send a quote.
How to Set Up a Task Automation:
- Go to the pipeline settings, click on the Automate button, and select the stage where you want the automation to trigger.
- Choose Create Task. For instance, if the task is to send a quote, name it accordingly, set it as a to-do, and assign it to the deal owner.
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Managing Stage Changes:
- Deals can move between stages either manually or through workflows. Manual changes involve dragging and dropping deals from one stage to another, which can be done after a call or meeting. This flexibility allows sales teams to update the pipeline in real-time based on the latest interactions with the prospect.
Conclusion
Setting up and customizing your HubSpot sales pipeline is essential for accurately tracking the progression of deals and forecasting revenue. By defining clear stages, setting appropriate deal probabilities, and leveraging automations, you can streamline your sales process and ensure that all team members have a consistent and clear view of ongoing opportunities.
Remember, your sales pipeline should evolve as your business grows and changes. Regularly review and adjust your pipeline stages and automations to reflect your current business realities. Stay tuned for more detailed posts in our HubSpot setup guide, where we will delve deeper into other key aspects of leveraging HubSpot to its full potential.