Create Deals & Sales Pipelines in HubSpot CRM

Previously, we introduced and discussed how to design a sales pipelines. This post illustrates how to attach each sale to 1) a deal and 2) a sales pipeline in HubSpot CRM. For instance, your prospects-turned-'deal opportunities' Jack and Jill show express buying intent for your products X and Y respectively and partners Peter and Paul (repeat customers) have just just called about more of your product X, you may associate the following elements. Notice that you can attach multiple contacts to a single deal. Additionally, since all activities with a contact are not necessarily associated with a specific deal, the association must be made manually for each new activity (email, logged calls, etc). Additionally, be reminded that although attached, deals and contact records are still viewed separately. After all, an individual attached to a company and that company's deal may have other activities that are unrelated to that deal, like emails about personal log in issues, other deals and so on. Consequently, keep this in mind when associating activities.

• Jack: 
• Deal named 'X Jack '
• 'A sales pipeline' (for regular customers) 
• Jack's individual contact record
• Jill: 
• Deal named 'Y Jill' 
• 'A sales pipeline' (for regular customers)
• Jill's individual contact record
• Both Peter and Paul: 
• Deal named 'X Peter-Paul'
• 'Renewal sales pipeline' (for repeat customers of product X. Create new pipelines for each unique scenario for which the sales process and, in turn, the sales pipeline differs). 
• Peter's individual contact record
• Paul's individual contact record

This post illustrates how you may do this. However, note that, the free version of the HubSpot CRM allows you to create only 1 sales pipeline. 

To create (or edit) a sales pipeline (or ie deal stages)

• decide on the sales process for a product or service.
• In your HubSpot account, click the settings icon (that looks like a gear wheel) settings in the main navigation bar.
• In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Sales > Deals.
• Scroll down to the 'Deal Pipelines and Stages' section. 
• Using the buttons available in this section, create, delete or edit sales pipelines.
• (For more details on customizing the default sales pipeline, see HubSpot's illustration)

To create a deal 

• Be prepared to create a deal whenever a qualified lead or prospect takes an action that could lead to revenue, like booking a meeting to discuss your product or service.

In your HubSpot account,  click 'Deals' (in the main navigation menu). 

• Click 'Create deal' (in the upper right-hand corner).

• Enter deal details. 
• Enter a descriptive name. I usually use client rank, name and product (which is unlike personal contact records that always start with the first name). If my products involves a sequential components which a client can choose as the entry product, I select the entry product. So if there are other components afterwards, I put a '+'. In short, you can be creative in ways that add value to your ability to understand your clients. Example: 'TCP Peter - Service X+'. In this case, I have not only qualified the prospect but also ranked him as having my target customer profile (TCP). Since hubSpot's deal 'board' displays the names and thumbnail image for each deal when viewing an entire sales pipeline, this type of name gives a lot of quick insight.
  
• Notice in the image immediately above that you are allowed to select from all of the available sales pipelines in a drop down menu.
• Close date relates to when you closed or expect to close the deal.
• Scroll down to the 'Contact' and or 'Company' drop down menu to associate pre-existing contacts to the deal. You may even create a new contact from here.
• Attach previous activity, preferably before doing activities. NB. When you create a new deal and associate existing contacts (and companies) with it, previous activities logged on the contact(s) (and companies) will NOT automatically appear on the deal record. However, you can edit the associations for existing activities that you'd like to see on the deal record from individual contact or company accounts. Associating activities with deals appear to be possible almost only for new activities and not activities that occurred prior to connect a deal and contact.
• Contacts (in top menu)
• Contacts
• Click on the contact
• Within the contact's account, click the tab for the activity you are about to do. As pictured below, a 'new note' was selected in this illustration.
• Click the 'add a deal' link. Once you begin to enter the details (in this case, typing the new note), the link 'add a deal' option will occur as highlighted below.
• Select the deal from within the drop down menu.
  

To control what agents / virtual assistants see
You can not only 1) limit access of your agents to deals in which (s)he is involved but also 2) specific data fields within such deal. 

To do step 1, the new agent's permissions are established and then an invitation is sent for him / her to become a 'user' (and not a 'contact') so that you can find him or her in your 'teams & users' list (not contact list). Afterwards, you can connect that agent to the specific deal and specifics of the deal. Here are the steps.

• Settings
• Users & Teams
• Select 'Create User'
• Type in the agent's email address and set the permissions accordingly. Specifically, allow 'owned only' which allows the user to see details of deals to which they are specifically assigned.
• Follow the instructions to send an invitation to the new user.

 

NB. The following steps automatically allows the new user access to see and track activity associated with assigned deals. You will therefore not need to manually create other settings to this end. 

• When the new user has accepted the invitation, go into Deals
• Select the specific deal to be affected
• In 'Contacts' (in the far right section on a desktop), select 'add a contact'
• Type in the name or email address of the new user. It should appear if the invitation has been accepted.
• Select the contact. You should see the names of all the users associated with the particular deal listed in an adjacent column
• Save

To complete step 2, ie limit what new users see for each contact's records, ....

• Settings
• Sales
• Deals
• Select each of the following 'Manage' options, the first of which is highlighted in the image immediately below.

In the following example, assistants can only see the 4 fields (aka 'properties') listed in the right column.

CONTENT RELATED TO CREATING DEALS AND SALES PIPELINES IN HUBSPOT CRM

• Intro to Deals and their Stages (aka Sales Pipelines)
• Associate deals with individual contacts (and or companies) as soon as possible, preferably before any activities associated with a deal. Most activities done before making the association can NOT become associated with the deal afterwards. As shown above, only activities that occur after the association can be easily added to the deal (while logging them).