Master HubSpot Deal Properties

·
August 26, 2024
·
6
minutes
linkedin logotwitter logoyoutube logohubspot

HubSpot deal properties help you track crucial deal information and optimize your sales pipeline. This article breaks down the types of deal properties and how to use them for better sales management.

Key Takeaways

  • Optimizing HubSpot deal properties involves leveraging both default and custom properties to capture critical sales data, which enhances deal tracking and management within your CRM.
  • Setting up and managing deal stages in HubSpot is crucial for effective sales tracking, forecasting revenue, and identifying sales process bottlenecks to streamline the sales cycle.
  • Automating deal creation and management in HubSpot improves data consistency, reduces manual workload, and ensures timely deal progression, contributing to a more efficient sales process.

Understanding HubSpot Deal Properties

Illustration of sales opportunities

HubSpot deals are the lifeblood of any sales operation within the HubSpot Sales Hub and CRM Suite. They represent ongoing transactions that your sales team is actively pursuing with contacts or companies, providing a structured way to track revenue through the sales process. Deals can be associated with multiple elements such as:

  • Contacts
  • Companies
  • Engagements
  • Line items
  • Tickets

This creates a comprehensive view of each sales opportunity. As deals progress through various pipeline stages, they either culminate in a win or loss, offering invaluable insights into your sales funnel and overall performance.

To effectively manage these recurring revenue deal type, HubSpot offers two main types of deal properties: default and custom.

Default deal properties include:

  • Deal stage
  • Amount
  • Close date
  • Assigned owner
  • Deal description

These properties form the backbone of your deal management strategy, ensuring all critical information, including company currency, is captured and tracked consistently.

On the other hand, custom deal properties allow you to tailor the platform to meet your unique business needs, providing flexibility and precision in how you manage and analyze your sales data.

Default Deal Properties

Default deal properties are the foundational metrics that HubSpot provides to track and manage your deals effectively. These properties include key information such as:

  • Deal stage
  • Amount
  • Close date
  • Assigned owner

For instance, the ‘dealstage’ property is crucial as it helps you identify the current status of a deal within your sales pipeline. The ‘pipeline’ property is equally important, especially for businesses with multiple sales pipelines, as it ensures each deal is categorized correctly.

Additionally, properties like deal amount and close date are vital for forecasting revenue and planning sales strategies. The assigned owner property ensures that each deal has a dedicated person responsible for its progress, enhancing accountability and streamlining the sales process. Understanding and utilizing these default deal properties can significantly improve how you track and manage your deals, leading to better sales outcomes and more efficient processes. Keeping track of the most recent deal owner is also crucial for maintaining up-to-date information on deal progress.

Custom Deal Properties

While default deal properties provide essential metrics, custom deal properties offer the flexibility to tailor HubSpot to your specific business needs. HubSpot allows you to create custom properties through the CRM Object Properties API, enabling you to capture unique data points that are critical to your sales process. For example, you might create a custom property to track a specific sales metric or customer preference that isn’t covered by the default properties.

Managing custom deal properties is straightforward but requires attention to detail. Here are some key steps to follow:

  1. To delete a custom deal property, you must first archive it and then proceed with deletion.
  2. While each HubSpot record can have one selected owner using the default property, you can create custom user field type properties to assign additional users related to the record.
  3. This flexibility ensures that your deal management system is both comprehensive and adaptable to your unique requirements.

Utilizing HubSpot Deal Stages for Effective Tracking

Visual representation of sales funnel

HubSpot deal stages are pivotal for gaining complete visibility over every aspect of your sales funnel. They help visualize your sales process, predict revenue, and identify bottlenecks, making them essential for effective sales management.

Each deal stage in HubSpot has an associated probability that indicates the likelihood of closing deals in that stage, providing insights that are crucial for accurate forecasting. By customizing deal stages to reflect your specific sales processes, you can ensure that your tracking system aligns perfectly with your business needs.

Setting Up Deal Stages

Setting up deal stages in HubSpot involves the following steps:

  1. Create new pipelines that match your sales process to ensure that every deal can follow the correct stages and have the appropriate default settings.
  2. Navigate to Objects > Deals in the settings menu.
  3. Access the pipeline editor.
  4. Add or customize deal stages to fit your specific sales workflows.

Adding a deal stage is straightforward. Here’s how:

  1. Go to ‘Sales’ > ‘Deals’
  2. Click ‘+ Add a deal stage.’
  3. Define the stages that best represent your sales process, ensuring that each stage is clearly defined and appropriately labeled.

By setting up your deal stages thoughtfully, you create a structured pathway that guides your sales team through each phase of the sales cycle, from initial contact to closing the deal.

Editing and Managing Deal Stages

Editing and managing deal stages in HubSpot is crucial for maintaining an optimized sales process. You can adjust stage probabilities, close date automation, and other properties to ensure accuracy and efficiency. For instance, adjusting the close date automation can help maintain accurate timelines when deals move between stages. To edit an existing deal stage, click on the stage’s name and enter a new name in the text box. You can also delete a deal stage by hovering over it and selecting ‘Delete,’ but ensure that existing deals in that stage are moved beforehand.

Furthermore, HubSpot allows for the automation of deal creation and management processes through workflows and deal stage automations. This feature, available in Sales Hub Starter, Professional, or Enterprise subscriptions, enables you to automate actions like:

  • Creating tasks
  • Sending notifications
  • Updating deal properties
  • Changing deal stages

When a deal’s stage changes, it’s essential to be prepared for deal closing.

By managing deal stages effectively, you can streamline your sales process and improve overall efficiency.

Assigning and Managing Deal Owners

Illustration of deal ownership

Assigning and managing deal owners in HubSpot is vital for ensuring accountability and clear ownership of each deal. This practice not only improves the efficiency of your sales process but also provides a clear point of contact for each deal, enhancing communication and collaboration within your team.

By having a dedicated person responsible for each deal’s progress, you can ensure that no sales opportunity falls through the cracks.

Assigning Deal Owners

Assigning deal owners can be done individually or in bulk, depending on your needs. To assign a deal owner individually, navigate to the ‘Deals’ tab, fill out key information such as deal name and pipeline, and select an owner from the dropdown menu. This ensures that each deal has a dedicated person responsible for its progress, improving accountability and focus.

For bulk assignment, you can follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the record’s index page.
  2. Select the records you want to assign.
  3. Use the ‘Assign’ option.
  4. This can also be done from the CRM > Deals section by selecting the deals and choosing an owner from the dropdown menu.

Bulk assignment is particularly useful for large teams or when managing a high volume of deals, ensuring that all deals are appropriately assigned without manual intervention.

Reassigning Deals

Reassigning deals is crucial when there are changes in the sales team or structure. This process ensures that all active deals have responsible owners who can continue to engage with prospects and close sales. To reassign a deal, access the deal record, edit the deal owner field, and select the new owner from the user list. This simple yet effective process ensures continuity and maintains the momentum of your sales efforts.

Effective reassignment is essential for maintaining a seamless sales process, especially during periods of transition within your team. By ensuring that each deal has a dedicated owner, you can prevent lapses in communication and keep your sales pipeline moving smoothly.

Automating Deal Creation and Management

Automation process illustration

Automating deal creation and management in HubSpot can significantly improve data consistency and streamline sales processes. By leveraging HubSpot’s automation capabilities, you can ensure that deals are created and managed with minimal manual intervention, allowing your sales team to focus on more strategic activities.

Automation not only saves time but also reduces the risk of errors, ensuring that your data remains accurate and up-to-date.

Creating Deals Automatically

Creating deals automatically using workflows can be based on specific triggers and conditions, such as form submissions or lead status changes. For example, a workflow can be set to create a deal when a lead submits a form or reaches a certain stage in the sales funnel. This ensures that no potential opportunities are missed and that deals are created promptly based on predefined criteria.

Additionally, workflows can be used to reassign deals automatically, allowing for efficient distribution based on specific triggers or enrollment criteria. This feature is especially useful for large sales teams or organizations with complex sales processes. By automating deal creation and reassignment, you can ensure that your sales pipeline remains dynamic and responsive to changing conditions.

Managing Automated Deals

Managing automated deals effectively involves setting up custom automation actions based on deal stages. This can include:

  • Notifying team members when a deal reaches a certain stage
  • Creating tasks for team members to complete at specific stages
  • Sending automated emails to prospects at different stages of the deal
  • Updating deal properties based on specific actions or triggers

Introducing a delay between workflow triggers and actions can help ensure that HubSpot’s internal processes do not interfere with automated deal management.

To avoid conflicts and ensure smooth operation, it’s essential to monitor and adjust your workflows regularly. By setting up custom automation actions, you can manage your automated deals more effectively, ensuring that your sales process remains efficient and that no critical steps are overlooked.

Analyzing Deal Metrics and Performance

Data analysis and metrics visualization

Analyzing deal metrics and performance in HubSpot is crucial for identifying patterns, trends, and opportunities for data-driven decision-making. By leveraging HubSpot’s analytics tools, you can gain valuable insights into your sales process, including:

  • Conversion rates at each stage of the sales funnel
  • Average deal size and deal velocity
  • Win and loss rates
  • Sales cycle length
  • Sales team performance metrics

These insights can help you optimize strategies and improve overall performance.

This data-driven approach allows you to make informed decisions that can significantly impact your sales success.

Key Deal Metrics

Key deal metrics include:

  • Total contract value: measures the total revenue expected from a deal, providing a clear picture of potential income.
  • Deal probability: indicates the likelihood of closing a deal based on its current stage, helping you forecast sales more accurately.
  • Annual contract value: represents the total value of a contract over a year.
  • Win rate: measures the percentage of deals won out of the total number of deals pursued.
  • Average customer lifetime value: calculates the average revenue generated from a customer over their entire relationship with your business.

These metrics are essential for tracking and analyzing the success of your deals and overall sales performance.

Some key metrics to track in sales are:

  • Annual contract value (ACV): measures the revenue generated per year from a contract, offering insights into long-term profitability and annual recurring revenue.
  • Monthly recurring revenue: closely related to ACV, this metric focuses on the revenue generated on a monthly basis, providing a more immediate understanding of your company’s financial health.
  • Win rate: calculates the proportion of successful deals out of the total number of opportunities, providing a snapshot of your sales effectiveness.
  • Average customer lifetime value (CLV): measures the total revenue expected from a single customer over their relationship with your company, highlighting the importance of customer retention and long-term strategy.

Using Reports and Dashboards

HubSpot’s reports and dashboards are invaluable tools for tracking sales performance and visualizing key metrics. These tools enable you to:

  • Transform raw data into actionable insights
  • Monitor progress and make data-driven adjustments to your sales tactics
  • Set up custom dashboards to display metrics such as the value of new opportunities, the weighted value of the sales pipeline, and total sales versus targets

By utilizing these tools, you can have a comprehensive view of your sales performance.

Creating and monitoring reports in HubSpot allows you to:

  • Track key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Measure your success against defined goals
  • Generate detailed reports that highlight trends
  • Identify bottlenecks
  • Optimize your sales strategies
  • Track the effectiveness of specific campaigns
  • Monitor overall sales performance

These tools provide the insights needed to drive continuous improvement and achieve your business objectives.

Importing and Exporting Deal Records

Importing and exporting deal records in HubSpot offers the following benefits:

  • Facilitates seamless data transfer between platforms
  • Enables external analysis or reporting
  • Ensures that your deal data remains up-to-date and accessible, regardless of the tools or systems you use.

By mastering the import and export functions, you can maintain a clean and efficient database, enhancing your ability to analyze and act on your sales data.

Importing Deal Records

Importing deal records requires careful preparation and attention to detail. Before importing, ensure that your files are correctly set up with all required fields and meet HubSpot’s formatting requirements, such as acceptable file types and size limits. The import process includes the following steps:

  1. Navigate to HubSpot’s Import & Export settings.
  2. Start an import from your computer.
  3. Map the columns in your .csv file to HubSpot properties correctly to ensure data is accurately assigned to the right fields.

HubSpot’s import tool offers the following features:

  • Automatically mapping properties from imported files to HubSpot properties if they are named similarly
  • Assigning deal owners during the import process by mapping the owner column to the relevant property in HubSpot
  • Importing records through a single file containing all associated objects/activities or multiple files with one object/activity each, providing flexibility in how you manage your data imports.

Exporting Deal Records

Exporting deal records from HubSpot is a straightforward process that involves the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Sales > Deals.
  2. Use the Table actions dropdown to select ‘Export view’.
  3. Select specific properties and filters to ensure you only include the relevant deal data.
  4. Choose to include either all properties or only those shown in the columns of your current view, depending on your analysis or reporting needs.

HubSpot allows you to export deal records by pipeline by selecting the desired pipeline from the dropdown menu before exporting. This feature is particularly useful for organizations with multiple sales pipelines, ensuring that your exported data is organized and meaningful. When exporting, you can choose the file format that best suits your needs, such as CSV or Excel, facilitating easy integration with other tools and systems.

Best Practices for Maintaining Clean Deal Data

Maintaining clean deal data is essential for accurate reporting and overall success. Implementing regular data audits, deleting and merging duplicate deals, and establishing clear data entry guidelines are critical practices for ensuring your database remains accurate and efficient.

By maintaining clean data, you can enhance the reliability of your sales insights and make more informed decisions.

Regular Data Audits

Regular data audits are crucial for maintaining a clean and efficient sales process. Here are some key steps to follow during a data audit:

  1. Identify outdated or incorrect deal information.
  2. Review your deal pipeline for duplicates, missing values, and anomalies.
  3. Check critical properties for blanks.
  4. Identify and address any anomalies in combinations of properties.

By following these steps, you can ensure the integrity of your database and make informed decisions based on accurate data.

Cleaning and preparing your data in HubSpot involves the following steps:

  1. Remove duplicates: Identify and remove any duplicate entries in your data to ensure accuracy.
  2. Address missing values: Fill in any missing values in your data to avoid gaps in your analysis.
  3. Conduct regular data audits: Regularly review and update your data to maintain accuracy and effectiveness in your sales strategies.

By following these steps, you can ensure that your data is clean and ready for analysis in HubSpot.

Deleting and Merging Duplicate Deals

Deleting and merging duplicate deals can be streamlined using HubSpot’s duplicate management tools, ensuring a clean and efficient database. These tools help identify duplicate deals and facilitate merging or deleting them, maintaining the integrity of your data. Common misspellings should be scrubbed when handling duplicate deals to ensure consistency and accuracy.

By using HubSpot’s duplicate management tools, you can efficiently manage duplicate deals and maintain a clean database. This practice not only enhances data accuracy but also improves the overall efficiency of your sales process, ensuring that your team can focus on genuine sales opportunities.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I maintain clean deal data in HubSpot?

To maintain clean deal data in HubSpot, conduct regular data audits, delete and merge duplicate deals, and establish clear data entry guidelines. This will ensure accuracy and consistency in your deal data.

What are the benefits of automating deal creation in HubSpot?

Automating deal creation in HubSpot offers benefits such as improved data consistency, reduced manual intervention, and timely deal creation based on specific triggers, allowing the sales team to focus on strategic activities.

How can I assign deal owners in HubSpot?

You can assign deal owners individually by selecting an owner from the dropdown menu in the deal record or in bulk from the record's index page using the 'Assign' option. This allows for efficient management of ownership in HubSpot.

How do I set up deal stages in HubSpot?

To set up deal stages in HubSpot, go to Objects > Deals in the settings menu, access the pipeline editor, and customize deal stages to align with your sales process.

What are HubSpot deal properties?

HubSpot deal properties are metrics used to track and manage sales opportunities, including default properties like deal stage, amount, close date, and assigned owner, as well as custom properties tailored to specific business needs.