Track Sales Outreach Efforts with Lead Status
Lead status primarily helps the sales team manage their one to one outreach. It’s also useful for sending automated, mass outreach to contacts that aren’t ready to buy.
Why the lead status dropdown in important
It tracks the status of the lead. Lead status tracks the sales process from form submission to deal close. It’s a great quick reference for sales reps to review where contacts are at in their new sales cycle and infer next steps. In my experience, it’s important for the sales team to help design the setup and usage of the lead status property.
It lets the sales team easily opt contacts into targeted marketing lead nurture. When someone is not ready to buy, but could be in the future, many teams simply ignore them and move on to more immediate things. Lead status can be used to opt them into an automated nurture track (e.g. emails, sales tasks) that keeps in touch and reminds sales to follow up after a certain amount of time.
Lead Status quirks to be aware of:
It should be built to sales process needs. This guide shares one effective way of building out the dropdown. The fundamentals are here, but the details are highly dependent on company needs.
It’s most useful for first-time leads. This guide offers one way to track a new sales process where the contact has never submitted a form, never had an opportunity created, and never has been a customer. For those that have, there are more ideal ways of tracking their progress (e.g. renewals pipeline, custom alerts, etc.)
It shouldn’t need to go backward. Similar to Lifecycle Stage, it’s intended to track progress forward and not bounce back and forth. Trying to get Lead Status to behave like this adds needless complexity in most cases.
It’s not Lifecycle Stage. Lead Status is used for tracking tactical sales outreach status. Lifecycle Stage is most helpful understanding how contacts are moving through the wider funnel to resolve drop-off points. In this approach, you’ll see alignment with opportunity and customer statuses, but overall, these two dropdowns are more different than they are alike.
1 - Understand how many contacts have each status
Build out simple reporting.
1.1 - Visit the Lead Status property in property settings. Look at how many contacts have a value for each. This is the quickest way of seeing how Lead Status is currently being used at the company.
1.2. - Visualize this and share it with relevant people. Create a contact-based report (e.g. bar graph) that looks at each Lead Status option and reveals how many contacts have that status.
2 - Plan out an ideal lead status dropdown
Write out the options, assign use cases, and automate.
2.1 - Review dropdown values and definitions. Here are some example values that have been relied on at a number of businesses I’ve worked with. The first few are the most important, as they help manage outreach. These are not 100% universal so should be tailored to business needs.
Example set of lead status definitions:
New - A brand new lead has been created in the system (e.g. via form submission) and has yet to be contacted. This should be automated.
Attempted to contact - Sales has reached out to the contact, but they haven’t replied. This should be automated.
In progress - They replied to initial outreach. Sales should probably update this manually, since auto-responders may trigger a change to in progress that you don’t want.
Qualified - You’ve determined they’re a good fit, but haven’t created a deal for them
Disqualified - They’re not a good fit. An additional “Disqualified - Reason” property can be used to specify the reason and track this over time. Utlimately, most can probably be deleted from the system. A quarterly review of disqualified contacts to purge from the system can be a good practice.
Open deal - Deal has been open for the contact. This often aligns with Lifecycle Stage and should be automated in the same way.
Closed won - Deal has been closed won. This often aligns with Lifecycle Stage and should be automated.
Closed lost - Deal has been closed lost.
Nurture - They’re not ready to buy. This can drop them into a nurture track that marketing and sales have built together.
3 - Plan and build lead status automation
Set lead status when forms are submitted, emails are replied to, and deals are moved into specific stages.
3.1 - If creating new dropdown values, add them to the default lead status dropdown. This will allow you to reference them in the workflows. Take special care to only use the relevant values and don’t reference any one’s you plan to remove.
3.2 - Plan and build automation that set lead status. It’s good for the sales team to be aware of how these values get set via automation. It’s essential for them to understand the values that will not be set by automation, because they will need to update them manually.
Example set of lead status automation:
New - Set when any relevant sales form is submitted.
Attempted to contact - Last contacted is known, but last reply date is unknown.
In progress - Leave manual. Too much room for error with auto-responders.
Disqualified - Leave manual. This should be based off sales interpretation of their research and conversations.
Open deal - Set when a deal is created.
Closed won - Set when a deal is closed won.
Closed lost - Set when a deal is closed lost.
Nurture - Leave manual. Let sales determine when they should be placed back into marketing nurture.
Example of proposed Lead Status values, definitions, and automation that sets these values
3 - Finalize the new lead status dropdown.
Map old values to new values and finalize the dropdown.
3.1 - Remove old dropdown values after transferring them to updated values. Determine what they should they be updated to by adding an “old values” column to the spreadsheet. Mass update them to the new value and ensure no contacts have that value. Delete those options from the dropdown.
Mapping irrelevant old values to new ones helps preserve data
3.2 - Share the updates with Sales and Marketing. I like to ensure everyone is on the same page after major updates. Since this may be a significant process change, holding a call to discuss questions can be beneficial.
3.3 - Be open to feedback and minor tweaks. If the team was engaged throughout the process of filling out the lead status spreadsheet, things should be working roughly as expected. However, there may be questions about how the automation is working. Or a sales situation that wasn’t accounted for could come up.
4 - Create and optimize associated marketing efforts
If using a “Nurture” value, plan and build out automated nurtures. Review results and update over time.
4.1 - Plan out automated nurture(s). I’ve seen this work best by starting with one workflow that enrolls contacts when their lead status is manually set to “nurture” by sales after a deal stalls out. The details of this will be dictated by creative sales and marketing efforts dictated by business needs but will likely include a mix of automated emails (from both marketing and sales) and tasks for sales to assess the relationship and take action as needed.
4.1 - Create a “Nurture Reason” property to enable more tailored nurture. Once one nurture is up and running, it’s possible to refine the content. One way to do this is by creating a “nurture reason” property that sales can select and opt into more highly targeted automated outreach.
Takeaways on lead status
Lead status and Lifecycle Stage are separate and generally used for different purposes, but they should align to some extent. Lead Status is most useful to track a smaller subset of the customer journey (i.e. after form submission and prior to the opportunity being created).
Before updating, take stock of how lead status is actually being used. Seeing how many contacts have a given lead status value can be done with simple contact-based reporting. Understanding current usage is likely best discovered by chatting with the sales team and aligning their responses with Hubspot property history details.
A simple lead status planning spreadsheet will leadership goals with day to day sales needs. I’ve had success with 4 columns per proposed value - dropdown value names, definitions, next steps, and automation needed.
Agree on what will be automated vs. what will be manually updated by sales. In the example described in this guide, everything except “in progress”, “disqualified”, “qualified” and “nurture” (if using) could be automated based on contact engagement.
