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We use HubSpot to track and manage all of our customer interactions. It enables the creation of customer contacts, and then logging of emails/notes associated to that customer.
# Contact Management
Given that we have multiple client-facing roles within FlowFuse, it's important to document those that we talk to to ensure no crossover in sales and conversations.
# Lifecycle Stage
All contacts in HubSpot need to have a defined lifecycle. It is required that all contacts pass through each lifecycle stage at the appropriate time based on their interaction with FlowFuse marketing and sales. Contacts should not skip a stage. It is up to the contact owner to ensure their contacts have the appropriate lifecycle stage set.
The following is a description of each stage.
| Lifecycle Stage | Description |
|---|---|
| Subscriber | Contact has signed up to hear more information, when it is available, about FlowFuse, e.g. newsletter subscriber |
| Lead | Contact that has converted on our website, or through some other interaction, with our organisation beyond a subscription sign up. For example, registered for a webinar, signed up for a free trial, etc. |
| Marketing Qualified Lead | The contact has requested to talk to someone directly at FlowFuse about the product/services of FlowFuse. Either through book a demo, contact us, direct outreach to a FlowFuse employee at an event, or asked a sales question at a webinar. Support requests are not considered MQL. |
| Product Qualified Lead | The Customer success team identifies a contact that they believe is a candidate for an upsell opportunity. Customer success will identify an PQL by monitoring FlowFuse Cloud usage and engaging with these users in a consultative manner. Any contact already identified as an MQL, SQL or Opportunity should not be a candidate for PQL. |
| Sales Qualified Lead | The Sales team will initiate a discussion with an MQL, and will qualify the contact as SQL. Qualification is done based on the qualifying questions that are listed below. The status of the contact is then further tracked in the Lead Status property. |
| Opportunity | When the expected revenue and the potential close date is known an SQL becomes an Opportunity. A Deal is created for each Opportunity. |
| Customer | An active, paying, user of FlowFuse. |
| Evangelist | FlowFuse will not actively use Evangelist lifecycle stage. |
| Other | Does not fit into any of the other descriptions, likely someone we are talking to about FlowFuse, but will never be a paying customer, .e.g. Partners |
# Lifecycle changes
# From MQL to SQL - Qualifying questions
- Is there a use case FlowFuse can solve?
- Is there a need, now or in the near future, for 10 or more instances?
- Is there a timeline for implementation within the next 6 months?
# From SQL to Opportunity
- Is there an active evaluation that can close within the next 3 months? (evaluation can be quoting, POC, any other indication that they are planning to purchase something soon)
| Deal Stages | ||
|---|---|---|
| Opportunity | 10% | When there is a legitimate opportunity to close the prospect within the next 6 months. This stage is primarily triggered by the timeline or urgency of the need for FlowFuse. |
| POC Started | 30% | When the prospect enters a POC or has a POC kick-off call scheduled in the near future. |
| Value Validated | 60% | FlowFuse has been technically proven in a POC. Procurement steps typically follow or are running concurrently: security, legal, budget, DM intro/meeting. |
| Contract Sent | 90% | Contact is sent with an expiration date that has been communicated to the customer. While quotes may be sent at any time throughout the process, a deal should only enter this stage if it is reasonably guaranteed that a signature is pending based on current knowledge. |
| Closed Won/Lost | 0% |
# Lead Status
For leads who are MQLs or SQLs the Lead status
field is used to mark what the status is. Even though they're beyond being a lead. This field is maintained by the primary contact owner, likely the account executive.
At this stage we're using the default set of status's in HubSpot:
| Lead status | When to use |
|---|---|
| New | The contact in question has had only marketing contact (E-mails, etc). |
| Open | In the stage where a contact is assigned to a Account exec, but no official connection has be made. Usually contacts are only in this stage for a short while. |
| In Progress | After contact has been made, this status captures the nurturing process toward an opportunity. |
| Open Deal | When a deal is on the board, and the opportunity is real, this is the status! |
| Unqualified | Either this contact specifically cannot lead the sales process, or the account itself has been found unqualified. |
| Unresponsive | We have not received a reply in 2 weeks, they are ghosting us. |
| Bad timing | FlowFuse was, for whatever reason, not a great fit right now. However, it's potentially a good fit later. |
# Outbound
Activation Outbound is a custom property that's set to Yes when the first meeting with the contact came through outbound drip campaigns or other outbound lead-gen actions. This property will be set to Yes when the contact was in HubSpot through other marketing activities too, but wasn't nurtured to the point of a meeting yet.
# Importing Contacts Into HubSpot
If you import contacts into HubSpot, it is important that the First Name and Last Name are populated correctly. Currently the FlowFuse Cloud database stores first and last name in a single field called Name. If you import this field into HubSpot the default is set to populate the Last Name field. The First Name field will not be populated so any email personalization with First Name will not be effective.
The ideal process for importing FlowFuse Cloud contacts is that you first split the Name field into a First Name and Last Name. Google Sheets has the ability to split a column of text into two columns based on the delimiter of a space. Once that is completed then you can import the list into HubSpot.
# Recommended Apps
We have several extension applications for HubSpot, these are a few that can be beneficial if you're interacting with customers:
- G-Mail Extension (link) - Automatically creates contacts when you e-mail them for the first time, and logs e-mail activity against that contact in HubSpot.