You're tracking pipeline as one number when it's actually two

Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Wednesday - and that means it’s time for your Property Playbook - an issue where we dig into the objects, properties, and make things happen!

Given this week’s theme of marketing budgets shifting, I thought we should explore a deal property that stands out as a default feature when you sign up for HubSpot.

It can even be automated to take the heavy lifting off your sales team so they don’t have to fill it in all the time.

Let's get into it.

On the Deal Object, you’ll find “Deal Type.” By default, it will track new and existing. It’s a way for you to track what is completely net-new business and what is expanding on an existing relationship.

Prospect A comes in and buys a service. This deal would be “new.”

A client has previously bought a service. Now, they are adding additional services. This new addition would be “existing”. You can then break that down in reports to show what is net-new business vs. existing, so you can see how the cash flow is moving in your business.

This field doesn’t get populated automatically, but you can automate it based on lifecycle status. If a person or company is a “customer,” set all new deals as “existing.” Easy peasy.

But what about your pipeline and tracking retention? If you are not using this field, it becomes tough to track your retention and account growth.

And the good news is that you don’t have to create two pipelines if you don’t want to - but you can track “two” separate pipelines in HubSpot leveraging this field, as you can pull it through to reporting.

In many companies, you aren’t just offering a one-and-done service, especially in B2B. You have ways to upsell, cross-sell and grow the share of wallet.

“Deal Type” gets set at the creation of the deal. And then when it isn’t new, it gets skipped. It doesn’t seem as important in the moment because the deal amount, details of the deal and the owner are more important.

However, this is where reporting will reveal a big issue. It will tell you that you are doing well in the one-time project category, but it will fail to show the growing partnerships that may be happening.

And those are the reports you are building growth plans on.

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In deal properties, use the "is known" filter operator to build an active list of deals missing Deal Type, then bulk edit your open pipeline this week. Build a Custom Report Builder report split by Deal Type and Deal Stage, and bring it to your next pipeline review instead of the usual blended number.

If this is the conversation you have been putting off, 44fjord works with teams to build the foundation that makes these numbers trustworthy. If you want to talk about what a partnership could look like, reach out to the team using the contact form on 44fjord.com/contact

TL;DR

A pipeline report cannot tell your retention story if you have not told HubSpot which deals are retention in the first place. Fix the input, and the report writes itself.