Leading a sales or marketing team without an optimised HubSpot portal? You might be facing some serious efficiency issues.
Sure, having a robust CRM system will streamline your processes. But when you customise properties for deals in HubSpot properly, you’ll gain deeper insights, increase your team’s efficiency, and drive greater revenue.
If you’re looking to create a custom property in HubSpot, keep reading to explore the practical tips and essentials industry leaders recommend.
What Are Custom HubSpot Properties?
At its most basic, HubSpot properties are used to store – and track – unique information about elements like contacts, companies, deals, and tickets.
Custom properties, however, enhance that scope.
Say that your sales team wants to track your leads’ industries, locate products they were interested in, or determine whether sales came through a partner.
Flexible, customisable properties in HubSpot can be used to collect, store, organise, and analyse data that otherwise falls outside of the CRM’s default fields.
You can set up these custom properties in a variety of ways:
- Text fields
- Checkboxes
- Date pickers
- Dropdown menus
TLDR; Having a flexible CRM that aligns with your business processes will make it easier to manage data, refine reporting, and extract actionable insights.
1. Optimise the “Deal Stage”
Use HubSpot’s Deal Stage to track prospects for sales and pipeline management. Your business will have greater visibility on each deal’s progress and can match the sales cycle with customised deal stages.
In other words, your sales team will clearly see where each deal stands and what’s required to move forward. Be sure to clarify each stage’s criteria so your team knows exactly when to do so.
Faizan Khan (Public Relations and Content Marketing Specialist of Ubuy Australia) says that, “Setting up the Deal Stage provides insights into conversion rates while identifying bottlenecks. When done correctly, it enhances sales efficiency and drives revenue growth.”
Other benefits include:
- removing confusion between teams
- improving prioritisation
- sharpening forecasts
- streamlining communication, and
- ensuring timely follow-ups.
2. Gauge “Deal Complexity” for Deal Complexity
Similarly, “Deal Complexity” can help measure high-stakes opportunities and determine the attention required to move complex deals over the finish line. Sales teams will discover more responsive methods to refine their approaches – and increase closing rates.
I recommend using this HubSpot property to rate each deal’s complexity and customisation (e.g., number of stakeholders, potential obstacles, deal size). Create a custom “Deal Complexity” property with options ranking from low to high. Make sure that CRM workflows are set up to automate notifications and assignments.
3. Track “Deal Stage Duration” for Insights
Wondering where your company struggles with inefficiency? “Deal Stage Duration” helps track how long deals are “stuck” in each sales process stage. This is one of the simplest ways to reduce sale cycle times, highlight predicted sales outcomes, and identify bottlenecks (i.e., where deals are most likely to fall through).
Swena Kalra (CMO of Scott & Yanling Media Inc) agrees: “We’ve streamlined our sales process by analysing these data sets. Doing so significantly reduced the time each deal spent in limbo, leading to improved conversion rates and forecasting accuracy.”
4. Evaluate “Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)”
Wondering where to place your focus or how to allocate resources more effectively? CLV can help teams estimate anticipated customer revenue over the course of working relationships.
Start by calculating the average purchase value, number of purchases, and average client lifespan. HubSpot makes it easy to automate and report these variables for multiple customer segments.
Setting up the CLV custom property not only makes it easy to identify VIP clients, it also
- simplifies marketing and sales efforts for maximised lifetime value
- develops targeted strategies to improve customer experience
- increases client retention rates
- clearly enhances data-driven decisions for your company
5. Utilise the “Deal Forecast Category”
Accurate forecasting is crucial for any business. I recommend checking out HubSpot’s Deal Forecast Category to categorise potential deals based on the probability of closing.
Abid Salahi (Co-Founder and CEO of FinlyWealth) says that, “We take advantage of practical data to swiftly respond to challenges, optimise resources, and steer the ship of our tech firm more confidently. The Deal Forecast Category enables us to bridge knowledge with action.”
When sales managers have a more structured snapshot of revenue and resource allocation, they’ll be more able to identify areas for improvement. And with better visuals, sales teams will also be given more realistic targets. That’s a win-win.
6. Measure Effectiveness with “Deal Source Attribution”
If you don’t know where your deals are coming from, how can you create accurate sales strategies?
Nicolas Krauss (Founder and CEO, dasFlow Custom Sublimation Apparel) says, “Whether they’re originating from marketing campaigns, referrals, social media, or organic traffic, your team needs to understand the effectiveness of its marketing efforts and allocate resources more efficiently. The end goal is more targeted strategies and improved ROI.”
Start by creating a custom “Deal Source” property with options that detail the lead’s entry point and their interactions. To improve spend and assess the ROI of campaigns, your sales and marketing teams should regularly analyse this data.
Extra Ideas to Use Custom HubSpot Properties for Deals
- Evaluate “Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)” to estimate the total revenue customers are expected to generate during your professional relationships..
- Monitor “Competitive Deals” to determine whether deals are competitive. Focus on win/loss rates against specific competitors.
- Track “Decision Maker Involvement” to streamline sales by clarifying whether primary decision makers are involved in the deal.
- Monitor “Deal Health” to rate the overall health of a deal (e.g., engagement, financial alignment, scheduling obstacles).
- Record “Deal Risk Factors” to identify and mitigate potential risks associated with a deal (e.g., budget constraints, timeline issues).
- Identify “Renewal Potential” to determine the likelihood of deals renewing. This is excellent for subscription-based businesses to focus on longer-term client relationships.
Looking to Refine Your CRM Strategy?
Whether you’re a new or experienced HubSpot user, I specialise in optimising sales teams’ CRM processes.
If you want to discover more about any of these customised properties for deals in HubSpot, get in touch!