Contact Record Status & Milestones

This is the NEW process, the whole company will be adopting in early 2021. Please feel free to review in advance to prepare for the changes and clean-up work needed. 

A recent call, reviewing this new process was held on Friday, January 22. Feel free to listen to the recording. See Recording. Another call was held on Wednesday, January 27; feel free to listen to that record. See Recording.

Every record within HubSpot will have an associated status of Prospect, MQL, SRL, SQL, or Customer. How these are set, what they mean, and what's required of you are very important elements within the CRM - and vital to our overall reporting. 

Lead Generation happens at the contact level so the stages will be set within the contact record – and will operate in a one-way fashion. These stages will be locked as HubSpot will update them automatically, depending on your activities as well as milestones, to help understand where a lead stands in our lifecycle pipeline. 

*Sales Rejected Lead

IMPORTANT NOTE: In most prospecting strategies, it's common to contact multiple contacts within the same company. This helps to ensure you get in front of the right person - or persons - to influence converting into a customer. When this happens, the contact status for those who do not become the main point of contact (POC) will remain at the their last status level. Only those who become the POC will have the status of Customer. Furthermore, the synced Account record for those contacts will take on the highest status level as this will ensure no marketing campaigns happen for those non-customer contacts associated with a customer account record.

Prospect

A contact with the Contact Status of Prospect is considered a potential selling candidate, and available to receive lead generation email communications. Within this Status, there will be five (5) milestone options, with those in bold handled automatically:

1. New
2. Received Campaigns
3. Dead
4. Qualified
5. Unqualified

Upon contact creation, the Prospect will automatically have the milestone of New.

Once a contact receives a lead generation campaign, the Prospect will automatically have the milestone of Received Campaigns. As of April 20, 2021, any contacts enrolled in a sequence will be automatically updated to this milestone.

If the contact bounces, has an invalid email address, unsubscribes, the Prospect will automatically have the milestone of Dead. This can also be manually chosen if the contact requests to never be contacted again - this option will unsubscribe them from all emails.

Provided you conduct your own cold calling and outreach with prospects, options of Qualified and Unqualified are available for your manual selection to advance the status beyond the Prospect stage. 

MQL

A contact with the Contact Status of MQL is a potential selling candidate that reached the 100-point threshold for lead scoring. Within this Status, there will be six (6) milestone options, with those in bold handled automatically:

1. Assigned
2. In Review / Acknowledged
3. Reassign
4. Sales Qualified
5. Return to Nurture
6. Unqualified
7. Dead

When the lead score is 100, the stage will automatically update to MQL and will automatically have the milestone of Assigned.

Once a sales member picks up the MQL, they will need to manually select the milestone of In Review / Acknowledged to indicate they are actioning the MQL. 

If the contact needs to be routed to another vertical, manual selection of the milestone Reassign is needed. This will be reviewed and reassigned, however, please feel free to reassign yourself.

When millstones Unqualified or Return to Nurture are manually selected, they will become SRL and reasons for this selection will be required. 

If the contact bounces, has an invalid email address, unsubscribes, the MQL will automatically have the milestone of Dead. This can also be manually chosen if the contact requests to never be contacted again - this option will unsubscribe them from all emails.

SRL

A contact with the Contact Status of SRL is either unqualified or where contact was made, but was not viable for a near future opportunity

. Within this Status, there will be two (2) milestone options, with those in bold handled automatically:

1. Return to Nurture
2. Unqualified
3. Sales Qualified
4. Dead

Return to Nurture will have a set of reasons to choose from in order to receive the proper lead generation nurture campaigns (unable to contact, not a good fit right now, etc.).

Unqualified will also contain a set of reasons (do not call, invalid email, will never be a good fit, etc.).

Sales Qualified can be selected if a rejected lead becomes active again, or is now more qualified to progress to being a SQL.

If the contact bounces, has an invalid email address, unsubscribes, the SRL will automatically have the milestone of Dead. This can also be manually chosen if the contact requests to never be contacted again - this option will unsubscribe them from all emails.

SQL

A contact with the Contact Status of SQL is a qualified MQL to be a candidate for selling as a result of a lead generation campaign, OR is a lead in which Sales qualified themselves bypassing the MQL status altogether. It is at this stage, a deal/opportunity must be created with a forecast in GMV potential. As the SQL is further worked, this forecast can change as needed. Within this Status, there will be four (4) milestone options, with those in bold handled automatically:

1. 1. Working
   2. Contract Negotiations
   3. Convert to Customer
   4. Return to Nurture
   5. Dead

Upon either an MQL or Prospect having the milestone of Sales Qualified, their status will automatically update to SQL with a milestone of Working.

The milestone is then manually set for Contract Negotiations when a contract has been submitted, or is in progress. Then again manually changed to Convert to Customer when the contract has been signed. 

The Return to Nurture milestone should be manually set when additional outreach is needs to occur. A reason will be required to send the right, targeted campaign. 

If the contact bounces, has an invalid email address, unsubscribes, the SQL will automatically have the milestone of Dead. This can also be manually chosen if the contact requests to never be contacted again - this option will unsubscribe them from all emails.

Customer

A contact with the Contact Status of Customer is a current client with a signed contract and/or is actively selling on one of our platforms. Within this Status, there will be three (3) milestone options, with those in bold handled automatically:

1. 1. Active
   2. Inactive
   3. Out of Business
   4. Dead

Upon SQL milestone of Convert to Customer, their status will automatically update to Customer with the milestone of Active in their vertical record. Sales should maintain these milestones over the duration of the relationship for accurate database management. 

If the contact bounces, has an invalid email address, unsubscribes, the Customer will automatically have the milestone of Dead. This can also be manually chosen if the contact requests to never be contacted again - this option will unsubscribe them from all emails.