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Manual data entries, endless phone calls, tracking deals via spreadsheets… this is what a day-to-day looks like for sales representatives.
With this gruesome routine, managing prospects and closing deals becomes a lot less efficient and your sales reps might even end up losing a few customers that could’ve been closed.
That’s why so many businesses create sales pipelines – they give you a bird’s eye view of the sales process and help sales reps close more deals by nurturing prospects through each stage of the pipeline.
And one of the most popular options for creating a sales pipeline is HubSpot.
However, if you don’t have a lot of experience with sales pipelines and aren’t sure what to include, things can get a bit tricky.
In this article, we’ll go over a step-by-step guide you can follow to set up a HubSpot pipeline and show you how you can leverage Databox to make things even simpler.
A HubSpot pipeline is an organized series of stages that users can set up to easily track how prospects move through the company’s sales cycle.
Pipelines can be extremely useful in increasing your company’s closing rate since you can visualize the sales process and make sure prospects don’t slip through any cracks.
Furthermore, HubSpot pipelines help you forecast revenue and pinpoint funnel issues.
You should also know what a deal stage is since we’ll be using that term quite a bit throughout the article.
Deal stages are the individual steps within a HubSpot pipeline. They’re the standardizing element of the whole system.
Some of the traditional pipeline stages are Qualification > Meeting > Proposal > Closing, but this can vary based on several factors (e.g. the complexity and size of your business).
Related: 23 Tips for Tracking Sales Activity with HubSpot CRM
Creating a HubSpot pipeline is pretty straightforward and shouldn’t snatch more than a few minutes of your time.
Once you log into your HubSpot account, click on the Settings icon in the top right section of the main interface.
Then, click on Objects > Deals, you’ll see them in the left sidebar section.
Next, click on the Pipelines tab and you’ll see there already is a Sales Pipeline included (by default for all accounts). The sales pipeline is fully customizable.
Below the Sales Pipeline, you’ll see a Create Pipeline – click on it to set up a new one.
Lastly, type in the name of your new pipeline and press Create. Once you’re finished, you’ll be able to add deals to the new pipeline.
Important note: To create a new pipeline in HubSpot, you need to have a Sales Hub Starter, Professional, or Enterprise account. Each subscription has a limit on the maximum number of pipelines you can create.
Now, to actually give substance to your pipeline, you’ll need to set up and customize the deal stages that go into it.
You can find the Deal Stages by going to Sales > Deals.
Then, choose the specific pipeline you want to customize and click Board Actions > Edit Stages.
Here, you can edit existing deal stages or add new ones.
Here are some of the basic options you should know about:
Knowing how to customize your existing deal stages is one thing, but it’s another to set up the entire pipeline and deal stages from scratch.
Most of the time, the biggest problem is deciding which deal stages to incorporate.
In HubSpot, there are 7 default deal stages for all users:
This can be a great start in case you’re still new to HubSpot pipelines. And, if your sales team is also inexperienced with using pipelines, the default settings will be easier to comprehend.
Once you learn the ropes, creating personalized deal stages that work best for your line of business will be a lot easier.
Here’s one great deal stage example of how a manufacturing company could set it up:
Learn more about setting HubSpot CRM in this evergreen guide written by our very own CEO, Pete Caputa.
HubSpot pipelines are a great way to visualize your sales funnel, secure more customers for your business, and quickly “duct tape” any leaks that come up.
But guess what – you can extract even more value from it by connecting it to Databox.
Combining these two tools allows you to merge and visualize your data from both HubSpot and Databox in one place.
This can give you a more comprehensive view of your business’s performance and helps you make more informed decisions based on your data. Furthermore, it allows you to automate certain processes and save hours of your time.
For example, you can use Databox to create custom reports and dashboards that automatically update with the latest data from HubSpot, so you don’t have to manually compile and update them yourself.
You can also overcome some limitations of the native tool and do things such as:
And much more.
Here is just one example how powerful Databox and Hubspot are when used together.
You can also take advantage of our free sales pipeline dashboard templates and visualize your HubSpot pipeline and metrics for a more accurate reading.
We have dozens of metrics available and you can simply drag and drop the ones you need onto the dashboard. The creation process takes minutes — literally.
Here are some of the most popular free dashboard templates among our clients:
To decide which goals meet the SMART criteria, sales managers need to look at sales analytics for their teams and monitor sales KPIs, for example:
Based on these metrics, and in light of other revenue-based and activity-based goals, you can identify and set desired goals for future performance, but how to get this information?
Now you can benefit from the experience of our sales experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing an overview of your sales team’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in sales reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up this Sales Analytics Overview Dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
To quickly measure how your marketing efforts are affecting overall sales and check out your sales funnel efficiency, you can use the Basic Sales & Marketing Pipeline Performance dashboard.
Once you connect your HubSpot account, you’ll learn:
This dashboard provides more granular sales and marketing funnel performance data and focuses on metrics like pipeline conversion rates, landing page conversions, CTA conversions, and lifecycle stages.
So, if you want a comprehensive overview of your conversion rate optimization effectiveness, you can download this free Advanced Sales & Marketing Pipeline performance dashboard template.
Some of the main things you’ll learn are:
Use this HubSpot Full Funnel Analysis dashboard to quickly check where most leads get stuck in the sales process and pinpoint which stage needs to be optimized.
You’ll also gain insight into:
This free HubSpot Sales Drilldown dashboard helps you track and manage your leads as they’re moving through the different pipeline stages.
The dashboard also helps you improve your overall sales strategy over time since you’ll be able to answer questions such as:
This is a fairly common question marketers have when they integrate HubSpot with Databox, so we compiled a list of some of the most useful and popular metrics you can visualize.
This metric showcases the number of prospects that agreed to do business with your company and officially became customers. It’s the last deal stage in the sales pipeline.
The sales metric provides you with a complete sales performance overview for a specific time period.
For example, it includes data like how many new contacts, companies, and deals you’ve had in a set period, alongside other information.
This metric displays closed deals won/lost for each individual sales representative on your team.
Deals overview shows the total number of deals in your company and segments them by open, won, and lost (in %).
You can use this metric to assess the efficiency of your sales pipeline. And if you dig deeper, you can also find out what’s causing losses and intervene.
Use this metric to check out how many new deals you’ve had in a specific time frame. You’ll also see whether there have been any drastic spikes or drops in certain periods.
Lastly, we have the sales pipeline metric that encompasses each individual deal stage metric and shows you how many prospects have moved on to the next stage.
PRO TIP: Here are 10+ HubSpot custom fields to upgrade your CRM from a nifty tool to a sales powerhouse. Discover the must-have custom properties from 20+ sales experts.
Even though it vastly simplifies the sales process and prospect management processes, HubSpot pipelines aren’t THAT easy to use and read, especially if you’re still new to them.
That’s where Databox steps in.
While the pipeline visualizes your company’s sales cycle, Databox helps to analyze your data further and do additional (custom) calculations that will help you get 110% out of each piece of information.
In other words, the pipeline provides the characters, whereas Databox builds the story around them.
By visualizing your HubSpot pipeline, you’ll have an easier time monitoring and managing your sales prospects as they move through the stages.
Plus, you can combine the pipeline visualization with other key metrics to have a complete overview of your sales performance, all in one place.
You don’t need to know a single line of code or have design skills to create a professional dashboard.
All you have to do is connect HubSpot as your data source, choose the metrics you want to include, and then create stunning pipeline visualizations, and much more.
Want to know what HubSpot on steroids looks like? Sign up for a free Databox account and find out.
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Filip Stojanovic is a content writer who studies Business and Political Sciences. Also, I am a huge tennis enthusiast. Although my dream is to win a Grand Slam, working as a content writer is also interesting.
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