Struggling to keep tabs on your leads in HubSpot? You’re definitely not alone! It can feel like a juggling act trying to figure out who’s ready for a chat, who needs a gentle nudge, and who’s just not a good fit. But here’s the cool part: HubSpot’s “Lead Status” feature is like your personal GPS for every single prospect, helping you navigate your sales pipeline with confidence.

In this guide, we’re going to break down everything you need to know about lead status in HubSpot. We’ll explore why it’s so incredibly important, dive into those default options, and I’ll even show you how to customize them to perfectly fit your business. By the end, you’ll have a crystal-clear understanding of how to manage your leads like a pro, boost your sales team’s efficiency, and ensure no valuable opportunity ever slips through the cracks again. Get ready to transform your lead management from chaotic to super-organized – let’s get into it!

Table of Contents

Why Lead Status Isn’t Just a Label – It’s Your Sales Navigator

Imagine trying to drive to a new city without a map or directions. That’s pretty much what it’s like for a sales team without a clear lead status system. Lead Status in HubSpot isn’t just some arbitrary tag. it’s a super practical, custom dropdown field that lives right on your Contact records. It tells you exactly where a prospect stands in your sales process, from their very first interaction to a potential deal.

Think of it as the core communication tool between your sales reps. It highlights precisely what needs to happen next with a lead. This little property becomes a powerhouse for organization, helping you prioritize who to call, who to email, and who needs a bit more time. It prevents qualified leads from getting lost in the shuffle, which, believe it or not, happens more often than we’d like to admit. Did you know that a whopping 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales? A big reason for that is often poor lead status management. By using lead statuses effectively, you create clear visibility into each contact’s journey, which then aligns your marketing, sales, and even service teams, making sure everyone is on the same page.

The benefits here are huge:

Crystal Clear Visibility: You see exactly where every contact is in your sales pipeline.
Team Alignment: Marketing, sales, and service can all speak the same language about a contact’s progress.
Smarter Prioritization: Your reps know exactly who needs their attention most.
Better Follow-up: It ensures leads receive the right message at the right time.
Enhanced Reporting: You can analyze your sales process to spot bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement.
Increased Efficiency: Automated workflows can jump in to reduce manual updates and keep data accurate.

Without clear lead statuses, sales teams often face inconsistent processes, incomplete reporting, and a disjointed customer experience. Properly implemented lead status tracking lets your sales team quickly determine who needs immediate follow-up and track specific sales actions.

Mastering LinkedIn and HubSpot: Your Ultimate Guide to Seamless Integration

Understanding HubSpot’s Default Lead Statuses: Your Starting Point

When you first jump into HubSpot, you’ll find a set of eight default lead statuses ready for you. These are a great starting point, and honestly, many businesses get a lot of mileage out of them. They’re designed to cover the basic stages a lead goes through once they’ve been qualified by sales.

Let’s break down what each of them generally means:

New

This one’s pretty straightforward. “New” means the lead has just landed in your system and hasn’t been contacted by your sales team yet. It’s like a fresh batch of inquiries, waiting for that initial outreach. The goal here is to quickly initiate contact.

Open

An “Open” lead has typically been assigned to a sales representative, but there hasn’t been any official activity or direct outreach from the rep yet. It means they’re ready for sales action but haven’t been engaged.

In Progress

When a lead is “In Progress,” it usually means your sales team is actively preparing to contact them or is in the early stages of engagement, perhaps doing some research before making the first call. This stage is ideal for setting up workflow automation to prepare the lead for outreach. Mastering HubSpot: Your Ultimate Guide, Inspired by Kyle Jepson

Attempted to Contact

This status is for leads your sales team has reached out to – maybe an email, a phone call, or some other method – but they haven’t heard back yet. It flags them for follow-up, reminding reps that they need to try again.

Connected

Woohoo! A “Connected” lead means your sales team has successfully engaged in a conversation with them. They’ve responded, and there’s an active dialogue happening. This is a crucial step, indicating they’re interested enough to talk.

Open Deal

If a lead moves to “Open Deal,” it means they’ve shown clear interest, and a deal a potential sale has been created and associated with their contact record. At this point, they’re considered an “Opportunity” in the broader customer journey.

Unqualified

Sometimes, a lead just isn’t a good fit. “Unqualified” means they don’t align with your product or service offering, or they’ve simply lost interest. It’s important to mark these so your team doesn’t waste time on them. It’s also a good idea to add an “Unqualified Reason” property to understand why they weren’t a fit.

Bad Timing

This status is for leads who are interested but, for external reasons, can’t move forward right now. Maybe they’re busy with another project, or their budget isn’t available until next quarter. It’s a great way to keep them warm for future follow-up without actively pursuing them in the current sales cycle. Your Ultimate Guide to Logging into HubSpot: No More Login Headaches!

Lead Status vs. Lifecycle Stage: Clearing Up the Confusion

this is where things can get a little fuzzy for some people, but it’s super important to understand the difference. In HubSpot, you have both “Lifecycle Stages” and “Lead Status,” and while they both track a contact’s journey, they serve different purposes. They work together, but they’re not interchangeable.

What are Lifecycle Stages?

Lifecycle Stages represent the broader journey a contact or company takes with your business, from being a complete stranger to becoming a loyal customer and beyond. It’s a macro-level view of their relationship with you. These stages usually include:

Subscriber: Someone who has opted into your content, like a newsletter.
Lead: A contact who has shown some interest beyond just subscribing, perhaps by downloading an ebook or filling out a form.
Marketing Qualified Lead MQL: Your marketing team has qualified this contact as ready for sales engagement, often based on their engagement or a lead score.
Sales Qualified Lead SQL: Your sales team has vetted this contact and confirmed they’re a potential customer. This is where Lead Status comes into play!
Opportunity: The contact is associated with an active deal.
Customer: They’ve made a purchase and have at least one closed deal.
Evangelist: A customer who actively advocates for your brand.
Other: For contacts who don’t fit into the above.

HubSpot’s Lifecycle Stages are more standardized and tend to move forward sequentially, reflecting the overall progression through your sales and marketing funnel.

What is Lead Status?

Now, Lead Status is more granular and specifically describes the sub-stages within the Sales Qualified Lead SQL lifecycle stage. While Lifecycle Stages tell you where a contact is in their entire journey with your company, Lead Status tells your sales team what action has been taken or what needs to happen next with that specific, sales-qualified contact. Decoding Kate Bueker: The Financial Powerhouse Behind HubSpot

Think of it this way: A contact might be in the “Sales Qualified Lead” SQL lifecycle stage, but their Lead Status could be “New,” “Attempted to Contact,” or “Connected.” It’s a field primarily managed by your sales team to keep track of their day-to-day interactions and manage their outreach and follow-up tasks.

The key takeaway? Lifecycle stages give you the big picture, while lead statuses provide the nitty-gritty details for your sales team to prioritize and execute. Both are vital for a well-oiled sales machine!

Customizing Your HubSpot Lead Status: Making it Your Own

While HubSpot’s default lead statuses are a solid foundation, every business has its own unique sales process. That’s why one of the coolest things about the “Lead Status” property is how incredibly customizable it is. Unlike Lifecycle Stages, which are pretty rigid, you can completely tailor your lead statuses to perfectly match how your team works.

Why Bother Customizing?

Tailoring your lead statuses isn’t just about personal preference. it’s about making your CRM a true reflection of your operations. Customization helps you: Kieran Flanagan: Unpacking the Mind Behind Modern Growth Marketing

Align with Your Unique Sales Process: Your specific steps, from initial research to a demo scheduled, can be accurately mapped.
Improve Internal Communication: Everyone on the team uses the same language, reducing confusion.
Boost Prioritization: Create statuses that highlight exactly what needs immediate attention.
Enhance Conversion Rates: By having clearer steps, you can guide leads more effectively.

For example, you might want to add statuses like “Demo Scheduled,” “Needs Assessment,” or “Proposal Sent” to reflect unique milestones in your pipeline.

Step-by-Step Guide to Adding, Editing, or Deleting Custom Statuses

Ready to make your HubSpot portal work exactly how you need it to? Here’s how you customize your Lead Status options:

Access Settings: Log into your HubSpot account. In the top right corner of your main dashboard, look for the settings gear icon and click it.
Navigate to Properties: In the left-hand sidebar menu, find and click on “Properties” under the “Data Management” section.
Locate “Lead Status” Property: There might be a lot of properties, so use the search bar to type “Lead Status” to quickly find it. It’s listed under the ‘Contact properties.’
Edit the Property: Click on the “Lead Status” property to open its settings page.
Add, Modify, or Delete Options:
- To add a new status: Click “Add option.” A new field will appear where you can type your custom status name e.g., “Discovery Call Booked”. HubSpot will automatically generate an internal value, but you can change that if needed for reporting.
- To modify an existing status: Click the pencil icon next to the status you want to change. You can edit the label.
- To delete a status: Click the trash can icon next to the status. Just be careful here. if contacts are currently assigned to that status, you’ll need to reassign them before deleting.
Save Your Changes: Once you’ve made all your adjustments, make sure to click “Save” to apply them. Your new statuses will now be live and available for your team to use.

Tips for Naming Custom Statuses

Keep it Actionable: Names like “Follow-Up Required” or “Awaiting Proposal” are more helpful than generic terms.
Be Clear and Concise: Everyone on your team should instantly understand what each status means.
Align with Your Workflow: Make sure your statuses genuinely reflect the steps in your sales process.
Don’t Overdo It: While customization is great, avoid creating too many statuses. More than 10-15 can become unwieldy and lead to confusion rather than clarity. A well-managed set of 5-8 statuses is often more effective.

Changing Lead Status in HubSpot: Manual & Automated Approaches

Once you’ve got your lead statuses all set up, the next step is actually using them! You’ve got a couple of ways to update a lead’s status in HubSpot: manually for individual contacts or in bulk, and through the magic of automation with workflows.

Updating Individual Leads

This is the most direct way to change a lead’s status, perfect for when you’re working on a specific contact record. Create a Knowledge Base in HubSpot: Your Ultimate Guide to Self-Service Success

Go to CRM > Contacts: From your HubSpot dashboard, navigate to the “Contacts” section.
Open the Contact Record: Find and click on the specific contact you want to update. This will open their individual record.
Locate the “Lead Status” Property: On the contact record, usually in the “About” section or the main overview, you’ll see the “Lead Status” property.
Select the New Status: Click on the current lead status value it’ll look like a dropdown menu. Choose the new status from the options that appear e.g., “Connected,” “Open Deal,” “Unqualified”.
Save Changes: For some properties, the change saves automatically, but it’s always good practice to hit “Save” if prompted.

Updating Multiple Leads Bulk Actions

Sometimes you need to update a bunch of leads at once – maybe you just finished a big outreach campaign, or you’ve imported a new list. HubSpot makes bulk updates pretty simple.

Navigate to Contacts: Go to your “Contacts” view in HubSpot.
Select Leads: Use the checkboxes to select all the leads whose status you want to change. You can use filters to create a specific view of contacts if needed.
Initiate Bulk Edit: Once selected, a bar will appear above the table. Click “Edit” or “More” then “Edit properties.”
Find “Lead Status”: In the bulk edit view, locate the “Lead Status” property.
Choose New Status: Use the dropdown menu to select the new lead status that will apply to all selected leads.
Apply Changes: Click “Save” or “Apply” to confirm and update the status for all selected contacts. HubSpot typically allows up to 100 contacts to be updated at once this way.

Automating Lead Status Changes with Workflows

This is where the real efficiency comes in! HubSpot workflows are incredibly powerful for automating lead status updates, saving your sales team a ton of manual work and ensuring consistency.

You can set up workflows to change a lead’s status based on specific criteria or their behavior. For instance:

Engagement Triggers: Automatically change lead status to “Connected” when a lead replies to an email or answers a phone call.
Qualification Actions: Update lead status to “Qualified” if a lead visits your pricing page, requests a demo, or submits a specific form.
Inactivity Management: Move leads to a “Nurturing” or “Bad Timing” status if they haven’t engaged with your content or communications within a specified timeframe.

How to set up a workflow for automating lead status updates:

Go to Workflows: In your HubSpot account, navigate to “Automation” then “Workflows.”
Create New Workflow: Click “Create workflow” and choose to start from scratch or use a template.
Define Enrollment Criteria: Set the conditions that will enroll a contact into this workflow e.g., “Contact Property: HubSpot Score is greater than 70,” or “Form Submissions: Form ‘Demo Request’ has been submitted”.
Add an Action: Click the plus sign + to add an action. Choose “Set a property value.”
Select Property and Value: Pick “Lead Status” as the property, and then choose the specific status you want to assign e.g., “Demo Scheduled”.
Activate Workflow: Review your workflow, give it a clear name, and then turn it on!

By leveraging automation, you ensure your lead data is always up-to-date, allowing your sales team to focus on selling, not on tedious administrative tasks. Mastering Your HubSpot Knowledge Base: A Full Guide to Effortless Customer Support

The Power of Lead Scoring with Lead Status in HubSpot

Alright, let’s talk about lead scoring – it’s another fantastic tool in HubSpot that works hand-in-hand with lead status to supercharge your sales efforts. What exactly is it? Lead scoring is a way to prioritize and qualify your leads by assigning numerical points to them based on their demographic information, behavior, and engagement with your brand. The higher the score, the more “sales-ready” a lead usually is.

How It Connects to Lead Status

Lead scoring is a direct pipeline into efficient lead status management. Here’s why:

Triggering Status Changes: You can set up HubSpot workflows like the ones we just discussed! to automatically update a lead’s status once their HubSpot Score reaches a certain threshold. For example, when a lead hits a score of 70+, you might change their status to “Marketing Qualified Lead” or “Ready for Sales Contact.”
MQL to SQL Handover: Lead scoring helps marketing teams know when a lead is “hot enough” to pass over to sales making them an MQL and then helps sales confirm if they’re a true “Sales Qualified Lead” SQL worth pursuing.

Types of Lead Scoring in HubSpot

HubSpot offers a couple of ways to score your leads:

Manual Lead Scoring: This is where you, or your team, define specific positive and negative attributes and assign points to them. For example, visiting a pricing page might add 50 points, while being an existing customer of a competitor might deduct 20 points. This gives you a lot of control to customize based on your unique buyer’s journey.
Predictive Lead Scoring: HubSpot also has a powerful feature often available in higher-tier plans that uses machine learning to analyze your historical data. It looks at similarities across your existing customers and compares that with leads who didn’t convert to predict the likelihood of closing for current leads. This gives each contact a “likelihood to close” score, typically a percentage, indicating their probability of converting within the next 90 days.

Key Attributes for Scoring

To build an effective lead scoring model, you’ll want to consider both demographic and behavioral data: Keap vs HubSpot: Which CRM & Automation Powerhouse is Right for Your Business?

Demographic Data: This includes information about the lead themselves or their company.
- Positive: Job title e.g., “CEO,” “Director”, company size, industry, revenue.
- Negative: Competitor’s email domain, student email address, low company size.
Behavioral Data: This tracks how a lead interacts with your website and marketing efforts.
- Positive: Visited your pricing page, downloaded gated content like an ebook, requested a demo, attended a webinar, clicked on multiple emails, engaged with social media.
- Negative: Inactivity over a period, multiple bounced emails, unsubscribed from communications.

HubSpot’s scoring criteria can be defined using up to 100 different filter criteria, giving you incredible flexibility.

Best Practices for Effective Lead Scoring

Start Simple, Then Refine: Don’t try to make your model perfect from day one. Get a basic one working and then refine it as you gather more data.
Balance Positive and Negative: Don’t just add points. subtract them for disengaged prospects or bad fits. This helps prevent inflated scores.
Incorporate Score Decay: Leads can go cold. Consider how to reduce points for inactivity over time to keep your scores relevant. While HubSpot doesn’t have a direct “decay” feature, you can use workflows to deduct points at set intervals.
Test and Review Regularly: Your business changes, and so should your scoring model. Periodically review your criteria and adjust based on actual conversion data.
Align with Sales: Ensure your sales team agrees on what constitutes a “qualified” score and how leads with different scores should be handled. This ensures a smooth handover from marketing to sales.

By combining a smart lead scoring model with your custom lead statuses, you create a powerful, data-driven system that tells your team exactly who to focus on and what to do next.

Best Practices for Supercharging Your Lead Status Strategy

Using lead statuses effectively isn’t just about setting them up. it’s about making them a core part of your daily sales and marketing operations. Here are some best practices to ensure your HubSpot lead status strategy is truly supercharged:

1. Establish Clear Definitions for Each Status

This might sound basic, but it’s crucial. Every single person on your team – sales, marketing, and even customer service – needs to understand precisely what each lead status means. What actions are expected when a lead enters “In Progress”? What criteria make a lead “Unqualified”? Document these definitions clearly. This creates a common language across departments and avoids misinterpretation. Jonathan Hunt Microsoft: Unpacking the Journey of a Corporate VP in Business Applications

2. Train Your Team Consistently

Implementing a new lead status system, or even refining an existing one, requires proper training. Don’t just roll it out and expect everyone to figure it out. Hold training sessions, provide clear guides, and answer questions. Make sure your sales reps understand the importance of maintaining accurate lead statuses and how to update them correctly. Consistent use depends on consistent understanding.

3. Regularly Review and Audit Your Statuses

Your sales process isn’t static, and neither should your lead statuses be. Schedule regular reviews quarterly or semi-annually to assess if your current statuses are still relevant. Are leads getting stuck in a particular status? Are there new stages in your sales process that aren’t represented? Audit your data to ensure statuses are being updated consistently and accurately. This helps you identify bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement.

4. Don’t Create Too Many Statuses

While customization is a superpower, it’s easy to get carried away. Having too many lead statuses some companies have over 30! can lead to confusion and make the system harder to manage. Aim for a lean, actionable set – typically between 5 and 10 statuses is ideal. Each status should represent a distinct, actionable stage in your sales process.

5. Align Marketing and Sales on Status Usage

For your lead status system to truly shine, marketing and sales teams need to be perfectly aligned. Marketing needs to understand how their efforts lead to different statuses, and sales needs to provide feedback on lead quality based on status progression. This ensures smooth handoffs and a cohesive approach to nurturing prospects. For example, if many leads are ending up as “Unqualified,” marketing might need to adjust their targeting.

6. Leverage Automation Wisely

We touched on this earlier, but it bears repeating: use HubSpot workflows to automate status changes whenever possible. This minimizes manual errors, saves time, and ensures real-time accuracy. Think about automating status changes based on email replies, form submissions, meeting bookings, or even inactivity. This allows your team to focus on meaningful interactions, not administrative tasks. Master Your Business: The Ultimate Guide to HubSpot Automation Workflows

7. Integrate with Other HubSpot Tools for Reporting

Your lead statuses are goldmines of data. Use them to create powerful reports in HubSpot. You can track how long leads spend in each status, conversion rates between statuses, and identify where leads are dropping off. Integrate lead status with your email marketing to send targeted campaigns based on a lead’s current stage, or with your sales pipeline to ensure a seamless transition to deal stages. Robust reporting helps you make data-driven decisions to optimize your sales funnel.

By following these best practices, you won’t just be using lead statuses. you’ll be mastering them, turning a simple HubSpot property into a dynamic tool that drives efficiency, clarity, and ultimately, more conversions for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the primary purpose of Lead Status in HubSpot?

The primary purpose of Lead Status in HubSpot is to help sales teams track and manage the progress of a prospect within their specific sales process. It’s a granular property that indicates the current engagement level or the next action required for a contact, particularly when they are in the Sales Qualified Lead SQL lifecycle stage. It helps with organization, prioritization, and ensuring timely follow-ups.

Unlock Growth: How to Successfully Join Inbound Marketing Today

Can I change the default Lead Status options in HubSpot?

Yes, absolutely! Unlike Lifecycle Stages, the “Lead Status” property in HubSpot is highly customizable. You can add new custom statuses, edit the labels of existing ones, or even delete options that don’t fit your sales process. This is done through your HubSpot settings under “Properties” for contacts.

What’s the difference between Lead Status and Lifecycle Stage in HubSpot?

Think of it like this: Lifecycle Stage is the big picture, tracking a contact’s overall journey with your company e.g., Subscriber, Lead, MQL, SQL, Customer. Lead Status is a more detailed, sales-focused sub-stage, specifically within the Sales Qualified Lead SQL lifecycle stage. It tells your sales team what’s happening now with that specific lead e.g., New, Attempted to Contact, Open Deal. They work together but serve distinct purposes.

How can I update a lead’s status in HubSpot?

You can update a lead’s status in a few ways:

Manually for individual leads: By opening the contact record and selecting the new status from the “Lead Status” dropdown property.
In bulk for multiple leads: By selecting multiple contacts in the “Contacts” view and using the bulk “Edit” action to update the property.
Automatically using workflows: By setting up HubSpot workflows that change a lead’s status based on specific triggers or criteria, like form submissions or email replies.

How does Lead Scoring relate to Lead Status?

Lead Scoring and Lead Status are a powerful duo! Lead scoring assigns points to contacts based on their demographics and engagement, indicating how “sales-ready” they are. You can then use these scores to trigger automatic updates to a contact’s Lead Status via workflows. For example, once a lead’s score reaches a certain point, their status can automatically change from “New” to “Marketing Qualified Lead” or “Ready for Contact,” streamlining the handover from marketing to sales.

Mastering HubSpot Smart Rules: Personalization That Actually Converts!

0.0

0.0 out of 5 stars (based on 0 reviews)

Excellent0%

Very good0%

Average0%

Poor0%

Terrible0%

There are no reviews yet. Be the first one to write one.

Amazon.com: Check Amazon for Mastering Lead Status
Latest Discussions & Reviews:

Mastering Lead Status in HubSpot: Your Ultimate Guide to Supercharge Sales!