Okay, you’ve got a healthy marketing funnel going—stuffing the top with leads, nurturing them with marketing content, and converting them to sales-qualified leads (SQLs). What’s next? Well, after your sales team has finessed them a bit, it’s time to start entering your hottest leads into deals in your HubSpot platform.
What is the HubSpot deals tool? How does it work? How can you use it to not only track deal information but gauge your sales pipeline’s health and track progress toward your sales goals?
Read on to learn the basics of this critical HubSpot Sales Hub tool and how to leverage it for your organization.
What Is the HubSpot Deals Tool?
HubSpot’s deals resources are a part of the HubSpot Sales Hub and CRM Suite that is concerned with helping organizations track current, past, and potential revenue from their sales processes.
In the HubSpot Deals Index, users can find a list of deals, how much each deal is worth, sort deals by deal stage, identify who owns (and is thus responsible for) each deal, and when deals were closed. You also get a high-level overview of your deals with quick data points for your total deal amount, the average value of your deals, average deal age, and more for an at-a-glance estimate of your deal health.
Where to Find the Deals Index in HubSpot
Looking for the deal tools in your HubSpot portal? You can find them on the Deals Index page by clicking on the “sales” dropdown menu item in the top nav menu of your HubSpot portal and clicking on the “Deals” option.
Who Can Use Deals in HubSpot?
The Deals Index and the ability to create deals is available to all HubSpot subscribers. However, access to deal creation and management tools may be restricted on a per-account basis. If you cannot see the Deals Index in your HubSpot nav menu or edit or create deals in your HubSpot portal, contact your system administrator to request access to the HubSpot deals resources.
Additionally, some specific features of HubSpot deals (and other Sales Hub tools) might only be available on specific subscription types or to users with a paid “sales seat.” For example, deal and company scoring properties are exclusively available to Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise subscriptions while custom objects for deals are only available to Enterprise-tier subscriptions.
What Are the Default HubSpot Deal Properties?
So, what are the default properties regarding deals that you can track in HubSpot? The default deal information metrics that HubSpot tracks include:
- Amount. The total value of the deal in the deal’s currency (dollars, euros, etc.). If your account uses more than one currency, this may be different for different deals.
- Amount in Company Currency. The total value of the deal in your company’s selected currency (if your account uses more than one currency), adjusted for exchange rate from the currency used in the deal to your company’s chosen currency. Note: this may not account for foreign transaction and exchange fees taken from the deal.
- Annual Contract Value (ACV). The value of a given deal over a 12-month period. Listed using the deal’s currency if your account uses more than one.
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). The amount of revenue earned annually from a given deal. Calculated based on term length and recurring line items associated with the deal—though HubSpot will assume a 12-month term if no term length is specified.
- Business Units. The business unit or units the deal is assigned to.
- Close Date. The date by which the deal is expected to close or, if already closed, the date it closed. Expected close dates can be set manually by users or automatically by HubSpot. When a deal is moved to closed-lost or closed-won stages, this will be the date the deal was moved to that stage (some exceptions may apply).
- Closed Lost Reason. A field for explaining why a “closed-lost” deal was lost. Users can create custom closed-lost reasons in HubSpot to accommodate their most frequent reasons for lost deals.
- Closed Won Reason. A field for explaining why a deal was won.
- Create Date. The date that the deal was created in HubSpot.
- Created by User ID. The user ID of the person who created the deal.
- Currency. The currency that the value of the deal is set in. This field only appears for users who have set multiple currencies in their HubSpot account—which is only available for paid HubSpot subscriptions (Starter, Professional, or Enterprise) and not the Free Tools subscription.
- Date of Last Meeting Booked in Meetings Tool. The date of the most recent meeting a contact associated with the deal has booked through the HubSpot meetings tool.
- Deal Collaborator. The users involved in the deal aside from the deal owner.
- Deal Description. An explanation of the deal.
- Deal Name. The name given to the deal in your HubSpot portal.
- Deal Owner. The user from your team who the deal is assigned to.
- Deal Probability. An estimate of how likely the deal is to close. This is based on the “Win” probability set for each deal stage in your pipeline settings and updates automatically.
- Deal Stage. The current deal pipeline stage the deal is in.
- Deal Type. A way to categorize deals. The defaults in HubSpot are “New” and “Existing” business (for first-time or recurring customers), but you can create custom deal types to better match your organization’s lines of business.
- Exchange Rate. For accounts using multiple currencies. This is the conversion for other currencies into your account’s currency based on current exchange rates. HubSpot will update this automatically.
- Forecast Amount. Deal amount multiplied by forecast probability.
- Forecast Category. The likelihood of a deal closing. The categories are: Omit, Pipeline, Best case, Most likely, Commit, and Closed. You can manually set these categories or use an “Automate forecast categories” setting to automate forecast category assignment.
- Forecast Probability. The custom percentile probability that a deal will close. Calculating this probability requires the creation of a custom workflow with the “Set a property value” action in the workflow for the “forecast probability” action. This is only available to Professional and Enterprise HubSpot account subscriptions.
- HubSpot Team. The team that the deal owner is assigned to.
- Last Activity Date. The last date/time an activity occurred associated to the deal. This can include notes, calls, sales emails, meetings, LinkedIn/WhatsApp/SMS messages, tasks, or chats.
- Last Contacted. The last time a contact activity was logged for this deal. This can include conversations, calls, messages, meetings, or sales emails.
- Last Modified Date. The most recent time that any property associated with the deal was modified.
- Merged Deal IDs. The Record IDs of deals that were merged into the current deal record.
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). The recurring revenue earned each month for a given deal.
- Next Activity Date. The next date for an upcoming activity associated with the deal, like a sales call, email, or message send.
- Next Step. The next recommended step to increase the likelihood that a deal will close. This can be edited manually in the forecast tool.
- Number of Associated Contacts. The number of contacts associated with the deal.
- Number of Sales Activities. The total number of sales activities that have been logged for a deal.
- Number of Times Contacted. The total number of activities associated with the deal, excluding tasks and notes.
- Owner Assigned Date. When the deal owner was assigned to the deal.
- Pipeline. The name of the pipeline that the deal is in. Used to determine which deal stages the deal will move through.
- Priority. The urgency associated with the deal.
- Record ID. A unique identifier for the deal in the HubSpot portal.
- Total Contract Value (TCV). The total value of the deal based on the line items associated with it—including both recurring and one-time charges.
- Weighted Amount. The Amount multiplied by the Deal Probability.
In addition to the above deal information, HubSpot will also track analytics history information and deals calculated information. The analytics information tracks data about the source for the company or contact associated with the deal (both latest and original info). Meanwhile, the “Deals calculated information” metrics are properties used to measure or filter deals when building a custom deals report, but will not appear in properties settings or on deal records.
Sales Hub Enterprise Exclusive Deals Metrics: Recurring Revenue Information
If you’re a Sales Hub Enterprise subscriber, then you’ll have access to an exclusive set of deal metrics for recurring revenue information. These metrics are:
- Recurring Revenue Amount. The total amount of recurring revenue associated with a deal.
- Recurring Revenue Deal Type. The deal type associated with the recurring revenue deal. Default options include: New business, renewal, upgrade, and downgrade.
- Recurring Revenue Date. The date when the recurring revenue for a deal will no longer be collected.
- Recurring Revenue Inactive Reason. The reason why recurring revenue is no longer being collected. Default reason options include: Churned, renewal, upgrade, and downgrade
How to Make Custom Deal Properties in HubSpot
Okay, so you need to create a custom deal property in HubSpot to better match your specific sales process, how can you do that? HubSpot subscribers can create custom properties in the HubSpot platform for their deals. Here’s how to do it:
- Go to your HubSpot settings menu (click the gear icon in the upper right of your HubSpot nav menu)
- In the left sidebar, go to “Properties” under the “Data Management” header
- In the “Properties” tab, click on “Create property”
- Click on the “Object type” dropdown that appears in the menu that slides in from the right
- Select “Deal” from the “object type” dropdown
- Select a group for the property (such as “deal information” or “deal activity”)
- Create a label for the new custom deal property to display in the Deal Index or property record
- Add a description for the property
- Click “Next”
- Choose a field type from the dropdown menu—text input, choosing options, values, or other—the specifics of the next step may vary depending on the field type chosen
- Text input, single checkbox, date picker, number, file, rich text, or HubSpot user—confirm that the label explains what information is needed from the contact
- Multiple checkboxes, dropdown select, or radio select—create labels and internal values for each option in your multiple choice, dropdown, or radio select property
- Calculation—build a calculation in the “Build calculation” tool
- Score—build the score in the “Build score” tool
- add criteria for increasing or decreasing the score by clicking “+ Add criteria” under the “Positive” or “Negative” comments in the builder.
- Click “Next” or “Create” (varies depending on field type chosen)
- If “Next,” choose property visibility and validation rules (choices vary based on field type)
- Property visibility rules may include:
- Whether to show in forms, pop-ups, and bots
- Whether to show in search results
- Validation rules may include:
- Requiring unique values
- Setting minimum or maximum value limits
- Limiting character counts or decimal places
- Restricting to numerical values
- Forbidding special characters
- Only allowing the selection of specific dates (future dates only, past dates only, specific date ranges, or any date)
- Only allowing date submissions falling on a weekday (Mon-Fri)
- Click “Create” to finish
Here’s a quick video showing how to create a custom deal property:
How to Edit a Custom Deal Property
Sometimes, rather than creating a whole new deal property, you just want to make a minor edit to an existing property. HubSpot makes it easy to edit properties in their platform. To edit a deal property that you’ve created:
- Go to Settings
- Click on “Properties” under the “Data Management” header
- Click on the dropdown button next to “Select an object”
- Choose “Deal properties” from the list
- Search for the deal property you want to edit
- Mouse over the deal property name
- Click on “Edit”
- Click through the tabs to change basic info or field type information
- For field type information, you can make changes the same way that you would have initially created the form fields in the creation tool.
- Click “Save” when you’re finished with your edits.
How to Delete a Custom Deal Property
Want to remove a custom deal property from your HubSpot portal that was created by accident or because it has an incorrect label that you cannot change? It’s a two-step process that first requires you to archive the property you want to delete:
Here’s how:
- Go to the “Deal properties” object type in your HubSpot settings menu
- Find the deal you want to delete
- Mouse over the deal property name and click on the “More” dropdown menu button
- Click on “Archive” from the dropdown menu
- Note: you cannot archive a property that is currently in use by assets like forms, workflows, or lists
- You can find out if the property is in use by clicking on the “Used in” tab from the “edit property” options
- Go to the “Archived Properties” tab of the properties list
- Mouse over the property name and click on the “Delete” button to finalize the deletion
- Note: Archived properties will be automatically deleted after 90 days
- You can restore an archived property by clicking on the “Restore” button—though some property types cannot be restored (such as the score field type that I created for the tutorial)
How to Create New HubSpot Deals
Okay, so you need to create a deal in HubSpot so you can track its progress and make sure that you can properly credit everyone who helps out on the deal and attribute that revenue to the right team members.
There are a few ways to create a HubSpot deal: in the Deals index, from an object record (such as a contact or company record), from a Gmail or Outlook inbox (using extensions), and automatically using a workflow.
Building a Deal from the Deals Index
- Go to the Deals Index page (click on “Deals” from the “Sales” dropdown in your main HubSpot nav menu)
- Click on the “Create Deal” button
- Fill out the details of the deal (name, pipeline, stage, deal owner, and amount)
- Under the Pipeline and Deal stage properties, fill out the “dependent properties” associated with deals for that pipeline—this may vary based on the pipeline settings your organization has for each pipeline
- Choose what records to associate the deal with (contacts, companies, or other line items)
- Click “Create” or “Create and add another” to finish
Here’s a quick video showing how to create a deal from the Deals Index page:
Building a Deal from a Contact or Company Record
- Go to the “Contacts” or “Companies” Index page
- Click the name of the record you want to create a deal for
- In the right panel of the record, look for the “Deals” section and click the “+ Add” option in it
- Enter the details of the deal like you would when creating from the Deals Index
- Click “Create” or “Create and add another” when finished
Building a Deal from Your Gmail Inbox
To build a HubSpot deal from your Gmail inbox, you’ll first need to install the HubSpot Sales Chrome Extension and associate it with your HubSpot account. Once that’s done, you can create a deal from your Gmail inbox by:
- Clicking on the HubSpot sprocket icon in your Gmail inbox’s sidebar:
- Type the name of the contact you want to add a deal for in the search bar and click on the name when it appears
- Click on the Deals section to expand it
- Click on “+ Add”
- Fill out the deal details like you would for a new deal from a contact record in HubSpot
- Click “Create” to finish
The deal should now appear in your Deals Index page as a new deal.
Automating Deal Creation with Workflows
You can also create deals automatically using specific triggers from the HubSpot workflows.
- Go to the Workflows Index in your HubSpot account—this can be found under “Automation>Workflows” in your main HubSpot nav menu
- Click on the “Create workflow” button and choose whether to start from scratch or a template
- Choose whether to trigger the workflow based on company or contact interactions and click “Next” to begin editing your workflow
- Choose the enrollment criteria for your workflow
- One simple and reliable option is to use a form fill for a bottom-of-the-funnel page as an enrollment trigger
- If creating from a form, you will first need to create the form in HubSpot
- Click the “+” icon following the trigger to add a new workflow action
- Either search for the “Create record” action in the search bar or click on the CRM option under the “HubSpot” header and click on “Create record” from there
- Click on the dropdown and choose the “Deal” record type
- Choose who to assign the deal to (current contact owner, specific users, or no one)
- Enter a default deal name (this can be based on other properties)
- Choose a deal pipeline to associate the newly-created deal with
- Choose a close date for the deal (such as “X days after action”)
- Enter an amount for the deal (if deal value would be a fixed value)
- Add additional properties by clicking the “Add more properties” button
- Choose who to associate the deal with
- Click “Save”
- Name your workflow
- Click “Review and publish” to finalize
The workflow in the demo is an extremely streamlined one—you may want to add more triggers and enrollment conditions to avoid creating too many extraneous deals in your portal.
How to Create New Deal Pipelines in HubSpot
Say you have multiple types of deals that you need to track in HubSpot and a “one size fits all” deal pipeline with set stages wouldn’t work for all of your products and services since they follow different sales timelines and have different base deal amounts or follow-up processes.
Note: Your pipeline limit will be based on your HubSpot Sales Hub subscription level.
- Free Tools. One pipeline.
- Sales Hub Starter. Two pipelines.
- Sales Hub Professional. 15 pipelines.
- Sales Hub Enterprise. 100 pipelines.
It’s time to create some new deal pipelines in your HubSpot portal so you can make sure every deal can follow the right stages and have the right default settings. Here’s how to customize new deal pipelines in HubSpot:
- Go to Settings (the gear icon in the upper right of your HubSpot nav menu)
- Go to the “Objects” dropdown under “Data Management” and click on “Deals” (this may open by default if you go to the Settings menu from the Deals Index)
- Click on the “Pipelines” tab
- Click the dropdown next to the “Select a pipeline” header and choose “Create pipeline”
- Give your Pipeline a name
- Click “Create Pipeline”
The new pipeline will be generated with some default values and deal stages. From here, you can start customizing the pipeline.
How to Customize Pipeline Settings
To customize your deal pipelines, first go to the deals settings in your HubSpot settings menu (the gear icon).
From the settings menu:
- Click on the Pipelines tab
- Select the pipeline you want to edit
- Scroll down to the “Board customization” options—there are four tabs of options to customize:
- Configure: allows you to add or remove stages, rearrange stages, set the deal probability for each stage, and add other stage properties
- Pipeline Rules (Currently in Beta): Allow you to set pipeline rules such as limiting which stages deals can be created in, preventing the skipping of stages, restricting deals from moving backwards in the pipeline, or controlling deal editing access for the pipeline
- Automate: A tab for creating workflows that trigger when prospects reach certain stages of the deal
- Deal tags: A tab for reviewing tags for deals associated with the pipeline
Here’s a quick tour of the different settings and tabs in the pipeline editor:
When editing pipeline stages, be sure to click “Save” before navigating away from the “Configure” tab. Otherwise, the changes you make may be lost.
How to Associate Contacts & Companies with HubSpot Deals
So, you’ve created a new deal in HubSpot, but it isn’t associated with the right contacts and/or companies. What can you do? It’s time to associate that deal record with the contacts and companies it belongs with! This is relatively easy to do in HubSpot:
- Navigate to the Deals Index
- Search for the deal that you need to associate with a contact or company and click on the deal name
- In the right sidebar, navigate to the “Contacts” or “Companies” tab
- Click the “+ Add” option
- Either search for an existing record or create a new record to associate
- If creating a new record, enter the property values for the new record and click “Create” to finalize the contact/company record
- If searching for existing records, search for each record to add and click on the checkbox
- If associating a company record, choose whether to set the company as the primary company under the deal record
- Additional Option for Professional or Enterprise Accounts Only: Add an association label by clicking on “+ Add association label” to explain the relationship to the associated record
- Click “Save” when finished
See the process in action in our sandbox account with this video:
How to Set Contact Lifecycle Stages Using HubSpot Deal Stages
Manually setting a contact’s lifecycle stage can be an enormous challenge for busy sales teams. Why not help your sale reps save some time, effort, and error risk by automating the process a bit?
One way to automate this is to use HubSpot deal stages to set the associated contact’s lifecycle stage. Here’s how to synchronize a contact’s lifecycle stage to their deal stage in HubSpot:
- Go to your HubSpot Settings menu (gear icon)
- Open the “Objects” dropdown under “Data Management” and click on “Contacts”
- Go to the “Lifecycle stage” tab
- Under the “Automation” option, select the checkbox for “Sync lifecycle stages” so that a checkmark appears
- Use the options below to choose which lifecycle stage to set contacts to based on their current deal stage:
- When the contact/company is created
- When a deal is created
- When a deal is won
- Click “Save” when finished
This is a way to set deal stages automatically without having to rely on the HubSpot workflows tool—though workflows allow for much greater specificity and nuance when creating deals. For example, with a workflow, you could base the conversion triggers on membership in a specific deal pipeline, add more nuance for when deals enter different stages, and more.
How to Assign Credit for Deals
When creating and closing deals, it’s important to make sure you’re giving credit where credit is due. This helps you identify your MVPs on the sales team as well as those who help them achieve their sales goals so you can recognize and reward them appropriately.
If you’re on Sales Hub Enterprise, there’s a specific tool that can help called “Deal Splits.” To turn on deal splits so credit for deals can be shared:
- Go to settings
- Open up the “Objects” dropdown in the left nav under the “Data Management” header
- Click on Deals
- On the “Setup” tab, scroll down to the “Split deals among users” option under “Collaboration” and turn the option on
- Click on “Set up deal splits” in the confirmation window that appears
- Choose the maximum number of users to split deals amongst and the minimum deal split percentage
- Once set up, a new tab will appear in deals allowing you to set up collaborative deal credit splits—this may take some time to process
- If you do not see the “in progress” go away after a few minutes, refresh the page and check again
Here’s a quick tutorial showing the initial setup process:
Can You Delete Deals in HubSpot?
Say you accidentally create a deal that isn’t correct and shouldn’t be in your database—it’s not just that the deal amount is wrong, but there shouldn’t be a deal at all. What can you do? You can delete the deal!
The process is simple:
- Navigate to the Deals Index
- Click the checkbox next to the deal (or deals) you want to delete
- Click on the “Delete” option that appears at the top of the table
- Confirm the deletion in the dialog box that appears by typing the number of records to delete
- Click “Delete”
- You can restore a deleted record or remove it from HubSpot permanently by clicking on the “restore records” option from the pop-up or the “Actions” dropdown in the top right
Here’s a video showing this process:
Importing Deal Records from Another CRM to HubSpot
A lot of HubSpot users don’t just use HubSpot for their customer relationship management. They often use other CRM tools on top of HubSpot. How do you get deal information from those CRMs into HubSpot? That’s where HubSpot’s bulk data import tools can help!
To import deal records into HubSpot:
- Go to your Deals Index page
- Click the “Import” button at the top right
- Choose an importation method:
- Sync: Use a connected app to automate the data sync process for your deals from another CRM
- Import: Start a manual import of data
- If importing manually, click on “Import”
- Choose an import method: file from computer, opt-out list, or repeat a past import
- Click on “Import file from computer”
- Choose between importing one file or multiple files
- Choose whether to import one object or multiple objects
- Verify that “Deals” is one of the objects you choose (if importing multiple objects)
- Drag and drop a file into the select a file field or click on “choose a file”
- Choose how to import the deals being added: create and update deals, create new deals only, or update existing deals only
- Choose whether to create “deal-deal” associations with the object
- Select the language of the headers for the columns in your import file
- Click “Next” when ready
- Confirm the quality of the import in the mapping guide to see if the import can be successfully completed
- Errors, such as typos in stage names, can be corrected by clicking on the error notification and choosing an appropriate option to import
- To import successfully, you need to have the following fields:
- Deal Name
- Pipeline
- Deal Stage
- Click “Next” to continue
- Pick an import name and number format
- Click “Finish Import” to finalize
Here’s a video walkthrough:
To import the deals successfully, you’ll need to set up an importation table with the correct columns and fields to match the objects being imported.
The top row of each column should specify the data field being imported. For example, “Amount” to specify deal amount and “Deal Name” to specify the deal name in HubSpot. Check the name of each column against your properties’ names in HubSpot to verify that they can be imported.
Here’s an example of a simple import table setup:
|
Deal Name
|
Pipeline
|
Deal Stage
|
Company Name
|
Amount
|
|
Tutorial Deal 1
|
Demo Sales Pipeline
|
Appointment Scheduled
|
Test Company
|
10000
|
Get Expert Help With HubSpot Deals
Managing and importing deals can be a difficult and time-consuming task. But help is just a phone call away! Reach out to Bluleadz to discover HubSpot support and setup services that can help you turn your sales processes into a well-oiled machine that can consistently produce results.
Our team has extensive experience in the HubSpot platform and has helped other businesses learn how to leverage their sales tools to drive sales team success.
HubSpot Deal Resources