5 Innovative HubSpot Pipeline Examples to Use in 2024

A straightforward sales pipeline acts as the roadmap for your sales team and guides you through each stage of the buyer’s journey. Ultimately, it helps close more deals. However, the sales and marketing world is forever evolving, and customer expectations are also increasing with time. Therefore, traditional pipelines might not be the solution for it anymore.

This is where HubSpot’s powerful CRM with a list of different tools and features to implement pipelines comes in. You can design pipelines that cater to the specific needs of your business. This blog will introduce you to five such pipeline examples that you can use to elevate your sales game in 2024. Let’s look into them.

The Standard Sales Pipeline

A standard sales pipeline serves as a visual representation of the journey a potential customer takes, from awareness to becoming a paying customer. The beauty of the standard sales pipeline lies in its simplicity and flexibility. It provides a clear structure to track leads and assess their progress. The standard pipeline serves as the building block for more complex pipelines. Businesses can customize it by adding additional stages specific to their industry or sales cycle.

Moreover, a clear pipeline ensures all team members understand the sales process and leads to faster deal cycles. It also helps identify bottlenecks and improve the sales process for better conversion rates.

Stages of the Standard Sales Pipeline

The standard pipeline is a straightforward and adaptable framework, typically consisting of five key stages:

1. Lead Generation: This stage focuses on identifying and attracting potential customers who might be interested in your product or service. Marketing efforts and lead generation outreach are all crucial aspects of lead generation.

2. Qualification: Not every lead is created equal. The qualification stage involves assessing whether a lead represents a good fit for your business. HubSpot offers lead scoring tools that can help you identify Sales-Qualified Leads (SQLs) who are most likely to convert.

3. Meeting: Once a lead is qualified, the sales team takes the initiative to schedule meetings or calls to delve deeper into the prospect's needs and showcase how your product or service can address them.

4. Proposal: Following a successful meeting, a formal proposal outlining the value proposition and pricing details is presented to the prospect. HubSpot allows you to create customized proposals with e-signatures for a streamlined closing process.

5. Close: This is the ultimate goal-securing the sale and converting the prospect into a paying customer. HubSpot provides deal-tracking features and automation tools that help sales reps manage the closing process efficiently.

The High-Touch Sales Pipeline

Some products or services require a deeper level of engagement and a personalized approach to secure a sale. This is where the high-touch sales pipeline comes into play. The high-touch pipeline caters to businesses selling complex solutions or targeting high-value accounts. These deals often involve multiple stakeholders and require a significant investment from the customer. Therefore, a more customized and relationship-driven sales approach is essential.

The high-touch sales pipeline gives preference to building strong relationships with key decision-makers. It also emphasizes developing solutions tailored to the specific needs of each high-value customer. High-touch sales also often lead to larger, more profitable deals. Moreover, The focus on building trust and exceeding expectations in the sales process translates into higher customer retention rates.

Stages of the High-Touch Sales Pipeline

Here's a breakdown of the typical stages:

1. Initial Contact: Similar to the standard pipeline, this stage involves establishing initial contact with potential customers. However, in a high-touch scenario, the focus might be on building rapport and identifying key decision-makers.

2. Needs Assessment: This stage goes beyond simple qualification. In-depth conversations and demonstrations are used to thoroughly understand the prospect's specific challenges and objectives.

3. Solution Development: Based on the needs assessment, the sales team collaboratively develops a customized solution tailored to address the prospect's unique challenges.

4. Decision Maker Brought In: High-value deals often involve multiple stakeholders. The high-touch pipeline acknowledges this by including a stage dedicated to bringing key decision-makers into the conversation.

5. Negotiation: HubSpot's deal-tracking features provide a clear view of the negotiation process and allow sales reps to make informed decisions and close deals at optimal terms.

6. Proposal Sent: A comprehensive proposal outlining the pricing details and value proposition is presented to the decision-makers.

7. Contract Signed/Won: HubSpot's e-signature functionality streamlines this process and reduces closing time.

The Subscription-Based Business Pipeline

Businesses that offer products or services with recurring revenue streams need a subscription pipeline. This pipeline focuses on nurturing long-term relationships. It provides a framework for acquiring and retaining customers in a subscription-based model.

Unlike traditional sales models, subscription businesses need to focus not just on acquiring new customers, but also on retaining existing ones. The pipeline helps track customer churn rates and identify areas for improvement in the customer experience. Moreover, it helps maximize customer lifetime value (CLV) by identifying opportunities to upsell and cross-sell. Subscription models offer the benefit of predictable recurring revenue. The pipeline provides valuable data to forecast future revenue and make informed business decisions.

Stages of the Subscription-Based Business Pipeline

The subscription pipeline differs from traditional sales pipelines by emphasizing customer retention and upgrades.

1. Lead Capture: Similar to other pipelines, the initial stage involves attracting potential or existing customers and capturing their contact information.

2. Trial/Signup: Subscription businesses often offer free trials to entice potential customers to experience the product or service first-hand. This pipeline will allow you to track free trial signups and engagement levels within the pipeline.

3. Engagement: This stage focuses on ensuring users have a positive experience during their free trial. HubSpot's marketing automation features can be used to deliver onboarding emails, tutorials, and personalized content to guide users and encourage them to discover the value proposition.

4. Subscription: The final goal is to convert free trial users into paying subscribers. HubSpot provides features for managing subscriptions, including automated billing and invoicing.

5. Renewal/Upgrade: The pipeline does not end with the initial subscription. A crucial aspect of subscription businesses is retaining customers and encouraging them to upgrade to higher tiers. HubSpot allows you to track renewal rates and set up automated renewal reminders to ensure a smooth subscription experience.

The Real Estate Sales Pipeline

As a real estate agent or broker, juggling multiple listings and buyers can be daunting. For this, the real estate sales pipeline could be beneficial. The real estate sales pipeline is specifically designed to cater to the unique needs of real estate professionals. It provides a visual framework for tracking properties and efficiently guiding both buyers and sellers through the sales process.

With the help of the real estate sales pipeline, companies can improve organization, enhance client communication, efficiently manage transactions, and track historical data to make data-driven decisions.

Stages of the Real Estate Sales Pipeline

The real estate sales pipeline typically involves the following key stages:

1. Property Listing: The pipeline might include details like property type, location, price, and target buyer profile. HubSpot allows you to create custom deal properties to capture all relevant information about each listing.

2. Viewing: HubSpot allows for easy appointment scheduling and communication with potential buyers.

3. Offer: HubSpot facilitates communication and document sharing throughout the offer negotiation process.

4. Negotiation: Negotiating the terms of the sale is a crucial stage in real estate transactions. HubSpot allows for collaborative communication with sellers and keeps track of all negotiation revisions.

The Technology & Software Sales Pipeline

Technology and software sales are distinct from traditional sales models. Selling complex solutions often requires a longer sales cycle and a focus on not just acquiring customers, but also ensuring successful product adoption and long-term customer success. A technology and software sales pipeline is specifically tailored to the unique needs of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and technology vendors. Its focus is on product adoption, improved customer success rates, long-term customer relationships, and tracking user behavior.

Stages of the Technology & Software Sales Pipeline

The technology & software sales pipeline typically follows the following stages:

1. Demo Request: This initial stage captures potential customer interest by tracking requests for product demonstrations.

2. Trial Usage: HubSpot allows for the integration of trial data with your pipeline, providing insights into user engagement.

3. Technical Evaluation: HubSpot allows you to create custom deal properties to capture specific technical considerations.

4. Purchase: HubSpot offers functionalities for managing subscriptions, automated billing, and e-signatures for a streamlined purchase process.

5. Onboarding: Unlike traditional sales, the journey does not end with the purchase. HubSpot allows for the creation of onboarding sequences, the delivery of personalized training materials, and the management of customer support interactions.

6. Renewal: HubSpot can be used to automate renewal reminders and upsell opportunities.

Conclusion

While traditional sales pipelines have been effective tools for guiding sales teams through the buyer's journey, the dynamic nature of marketing demands innovative approaches. HubSpot's robust CRM, equipped with a variety of tools and features, offers tailored solutions to adapt to these evolving demands. So, if you want your company to shine in 2024, it is important to make use of the HubSpot Pipeline examples presented in this blog.