How to Create a Pipeline in HubSpot: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating a pipeline in HubSpot is a crucial step in streamlining your sales process and tracking your deals. A well-structured pipeline helps your team stay organized, forecast sales accurately, and ultimately close more deals. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to create and manage your pipeline in HubSpot.

Before we dive in, ensure you have the necessary permissions to create and manage pipelines. If you're an administrator, you can grant these permissions to other users in your account settings.

Creating a New Pipeline

HubSpot allows you to create multiple pipelines to manage different types of deals or sales processes. Let's start by creating a new pipeline.

To create a new pipeline, navigate to your Sales Dashboard and click on the 'Settings' icon in the top right corner. Select 'Pipelines' from the dropdown menu. Click on the 'Create pipeline' button and enter the pipeline name, deal stages, and deal amount fields. Once you've filled in the details, click 'Create' to save your new pipeline.

Customizing Deal Stages

HubSpot provides default deal stages, but you can customize them to fit your sales process. To customize deal stages, click on the 'Edit' button next to the pipeline name. Here, you can add, remove, or rearrange deal stages as needed. You can also set the probability of winning for each stage to help with forecasting.

For example, you might have deal stages like 'Appointment Scheduled', 'Qualified to Buy', 'Needs Approval', 'Contract Sent', and 'Closed Won'. Customizing deal stages ensures your pipeline accurately reflects your sales process.

Setting Up Deal Amounts

HubSpot allows you to set deal amounts for each deal stage. This helps you track the total value of deals in each stage of your pipeline. To set deal amounts, click on the 'Edit' button next to the pipeline name and enter the deal amount for each stage.

You can also set a default deal amount for new deals. This can be useful if you typically close deals for a specific amount. To set a default deal amount, click on the 'Settings' icon in the top right corner of the Sales Dashboard and select 'Deals'. Under the 'Deals' tab, you'll find the 'Default deal amount' field.

Managing Your Pipeline

Now that you've created your pipeline, it's time to start managing your deals. You can add, edit, and delete deals directly from your pipeline view.

To add a new deal, click on the '+' icon at the top of your pipeline. Enter the deal name, amount, and other relevant details. You can also associate the deal with a contact or company, and set the deal stage.

Moving Deals Through the Pipeline

As your deals progress, you'll need to move them through the pipeline stages. To move a deal, simply drag and drop it to the appropriate stage. You can also click on the deal and select a new stage from the dropdown menu.

HubSpot allows you to bulk move deals as well. To do this, select the deals you want to move, click on the 'Bulk actions' button, and select 'Change deal stage'. This can save you time when managing a large number of deals.

Forecasting Sales

HubSpot's pipeline view allows you to forecast your sales based on the deal amounts and the probability of winning for each deal stage. To view your sales forecast, click on the 'Forecast' tab at the top of your pipeline.

Here, you'll see a breakdown of your forecasted sales by deal stage, as well as a total forecast for the selected time period. You can use this information to track your sales performance and make data-driven decisions.

Creating and managing your pipeline in HubSpot is a powerful way to streamline your sales process and close more deals. By customizing your pipeline to fit your sales process and regularly updating your deals, you'll gain valuable insights into your sales performance and achieve your sales goals.