Welcome to the Hubspot Guide

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Customer - When a Deal is won, all associated Contacts are moved to Customers. Nice!

Note
Non-intuitive policy - A former customer is: Lifecycle Stage: Customer Lead Status: Open

Evangelist - These are Customers that go a step further. Evangelists are more likely to participate in beta programs, fully utilize our features, engage with our customer success communications and marketing, referral programs, reviews, and more.

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This helps us differentiate which business unit the Contact came in from. 🚧 This name might be a little confusing with Original, but we’ll leave it for now.

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Hubspot Score

Note
Under construction . We have fields for “Annual Adoptions” that is single line text and “Yearly Adoptions” that’s a drop-down select for form intake. Adoptions aren’t conducted by a person but rather via their organization (Company) or the estimate for their contract (Deal).

⚠️ Currently, we have fields for “Annual Adoptions” that is single line text and “Yearly Adoptions” that’s a drop-down select for form intake. Adoptions aren’t conducted by a person but rather as a function of their organization (Company) or the estimate for their contract (Deal), and I think we should shy away from relying on user-submitted text in either of these fields for the source of truth for adoptions.

Hubspot Score

Note
Under construction until we have better understanding of what factors influence lead quality.

Contact Type

This field denotes how the contact engages with us.

Vendor - They’re a supplier or service provider that sells us something.

Prospect - They’re an organization interested in using our product or a customer.

Partner - These are organizations that we align and collaborate with.

Press & Media - These are publications and similar that we use to help amplify our message and public relations efforts. 🚧 Construction Point - these could go under Partner, too 😕 🚧

Other - Anyone that doesn’t fit the above descriptions can go into Other.

Companies

Companies are the objects that track organizational data. For information that’s general to every member of the company, it’s better to put it here than in the Contact record. Think things like number of employees, location, annual revenue, number of adoptions, intake numbers, etc.

Often, Companies are the point of reference for customer success teams and salespeople working with target accounts.

Company Owner

Because Companies hold data longer than a single year, Account Managers are stored here in the Company Owner field. If you receive a ticket or a request specific to this shelter, this is the first person to notify.

Intake - The number of animals taken in by the organization per year

Yearly Adoptions - The number of estimated adoptions conducted by the organization each year.

Organization Size - The number of people that work there

Type - Same format as Contact Type

Animal Shelter Software - What shelter management software are they currently using?

Pet Listing Tools - What software are they using to list pets?

Deals

Deals are records that roll up all communications with attached Contacts and Companies specific to the transitory engagement of a contract. Deals have start and end dates and contain fields that apply to all associated Contacts and Companies but may not be permanent or intrinsic traits.

Deal Stages

Proactive Inbound / Qualified to Buy (10%)

This is the start of our funnel and is for people that know what our software does, knows generally what it costs, and are still interested in talking about how ShelterBuddy or Adopets works in their specific environment.

Qualified / Discovery Call ✅

This person has spoken with sales on a discovery call, they know our pricing, they have a follow up scheduled with us to review their proposal, and we think it’s a good idea to continue engaging them. At this point they should still be interested in talking with us after knowing our price, features, and limitations.

Presentation Scheduled (50%)

This person has been through one conversation and is ready for a second. By this stage we’d like to see more stakeholders added, details shared about their desired launch date, what they’re looking for in shelter management software, and why their current situation is lacking.

This follow up conversation can be more technical and applied to their specific environment.

Gaining Approval (60%)

You’ve had your second call or your second round of deeper data collection, and everyone seems ready to go.

By this point the person should have a specific price in hand, technical and legal personnel involved to make sure the integration works with their current policies and protocols, and we should have a solid relationship with the stakeholder to where we’re not in the dark and sending “just checking in” emails.

The customer has everything they need to know how we’ll work in their environment, and it’s just about getting everyone on the same page in agreement to start.

Contract Sent (90%)

The contract is sent and in their hands! We’re fully expecting this one to come back and launch, but we just hold it here to account for unfortunate interventions.

Note that this stage is a formality on the way to close. These deals should be as good as closed. Just sending someone a contract without a full expectation of it being signed does not qualify a Deal for this Stage.

Closed Won

The contract is in and they’re customers! Be sure to enter a Closed Reason at this stage.

Closed Lost

At some stage, the it was decided that our products aren’t a good fit for their organization. This could have been encouraged by the salesperson or decided by the prospect. Be sure to enter a Closed Reason at this stage.

Deal Fields

Association Labels

Billing Contact: this is the financial point of contact and the person who will receive invoices.
Key Point of Contact: this is the person who will receive contract related communications and will automatically receive onboarding emails, documents, and instructions.

Deal Name

Deal names are important because they inform what accounting uses in our financial systems and what our engineering team uses when adding companies to the system. The more aligned these are, the easier it is to report on them later.

Deal naming structure is:

Rob Coons' Raccoon Haven - ShelterBuddy - 2023

Note that well-known acronyms are fine (ASPCA, AWL, etc), but please avoid using abbreviations like “Aust” instead of Australia, “Qld” instead of Queensland, “S” instead of “South,” etc. Deal Name is meant to be searchable, so abbreviations make it difficult.

Deal Amount

This is how much money the Deal is worth (in customer’s local currency) over the Deal’s service period.

This seems straight forward, but it requires an entry here because ShelterBuddy projects revenue forward at the time of contracting, while Adopets, Adopter Perks, and Mobile Checkout all earn revenue as the customer uses the features.

Then how can we know how much money a Deal makes for us in a given time period?

Upon a contract ending its service period, we need to consult various sources to see how much transactional revenue was earned during the service period, and add it to the Deal Amount.

Warning
Do not project estimated revenue from transactional revenue into the Deal Amount.

Associated Contact Create Date

This is the date that the initial contact was made by the first associated Contact in the Deal.

This field is manual entry and, if we end up having a lot of inbound leads, is incredibly important.

Starting November 2022, this will be a required field on deal creation, so I’ll post a Loom video about it.

Create Date

This is the date the Deal was created and is automatically input when creating the Deal.

Close Date

This is the expected date or actual date a Deal is either won or lost.

When the Deal is still in the sales process, this field serves as the expected date for the Deal to close. Once the Deal is won or lost, it is cemented as the actual date the Deal is closed and the signed contract is received.

Closed Reason

This might have to be split into closed won or closed lost reason, but it’s elegant if all reasons can be worded in such a way that we can identify the same factors for both to see the split of how we win and lose these deals. More on this another time.

Process - Features - The Deal closed because of the features we offered.
Process - Ease of Use - The Deal closed because of our user experience and how smooth our product or experience is.
Process - Service - The Deal closed because they loved our service & support or their relationship with the salesperson or customer success manager.
Financial - Pricing - The Deal closed based on how our pricing compared to competitors or in-house solutions.
Financial - Donations & Revenue - The Deal closed based on the donations or revenue generated by their use of shelter management software.
Financial - Budget - The Deal closed because of their budget timelines and ability to spend.
Social - Organization - The Deal closed due to affinity or social pressure from how the Deal Contacts relate to us via a professional or social organization.
Social - Other - The Deal closed because of how the prospect feels about our position in the industry, our values, and what working with us means for issues the prospect cares about.

Note
Note: Reasons might need supplementary notes. Like, if a person buys based on Features, what specific features do they like? Better to keep Reason as general but then document the specifics somewhere.

Contract Start Date / Launch Date

This is the service start date for this Deal period. This is key for customer success, as this serves as the basis for certain check-in communications.

Contract End Date / Contract Renewal

This is when their contract ends. Also key for customer success, as it informs renewal, rebooking, and churn-related conversations & timelines.

Client Activity Status

Need for the field is to make sure an account is being closed.

Deal type

New - These are Deals that are new to our company. The easiest are new leads that come in that have never booked business with us before. Edge cases include: Customers that used to work with us, stopped, and then came back to use years later.

Existing - These are most often renewals or Companies returning after a short time.

Upsells and Add Ons - These are cross-selling and upselling into Deals that are already in existence. It’s usually best to amend these service dates to match the Deal that they’re adding onto.

For example, if a customer’s current Deal has service dates of 1/1/2024-12/31/2024, and in Spring they request additional features, the add-on would be for dates, say, 4/1/2024-12/31/2024 and then the services would be merged and represented in one Existing Business Deal for 2025.

Yearly Intake

This is the estimated number of animals being accepted by the shelter in the time period covered by the Deal.

Yearly Adoptions

This is the estimated number of animals being adopted via the shelter in the time period covered by the Deal.

Modules (Formerly Products Subscriptions)

These are the products that the client is buying from us in this particular Deal. A full PDF of these with some additional details about what’s included in PRO and EXPRESS can be found at the file here:

View file

name	Additional Modules and Components Price List – ShelterBuddy (1).pdf

ShelterBuddy Pro or “Pro” - <List features included here>

ShelterBuddy Express or “Express” - <List features included here>

Dispatch - Used for groups that deploy officers to the field. Dispatch covers vehicle notes, checking employees in, and more. This feature is popular with municipalities and animal control departments. <more details>

Google Maps - Using 3rd party software and tools from Google mapping functionality is available throughout the system which is especially useful in the Dispatch module and for routing. There is a once-off setup cost then a monthly price based on estimated page views. In the administration section there is a counter that customers can monitor their usage and once their limit is reached the feature will turn off till reactivated. The ongoing costs are determined by a Google in an account set up directly with the customer and a Google distributor.

[X] Volunteer [Deprecated] - An advanced volunteer module that allows the full management of your volunteers and a web login in so volunteers can sign on, roster and request training all seamlessly and automatically based on their approved training and skillset. This module comes with a range of reports [Deprecated, is now VolunteerBuddy].

VolunteerBuddy - <See above description. This is the current volunteer management module.>

Virtual Shelter - Virtual Shelter is supplied as part of the standard PRO installation however the electronic digitizing of a shelter plan or drawing supplied by the customer varies in price depending on its complexity and detail. We have built an administration section for this feature and HomeAgain staff will be able to set virtual shelter up themselves as part of the implementation process.

Digital Signatures - This is your chance to ‘Go Green” and save reams of paper. This price is for the Electronic Signature capture module which allows you to use Ipads or tablet devices to capture signatures and reduce the need for paper copies, there is a once-off setup charge of $1,395.00.

Power BI - <Shelterbuddy now uses Power BI for the users to produce adhoc reports and dashboards directly out of the Shelterbuddy database.>

Adopets - Adopets is a standalone module totally separate from ShelterBuddy. Moves adoption applications online and automates core activities like email responses, status updates, and application storage. Drives community and staff engagement with an intuitive system that adopters love and requires less time from staff to process applications. Enable efficient collaboration on adoption process, paired with actionable reporting, and seamless integration with shelter software.

Note
Note: Adopets and ShelterBuddy Deals should be kept separate, denoted by bundled Deals coming with two separate Deals, one for each product. As of early 2024, we’d like to push ShelterBuddy first and then cross-sell Adopets into those customers for those that demonstrate a clear need for Adopets features.

Licensing - The standard license module allows you to denote existing licenses, issue new licenses, send renewal notices, renew existing licenses, cancel licenses, send late notices, and issue citation notices for expired licenses allowing you to manage your licensing process. Note - this is separate from online licensing.

Lost & Found Site - This site is designed for the active interface for the public with the animals, be it lost, found or adoption animals The site can be customized to reflect the customer’s current website “look”. This is done by Shelterbuddy providing a customized iframe site or via the API. There is an additional monthly charge based on animal numbers. The API gives greater creative control over the look and feel of the site, but the iFrame offers the additional option to allow users to log in and post their own pets, to be verified before display by SB users.

[X] Adoption Site (API) [Deprecated] - Deprecated, but lets shelters post their animals for adoption.
(Note: “Public Site” often refers to the Lost & Found AND/OR Adoption Site referenced above. Web-hosted assets available to the public)

Online Licensing - A module that allows the public to license their animals over the internet which is completely integrated with Shelter Buddy. The system is mobile phone ready and has features specifically designed for enquiries by rangers and animal control officers in the field.

Mobile Checkout - Cutout of the Adopets product. CHeckout, collect donations, enter credit card, pay adoption fee. Transfer to the consumer-facing side for the adopter to finalize the contract versus requiring both parties to interface at the time of adoption. This increases amount of donations and makes transactions easier per-adoption vs annual licenses (for the software).

Adopter Perks

Data Migration - <Data conversions and data uploads all need to be priced individually and normally are at least 25 hours.>

Service & Support (Ticket object)

Help Desk

The Help Desk is the central hub where we receive incoming customer concerns via Forms and email (support@shelterbuddy.com and support@adopets.org/.com). Help Desk is where we field incoming tickets and track tickets that we are actively solving as support coordinators. Help Desk is not meant to be a repository of existing & known customer issues.

Pipelines

Pipelines are where known tickets are allocated for long-term service. Currently, there are 3 Pipelines:

Support Pipeline - these are incoming tickets and, at time of writing, is synonymous with Help Desk. These are small tickets that can actively be solved by a coordinator or are awaiting escalation.
Account Manager Tickets - These are tickets that are best served by someone that has a relationship with the shelter, is deeply familiar with shelter operations, or is out of the control of the revenue team (engineering tickets, mostly) but need to be monitored to make sure they’re being addressed. This is also the Pipeline where Tickets should be directed if they’re being created from an Account Manager’s gmail inbox (example: a customer directly emails AMName@petloyalty.co with a specific concern that isn’t solved in a quick message, it’s good to create a Ticket in this field so that we have a track record of their concerns).
Onboarding Pipeline - These are tickets specific to Onboarding tasks for new clients and generally should not have Tickets escalated to it unless a currently-onboarding customer submits a Ticket through our support Form.
AME - This Pipeline is specific to the PetSmart / AME campaign and is not covered by the documentation in this guide.

Priority

This helps us identify which tickets are most important and how they’re affecting customers.

High: Issue currently prevents software from serving shelters or facilitating adoptions.
Medium: Issue prevents an action from being completed, but overall service is intact.
Low: The issue is an idea, future concern, or is otherwise not interrupting the shelter.

Contact Type

This field denotes how the contact engages with us.

Vendor - They’re a supplier or service provider that sells us something.

Prospect - They’re an organization interested in using our product or a customer. Primarily these are animal shelters.

Partner - These are organizations that we align and collaborate with.

Press & Media - These are publications and similar that we use to help amplify our message and public relations efforts. 🚧 Construction Point - these could go under Partner, too 😕 🚧

Other - Anyone that doesn’t fit the above descriptions can go into Other.

Companies

Companies are the objects that track organizational data. For information that’s general to every member of the company, it’s better to put it here than in the Contact record. Think things like number of employees, location, annual revenue, number of adoptions, intake numbers, etc.

Often, Companies are the point of reference for customer success teams and salespeople working with target accounts.

Company Owner

Because Companies hold data longer than a single year, Account Managers are stored here in the Company Owner field. If you receive a ticket or a request specific to this shelter, this is the first person to notify.

Intake - The number of animals taken in by the organization per year

Yearly Adoptions - The most recent estimate of adoptions by the organization in the past year.

Organization Size - The number of people that work there

Type - Same format as Contact Type

Animal Shelter Software - What shelter management software are they currently using?

Pet Listing Tools - What software are they using to list pets?

Deals

Deals are records that roll up all communications with attached Contacts and Companies specific to the transitory engagement of a contract. Deals have start and end dates and contain fields that apply to all associated Contacts and Companies but may not be permanent or intrinsic traits.

Deal Stages

Proactive Inbound / Qualified to Buy (10%)

This is the start of our funnel and is for people that know what our software does, knows generally what it costs, and are still interested in talking about how ShelterBuddy or Adopets works in their specific environment.

Qualified / Discovery Call ✅

This person has spoken with sales on a discovery call, they know our pricing, they have a follow up scheduled with us to review their proposal, and we think it’s a good idea to continue engaging them. At this point they should still be interested in talking with us after knowing our price, features, and limitations.

Presentation Scheduled (50%)

This person has been through one conversation and is ready for a second. By this stage we’d like to see more stakeholders added, details shared about their desired launch date, what they’re looking for in shelter management software, and why their current situation is lacking.

This follow up conversation can be more technical and applied to their specific environment.

Gaining Approval (60%)

You’ve had your second call or your second round of deeper data collection, and everyone seems ready to go.

By this point the person should have a specific price in hand, technical and legal personnel involved to make sure the integration works with their current policies and protocols, and we should have a solid relationship with the stakeholder to where we’re not in the dark and sending “just checking in” emails.

The customer has everything they need to know how we’ll work in their environment, and it’s just about getting everyone on the same page in agreement to start.

Contract Sent (90%)

The contract is sent and in their hands! We’re fully expecting this one to come back and launch, but we just hold it here to account for unfortunate interventions.

Note that this stage is a formality on the way to close. These deals should be as good as closed. Just sending someone a contract without a full expectation of it being signed does not qualify a Deal for this Stage.

Closed Won

The contract is in and they’re customers! Be sure to enter a Closed Reason at this stage.

Closed Lost

At some stage, the it was decided that our products aren’t a good fit for their organization. This could have been encouraged by the salesperson or decided by the prospect. Be sure to enter a Closed Reason at this stage.

Deal Fields

Association Labels

When a Deal is won, we should know who to direct for our main styles of communication. Note that these labels are a one-to-many, so a person can be both a Primary and a Billing, for instance.

Billing: this is a financial point of contact and the person who will receive invoices.
Primary Contact: this is a person who will receive contract related communications and will automatically receive onboarding emails, documents, and instructions.
Technical (Onboarding): This is a person who manages data migrations, email domain validation, data exports, and other technical issues for the shelter.

Deal Name

Deal names are important because they inform what accounting uses in our financial systems and what our engineering team uses when adding companies to the system. The more aligned these are, the easier it is to report on them later.

Deal naming structure is:

Rob Coons' Raccoon Haven - ShelterBuddy - 2023

Note that well-known acronyms are fine (ASPCA, AWL, etc), but please avoid using abbreviations like “Aust” instead of Australia, “Qld” instead of Queensland, “S” instead of “South,” etc. Deal Name is meant to be searchable, so abbreviations make it difficult.

Deal Amount

This is how much money the Deal is worth (in customer’s local currency) over the Deal’s service period.

This seems straight forward, but it requires an entry here because ShelterBuddy projects revenue forward at the time of contracting, while Adopets, Adopter Perks, and Mobile Checkout all earn revenue as the customer uses the features.

Then how can we know how much money a Deal makes for us in a given time period?

Upon a contract ending its service period, we need to consult various sources to see how much transactional revenue was earned during the service period, and add it to the Deal Amount.

Warning
Do not project estimated revenue from transactional revenue into the Deal Amount.

Subsidy Revenue

This is money we’ve received that’s not a direct invoice to the customer or from transactional revenue. Most often, this is Home Again / Merck revenue, but could be from other sources as we build more partnerships.

Adopets Revenue

This is transactional revenue from Adopets adoptions.

Associated Contact Create Date

This is the date that the initial contact was made by the first associated Contact in the Deal. This field is manual entry and, if we end up having a lot of inbound leads, is important.

Create Date

This is the date the Deal was created and is automatically input when creating the Deal.

Close Date

This is the expected date or actual date a Deal is either won or lost.

When the Deal is still in the sales process, this field serves as the expected date for the Deal to close. Once the Deal is won or lost, it is cemented as the actual date the Deal is closed and the signed contract is received.

Closed Reason

This might have to be split into closed won or closed lost reason, but it’s elegant if all reasons can be worded in such a way that we can identify the same factors for both to see the split of how we win and lose these deals. More on this another time.

Process - Features - The Deal closed because of the features we offered.
Process - Ease of Use - The Deal closed because of our user experience and how smooth our product or experience is.
Process - Service - The Deal closed because they loved our service & support or their relationship with the salesperson or customer success manager.
Financial - Pricing - The Deal closed based on how our pricing compared to competitors or in-house solutions.
Financial - Donations & Revenue - The Deal closed based on the donations or revenue generated by their use of shelter management software.
Financial - Budget - The Deal closed because of their budget timelines and ability to spend.
Social - Organization - The Deal closed due to affinity or social pressure from how the Deal Contacts relate to us via a professional or social organization.
Social - Other - The Deal closed because of how the prospect feels about our position in the industry, our values, and what working with us means for issues the prospect cares about.

Note
Note: Reasons might need supplementary notes. Like, if a person buys based on Features, what specific features do they like? Better to keep Reason as general but then document the specifics somewhere.

Deal Start Date

This is the Deal’s service period start date. This is key for customer success, as this serves as the basis for certain check-in communications.

For new & onboarding customers, please leave this field blank until the customer’s invoice date has been set and they are locked for an onboarding date. Because:

This field being blank is how we identify onboarding customers
Setting this field automates certain training communications & invoicing communications.

Deal End Date

This is when the Deal’s service period ends. Also key for customer success, as it informs renewal, rebooking, and churn-related conversations & timelines.

Deal type

New - These are Deals that are new to our company. The easiest are new leads that come in that have never booked business with us before. Edge cases include: Customers that used to work with us, stopped, and then came back to use years later.

Existing - These are most often renewals or Companies returning after a short time.

Upsells and Add Ons - These are cross-selling and upselling into Deals that are already in existence. It’s usually best to amend these service dates to match the Deal that they’re adding onto.

For example, if a customer’s current Deal has service dates of 1/1/2024-12/31/2024, and in Spring they request additional features, the add-on would be for dates, say, 4/1/2024-12/31/2024 and then the services would be merged and represented in one Existing Business Deal for 2025.

Info
Note: Add-ons do not include organic growth of an account or increases in Deal Amount due to pricing changes or adoption throughput changes. They only apply to changes in feature set or contracted increases to an existing account.

Yearly Intake

This is the estimated number of animals being accepted by the shelter in the time period covered by the Deal.

Yearly Adoptions

This is the best estimate of customer or prospect adoptions Deal’s service period (start/end dates).

Duration

The number of years that a Deal is contracted for.

Modules (Formerly Products Subscriptions)

Info
Under construction - we’re simplifying features and bundles and changing the way we communicate it. Stay tuned.

These are the products that the client is buying from us in this particular Deal. A full PDF of these with some additional details about what’s included in PRO and EXPRESS can be found at the file here:

View file

name	Additional Modules and Components Price List – ShelterBuddy (1).pdf