Welcome to the Hubspot Guide

Please do not see this lengthy document as something to be read front-to-back.

Guiding Principles

Keep It Simple. Keep It Clean.

Lean on automation and simple, single-variable fields to reduce how much we’re expected to manually enter. Before creating a field, investigate if the contents of the field can be extracted from information that’s documented in other fields.

Single Variables

Fields are meant to contain single variables are are meant to convey one piece of information. The more we adhere to this, the more elegant things we can do by combining fields.

Manual entry vs Automatic entry

Rely on humans as little as possible for updating fields that can be updated by other processes.

Also, don’t ask for manual labels or interpretations of data that’s already stored. “Priority” is a manual field that asks for manual interpretation of existing fields - Deal Amount, Number of Adoptions, Readiness to buy (stage). This is like putting a dry erase board next to a light switch and writing “on” when you flip the switch up and writing “off” when flipping the switch down.

Formatting

Capitalization - Because Hubspot has a lot of proper nouns that can be confused with common terms, I capitalize Hubspot-specific words

Examples:

• “We have three Contacts in the optometrist’s contact lens department.”

• “I’ll take the lead on following up with these Leads.”

• “What’s the reason we won the contract? I looked at Closed Won Reason and it was blank.”

Contacts

Contacts are individuals in the CRM and are usually where salespeople work pre-funnel activity.

Lead Status

Lead status is a label for the state of engagement of the Contact, or the dictionary definition of status, “the position of affairs at a particular time.”

New - This Contact has just been created and has not yet been claimed by a salesperson or been engaged.

In Progress - This Contact is currently being managed by a team member.

In Review - This Contact is not currently being managed but should not be engaged without speaking to their Contact Owner. Examples of this are a prospect who says “I don’t have any budget until October, and you had better not call me until then!” or a former customer who was aggressive with us during offboarding. It could also be someone who has a relationship with a specific agent and shouldn’t be marketed to generally.

Open - This is a Contact that is not being worked and is fair game to be communicated with by marketing and for entry level salespeople to add to their roster (with consent).

Lifecycle Stage

Lifecycle Stage is the label for the depth of engagement of the Contact.

Subscriber - This is someone who receives our info and is in our CRM but isn’t of relevance to our active sales operation. Occasionally a Subscriber will respond to regular communications and enter our sales process.

Lead - This is a Contact that needs sales follow up and could potentially sign up with us.

Marketing Qualified Lead - These are leads that have been qualified by marketing. Until we have a marketing team, this is automated based on whether or not the Contact shares qualities of the types of people we sell to. Do they run a shelter?

Sales Qualified Lead - These are Contacts qualified by a salesperson. In a growing organization with few SDRs, this label applies to a Contact once they’ve booked a meeting with sales.

Opportunity - This is a Contact that has been added to a Deal and is actively in our sales funnel.

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

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.

Other - People that we want to track comms with but aren’t sales Contacts. These are investors, media & publishing partners, vendors, etc.

Sources

Original Source

This is maybe one of the most important fields. The fields are rather self explanatory and auto-populated in most cases, so this is just a reference.

Paid Search - Paid ads on major search engines

Organic Search - Traffic from being ranked for the users search query

Direct Traffic - People that typed our URL into their browser directly

Paid Social - Ads on social media

Organic Social - People that clicked through our profiles or shared links on social media.

Email Marketing - New contacts created from outbound or shared marketing emails

⚠️ Referrals - This is referral traffic online, namely blogs that contain links to our site or content aggregators. This definition is flagged because a common error is to group interpersonal referrals into this group.

Other Campaigns - Catch-all for other ideas

Offline Sources - This is the default for contacts that are created by import from CSVs, the Hubspot Sales extension (most common), or other forms of offline or non-browser entry.

Origin Source

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.

Hubspot Score

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:

<Customer name> - <Business Unit (Adopets or ShelterBuddy)> - <Deal Dates>

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.

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.

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

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)

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:

Open

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:

1. 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.

2. Account Manager Tickets - These are tickets that are best served by someone with a relationship with the shelter, is familiar with shelter operations, or is outside 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 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).

3. 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.

4. 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.

1. High: Issue currently prevents software from serving shelters or facilitating adoptions.

2. Medium: Issue prevents an action from being completed, but overall service is intact.

3. Low: The issue is an idea, future concern, or is otherwise not interrupting the shelter.

Category

Category defines what kind of support is needed. Current categories are:

1. Product Issue - The product isn’t performing the way it should. This could be a bug or a larger issue like servers being down.

2. Admin Action - These are known actions that can only be done by admins, so here the shelter staff are just submitting a request. Common examples are Smart Kennel Card field changes, manual updating of pet status, and similar.

3. Billing Issue - Something is wrong with what a shelter is being charged.

4. Feature Request - The user is requesting functionality that isn’t currently part of our offering.

5. General Inquiry - “Other”

6. Refund Adopter - The shelter needs to refund an adopter. To be deprecated once refund feature goes live.

7. External Adoption - A shelter has performed an adoption outside of Adopets and needs an admin to update the animal or adopter records. To be deprecated once Force Set Adopted documention is clearer.

8. Reporting Help - Shelter staff often need help producing a custom report or using our existing reporting tools to get the info they need. This category covers those requests.

9. Virtual Shelter - Specific admin request for us to edit or create a virtual shelter for the customer.

10. Training Opportunity - The user was unable to perform an action that is user-facing. They reached out to support instead of performing the action themselves due to poor placement of knowledge base articles or a need of a new round of training.

11. Irrelevant - Testing emails, solicitations, and more.

12. Requesting Shelter Contact - This is a user that is emailing us thinking that we are the shelter.

13. Question from Foster - Foster parents requesting help from us or help that is typically provided by shelter managers.

Resolution

For now, we’re only really engaging with Resolution when the Ticket isn’t immediately clear how to solve for us based on documentation or for the customer based on unclear user interface. For these, use the following fields:

1. Issue Fixed - Documentation Needed: We got help with the Ticket, but we had to ask someone on Slack or in a meeting to get to it. This helps us update documentation to reduce escalations.

2. Issue Fixed - Product Review Needed: The customer could have done this, themselves, but the product’s settings made it difficult to do. This could also include Admin Actions that could potentially be done by the customer with a small change to the product.

Processes & Protocols

AKA: “How do I?”

Sales

Accept New Leads

Click to view your New Leads.

https://www.loom.com/share/148be67cb1b64b12bf6ba33e7e131cec

Starting in September, Leads that come into the system will have a Lead Status: New. When a salesperson begins working a lead, the rest of the team needs to know that certain criteria have been met. Therefore, a Contact being worked should be marked as Lead Status: In Progress. At Pet Loyalty, please always do the following when accepting a new Contact and marketing it In Progress:

1. Identify Contacts - Filter by:

   1. Contact Owner is: Me

   2. Lead Status is: New

2. Research and Enrich Contact record

   1. Add LinkedIn Bio to their profile

   2. Add Job Title to Contact record

   3. Create/Confirm Associated Company (the Company record attached to the Contact)

3. Enroll in an email sequence or call to follow up

4. Only after this is done, update Lead Status: In Progress

Note: If a person has entered their phone number, they have done so voluntarily. If you can respond to their inquiry within a few minutes, then a phone call will get you straight to the discovery process and you’re underway. Be sure to log phone calls as calls in Hubspot, not Notes. This way your activity gets tracked and you can be recognized for those lightning fast reflexes!

Manage In Progress Leads

https://www.loom.com/share/2bfa9267b79046a492bd39ae24eee509

1. Identify eligible Contacts - Filter by:

   1. Contact Owner is: Me

   2. Lead Status is: In Progress

   3. Lifecycle Stage is: Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead

2. Scan for engagement

   1. Last page seen

   2. Last email clicked

3. Scan for value

   1. Yearly Adoptions

   2. Job Title

   3. Phone Number

4. Actions

   1. If no engagement, update Lead Status: Open.

   2. If engagement or value: Send thoughtful communication or phone call.

Create New Deal

Deals reflect a Contact that has proactively indicated interest in purchasing the product after knowing the general costs and features. This is usually following a discovery sales call or if a person has sent a very specific, proactive inquiry email.

1. Name the deal -
   <Company Name> - <Product (Adopets or ShelterBuddy)> - <Time Period>.
   “Animal Welfare League of Arlington - ShelterBuddy - 2023”

2. Add Amount - We should have enough information to ballpark an amount. We can narrow it down later. If you need a placeholder, put our average contract value in this space or multiply their adoptions by our expected income per adoption.

   1. Add the Currency, which is just their locality

3. Add all associated Contacts to the Deal record.

4. Add an Associated Contact Engage Date - This is a key field and can only be done manually. This is the date that the initial contact reached out to us. For new Deals that’s simple: it’s the create date of the Contact. But for referrals or recurring business it’s the date that the person reached out and said “hey, we’d like to extend a year or add a feature,” and that requires human touch.

5. Estimate the Close Date (Hubspot default is the final day of the current month, but update this manually based on what you’ve learned about the deal or based on our average sales cycle length. This is important for follow up).

6. If call recording has finished processing, add a Google Drive link to Discovery Call Recording or attach the recording as an attachment.

7. Enter the Products Subscriptions field for what product or feature set the person is evaluating.
   NOTE: Please maintain separate Deals for Adopets and ShelterBuddy opportunities. Why? Adopets recognizes variable revenue in hindsight, SB forecasts predictable revenue. Each has a different customer success cadence.

Multi-Year Deals

For multi-year Deals, simply create and document the Deal for the first year.

• Deal Start Date: Go Live Date

• Deal End Date: 1 year from Go Live

• Duration: Number of years the deal is contracted for

• Amount: First year of contract plus any up-front fees

• Subsidy: Multi-year (only if a discount was given for their commitment

Because Deals are to document one-year periods, forecasts are based on Deal Amount, and best practices aren’t to recognize revenue beyond a year, we should be matching these accordingly.

Engage Opportunities

Under construction - This will eventually be a ‘structured routines’ guide on how to manage many Deals with a sense of personalization.

https://www.loom.com/share/c4d3728366754e87b19cf9d01a87f20f

Send a Contract

1. Enter the Contract Start Date (Launch Date)and Contract End Date (Contract Renewal)

2. Ensure the product or quote in Hubspot matches what’s being sent to the prospect.

3. <use an IF/THEN contingency in the communication>

Win a Deal

1. Ensure contract is totally signed, not verbal, before moving Deal Stage to Closed Won

2. Update Associated Contacts:

   1. Identify the Billing Contact on the Deal or within the Company record

   2. Identify the Key Point of Contact for Onboarding & admin communications

3. Update the Company record

   1. Add address, contact, and URL information for smooth site cut and DO tasks.

   2. Fill in Company Onboarding Details

Open

Lose a deal?

Under Construction

Customer Success

Understanding Service Periods

Our customers are with us over many years. During that time, they experience changes to features used, intake/adoption numbers, personnel, invoice amounts, and more. To capture these changes over time and to get accurate revenue snapshots, we create unique Deals for each year of service that we provide to a shelter. These year-long measurements are known as “service periods.”

To track a customer’s details within a specific time frame, you’ll want to find the service period for the date in question. To do this, apply the following filters:

• Deal Start Date is before: <Date in question>

• Deal End Date is after: <Date in question>

Accepting a new customer (CS)

1. 🚧 A workflow should send the welcome email and schedule a call with them 🚧

2. Ensure the Launch Date (Contract Start Date) and Contract Renewal (End Date) is accurate.

Support Ticket Triage / Escalation

When a new ticket comes in, assign a Category based on the section above. Form-based tickets will come in automatically assigned a category.

There are three main actions to do if a ticket cannot be solved right away:

1. Batch process: Delegate non-time-sensitive tickets to be handled with similar tickets to save time

2. Escalate to engineering: If an issue is causing problems with a customer and cannot be handled by non-technical staff, let engineering know, tell the customer, and maintain visibility on the ticket. To keep the Help Desk clear, elevate these to Account Manager Tickets.

3. Escalate to account management: Change Pipeline to Account Manager Tickets under “New”, assign the shelter’s Company Owner as the Ticket Owner, and then notify them publicly in the product’s CX channel on Slack.

Filter by: Ticket Status is none of: Closed, Category is: (listed below).

Batch processes

1. Refunds: How to Process a Customer Refund in Adopets

2. Cash Transactions & External Adoptions: How to Process an External Adoption

3. Manual processing / status edits

4. Reporting Help (in some cases)

Escalate to Engineering:

1. Product Issue

If a ticket is a current technical malfunction with our software, escalate the ticket to the account manager, who can then review and triage the request to engineering. If it needs escalated, check with engineering and create a Jira ticket via the Jira integration in the lower-right of a ticket’s right-hand column. If the ticket relates to a known issue, please attach the existing Jira ticket to the card without creating a new one.

<INSERT Jira tech issue support ticket criteria here>

Divert the ticket - Attach to existing product / feature request

1. Feature Request - We do not burden engineering with “nice to haves,” but only current parts of the product that are broken.

Escalate to Account Manager

These tickets require a personal touch or administrative action that needs details specific to the account.

1. Reporting Help (in some cases)

2. General Inquiry (in some cases)

3. Billing Issue

For these issues, make sure the Ticket Owner is the Account Manager responsible for this account. If unsure, check the Company Owner field. Then, escalate this to the Account Management Tickets Pipeline.

Renewing Contracts

Service dates refer to the time period that a Deal refers to. While a contract may be ongoing, terms change (services, pricing, shelter throughput, and more). Every year, we review the Deal and make sure that the terms are accurate. Also, replicating the Deal ensures that we have an accurate snapshot into our current customer count.

What’s most important in renewing a Deal? This is our time to review their account and make sure we have the big things right.

1. Are they using the features that they’re paying for?

2. Is the shelter sized and priced appropriately? Is our Yearly Adoptions figure consistent with their records and with our internal documentation?

3. Is the old deal and new deal thoroughly documented?

4. Consider migrating info between Company and Deal records.

Process

1. View a renewal Task / Deal in Hubspot

   1. For meeting: identify if these should be delegated via lists, Deal Owner, CS Manager, or Tasks

2. Pull up their information

   1. Hubspot Deal

   2. Hubspot Company

   3. Accounting / invoicing info

   4. Adopets and/or ShelterBuddy dashboard

3. Enter all of the updated information (fields below) in the new Deal. In areas of discrepancies…

   1. Identify the source of truth here. Do we want to compare Hubspot exports (consolidated, more technical) or use a Google Sheet (easy to compare and identify misalignments)?

Crucial Fields

1. Yearly Adoptions

2. Amount (update to check on Adopets actual revenue vs expected)

3. Contacts - attach the correct contacts with their roles to the Deal

4. Products Subscriptions - are they using what they’re paying for? Are they paying for what they’re using?

   1. Example: API turned on for people who aren’t using it.

5. Service Dates - Start & End (for renewals, assume the year following the existing service period)

6. Currency Type

Find and Filter Customers

Object: Company

• Lifecycle Stage: Customer

• Lead Status: In Progress

• For ShelterBuddy Customers:

  • Animal Shelter Software: ShelterBuddy

• For Adopets Customers:

  • Pet Listing Tools: Adopets

• For Both:

  • Animal Shelter Software: ShelterBuddy

  • Pet Listing Tools: Adopets