HubSpot's prospecting dashboard fills a critical gap between marketing and sales pipelines. Here's how to use it.
The HubSpot prospecting workspace is a comprehensive tool designed to streamline the process of identifying and engaging potential customers. This intuitive environment allows users to manage leads efficiently by providing features such as customizable pipelines, automated email outreach, and insightful analytics. By centralizing all prospecting activities, teams can collaborate seamlessly, track interactions, and prioritize leads based on engagement levels. The benefits of the HubSpot prospecting workspace include enhanced productivity through automation, improved organization of prospect data, and the ability to make data-driven decisions that ultimately lead to increased conversion rates and business growth.
Video Transcript
[00:00:04.19]
There is a gap in most CRM systems, a gap between marketing and sales. It's the space in a prospect's customer journey where they are warmer, more likely to buy from you than your full marketing list of possible prospects, but not quite ready to be treated as a sales opportunity. This is where HubSpot's Sales Hub is different. It not only provides you with a state-of-the-art sales toolkit — Hubspot Sales Hub also provides you with a prospecting dashboard that fills the gap between low-touch, high-volume mass marketing, and high-touch one-on-one sales engagements. The HubSpot prospecting dashboard is designed to help you nurture leads that have demonstrated they're ready for more serious sales attention, but which aren't yet at the level of being an opportunity (when you could drop them on your sales pipeline and start forecasting cash and close dates). Here's a look at what you get with the HubSpot prospecting dashboard. To navigate to the prospecting dashboard, and remember, you need a paid sales seat to access this feature, you go to Workspaces and then Prospecting. By the way, click that bookmark because you're going to be using prospecting a lot, and then it will show up in your Bookmarks tab.
[00:01:23.07]
On the prospecting dashboard, you'll see a card in the top left with your prospecting progress for today. And beneath this card, you can see your schedule and also see a feed of activities. But before we go on, let's take a quick look at where the prospects in this prospecting dashboard come from, because you obviously don't want every HubSpot contact assigned to you showing up in your prospecting dashboard. So let's go into this contact environment and pick a contact. You can designate which of your contacts are managed through the prospecting panel by setting their life cycle stage to the correct setting, whatever that setting is to you. So on a contact page, here's your life cycle stage. Some companies have just a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) allowed on the prospecting dashboard. You might decide that you want to have an option called “prospecting lead,” but whatever you designate in the settings of your system, you then choose the life cycle stage for the contact, and that's how the contact gets into prospecting mode.
Okay, so let's go back to your prospecting panel. It's in the main section of this window where your dashboard starts making a material difference in your sales behavior. At the top of the dashboard, you have a tasks section.
[00:02:44.26]
Here you can see all your prospecting tasks that are due today, which prospecting tasks are overdue, and which ones are coming up. You can go straight to managing your tasks from any of the active links where you have work to do. If you are running sales sequences (a sales sequence is a series of automated personalized touchpoints designed to engage your prospects and guide them through the sales funnel to the point where they become an opportunity), well, you can see the status of those sequences here, and you can instantly navigate to the sequences to see more performance data. Next, we have suggested activities. These are where you're alerted to new contacts that have entered the prospecting phase or reengaged contacts that seem to be warming up again by some behavior. And then HubSpot reminds you to follow up on any lagging email responses and to log your meeting outcomes. Finally, we have hot leads. Any lead that is new to the system or to the status of prospecting will remain hot for the first 30 days. Or if you've initiated outreach to a prospect or made a connection with a prospect, they will also be flagged as hot.
[00:04:03.26]
So let's take a look at how you change the status of a lead to flag it as a hot lead. Let's go here. So we're in your leads tab. The Leads tab shows you all the prospects you're working right now that are designated as “prospecting.” You can make changes to your leads right in this list by changing your next activity schedule, the lead stage, the lead label, and the lead type. Take a look at this next activity column. See how many leads do not have a next activity scheduled? That's bad, because that means you're not actively working that lead and they may slip through the cracks. You can actively schedule a new task right from here. Or you can schedule something new for them in the more comprehensive lead view. For stage, this is how you turn a lead to a hot lead. You can select a new stage for a client. We've got a prospect here that's in “new” status. But if you've made an attempt to contact them or you've started the process of contacting them, you can change it to “attempting.” If you've made contact with a contact, you can change it to “connected.”
[00:05:16.14]
If a contact is turned into a sales qualified lead and you want to... If you've set your system to automatically create a deal for them, you could hit SQL and look, it pops up your deal tab and now we're moving them out of the prospecting system and into your sales pipeline. You can label your leads with hot, warm, or cold status, and you can also indicate what type of a lead this is. So this is where you can start managing the leads and make them hot or move them onto the next stage. You can also open up a lead and manage them from in here. So here you can trigger all kinds of activities to your leads. You can learn more about your leads, add notes, codes. Then, remember that “next activity” column, where we had so many contacts with nothing scheduled? Tasks are a key to putting HubSpot to work for you. If you consistently schedule follow-up activities for your prospects, then they will never go cold due to lack of attention on your part. Hubspot helps you make a plan in this prospecting dashboard and then stick to it using your HubSpot Task Management dashboard.
[00:06:27.26]
If you didn't schedule a task on the last screen, take a moment now to schedule some next activity with this prospect. If you're used to managing your prospects via a spreadsheet, then you know how much time gets wasted just scrolling through endless rows, trying to decide what to do next. When you're scheduling meaningful tasks for yourself with meaningful timing, that can make all the difference between average sales results and, I don't know, going on that luxury vacation. Okay, let's take a look at your schedule tab now. The schedule tab is where you can see your scheduled tasks by date and manage your schedule. Here we can say, “I just want to see tasks,” or “I want to see tasks and calendar events,” or “I want to see one of my meeting calendars.” The feed tab is where you can see all the activities of your prospects. For example, I can see this prospect clicked on a link. Now I know they're interested, by the fact that they're demonstrating interested behavior. This may be a great time to do a follow-up call or an email because I know they're actively engaged. If I hover over that piece of activity, I can trigger some activity straight from within this feed link.
[00:07:45.16]
So this is how you stay focused and do the right things at the right times. Each day, when you navigate to your task environment, you put all of this prospecting business to work. The heart of HubSpot Sales Hub is that it keeps you focused on doing those things and turning them into sales. So let's take a look at your task dashboard. You go to the CRM tab and then down to tasks. Now, if you just have five minutes and you want to get one thing done in your five minutes between meetings, you can click a task and do it. Or if you schedule an hour to knock out a whole bunch of tasks, you can launch your first task, do the work that's designated by this task information right here. You've got your task title in the blue bar, and then up here we have send a new lead email. You can then complete the task and say next, and it brings up your next task, a new work on the next task.
Don't settle for only high touch or low touch sales options. Using HubSpot's Sales Hub prospecting dashboard, you have the perfect tool to nurture those warm leads, never miss a step, never let a prospect fall through the cracks, and get those warm prospects to the point where you can drop them on your sales pipeline.