Working session with Miriam Framson (Citrus America) to finalize HubSpot CRM architecture. The call covered the full contact lifecycle flow, reorganization of fields between contact and company objects, automated deal creation triggers, and a plan to integrate BANT criteria into deal probability scoring.
Attendees: Melissa Cusumano, Mark Hope, Chris Ostergaard (Asymmetric); Miriam Framson (Citrus America)
Follow-up: Tuesday at 8am CT / 9am ET
The agreed contact lifecycle progression is:
Prospect → Lead → MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Customer
| Stage | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Prospect | Default for any contact missing Lead criteria; also used for non-sales contacts (vendors, media) |
| Lead | First name, last name, email, phone, US/Canada location (incl. Alaska, Hawaii), category known |
| MQL | All Lead criteria + associated company with known number of locations + interest in juicing (contact-level fields only) |
| SQL | All MQL criteria + company-level fields answered (juicing status = yes OR no-but-interested; additional qualification fields with "unknown" option allowed) |
| Opportunity | Triggers automated deal creation |
| Customer | Set upon deal close/won |
Lifecycle stages are a standard HubSpot field and cannot be customized beyond the built-in options. The waterfall automation will cascade contacts upward as criteria are met, and downward if data is removed or invalidated (e.g., a bogus phone number clears the Lead qualification).
Fields describing the place (not the person) were moved from the contact object to the company object. Rationale: contacts come and go; the company record persists and should hold institutional knowledge.
Fields moved to company object:
- Are you already juicing? (yes / no, but interested / no, not interested / unknown)
- Number of locations
- How much volume do you anticipate juicing?
- Additional qualification fields (juicing program details, etc.)
Rules:
- These fields are not required to create a company record (avoids friction for early-stage research entries)
- They are required for a contact to reach SQL status
- An "Unknown" option will be added to each field so reps can progress qualification without blocking on incomplete information — but the field must be explicitly filled in
Deal creation will be automated when a contact's lifecycle stage changes to Opportunity. This ensures:
- Every opportunity has a deal record with an associated contact and company
- If a contact leaves a company mid-process, the deal and company records remain intact and the sales team can identify the missing contact
- Revenue forecasting can begin, even at low probability
"The way you're supposed to manage sales processes is you're managing deals, you're not managing companies or contacts." — Mark Hope
BANT criteria (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) will be added as fields on the deal object. Rather than reps manually entering a probability percentage, BANT scores will drive an automated probability calculation.
Proposed priority flagging:
- 🟢 Green — all BANT criteria met
- 🟡 Yellow — partial BANT criteria met
- 🔴 Red — minimal BANT criteria met
This replaces the current approach where reps enter probability by feel ("putting their finger in the air"). Full BANT implementation is pending Miriam's review of the deal section.
For RFQ/spec projects involving multiple dealers and locations, HubSpot's associated records feature allows deals to be linked to other deals. The pattern:
- Create a parent deal as a placeholder for the RFQ/project
- Attach the RFQ document
- Create child deals per location or dealer quote, linked back to the parent
This preserves the project lineage without conflating separate commercial opportunities.