BluepointATM HubSpot CRM Simplification

Overview

During a HubSpot training session with BluePoint ATM, the team identified that using both Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status in parallel was creating redundant, confusing tracking. The agreed solution was to consolidate around Lifecycle Stage as the single primary metric and introduce a new Contact Type property to handle relationship-based segmentation.

This approach simplifies reporting, enables cleaner automation triggers, and makes it easier to exclude non-prospect contacts (e.g., vendors, GPOs) from marketing communications.

Problem: Redundant Tracking Fields

BluePoint was maintaining two overlapping properties:

• Lead Status — used to track granular sales progress (e.g., "Proposal Presentation")
• Lifecycle Stage — HubSpot's native funnel property (Subscriber → Lead → MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Customer)

This created confusion about which field to update, which to report on, and how automations should fire. Many contact records had Lead Status populated but Lifecycle Stage empty or inconsistent.

"I think what I would do here is stop using the lead status. Take the lead status off of the side panel and don't use it at all. Just use the lifecycle stage."
— Mark Hope (Asymmetric)

Solution: Lifecycle Stage as Primary Metric

Lifecycle Stage Configuration

Lifecycle Stage is the field HubSpot's automation engine is built around. All workflow triggers, reporting, and funnel views should reference this property.

Stages in use at BluePoint:

Changes made during the session:
- A Disqualified stage was added to capture contacts who should never be re-engaged (e.g., "do not call" requests).
- The Subscriber stage is a candidate to be renamed Prospect to better reflect BluePoint's use case — someone whose name was sourced from a list or event but hasn't been qualified yet.

Retiring Lead Status

The team agreed to stop actively using Lead Status. Rather than deleting it immediately (which would affect ~14 existing records), the plan is to:
1. Stop populating it on new contacts.
2. Leave existing values in place temporarily.
3. Hide it from the contact sidebar view once the team has migrated to Lifecycle Stage.

New Property: Contact Type

Purpose

BluePoint's CRM contains more than just sales prospects — it includes past customers, GPO partners, and vendors. Without a way to distinguish these, marketing emails and workflows risk being sent to the wrong audience.

Contact Type was created as a custom dropdown property to categorize contacts by their relationship to BluePoint, independent of where they are in the sales funnel.

Values

"The telephone company is a vendor. A GPO is a partner — a type of partner. You need a field that you can separate those. You can say, hey, this guy's a vendor, I don't want to send him marketing emails."
— Mark Hope (Asymmetric)

How to Use It

• Filtering: Create list views filtered by Contact Type = Lead to ensure marketing campaigns only target prospects.
• Exclusions: Exclude Vendor and GPO contacts from enrollment in drip sequences.
• Reporting: Segment pipeline reports by contact type to see lead volume vs. customer base at a glance.

Bulk Editing Contacts

To update existing contacts with the new Contact Type property, Mark demonstrated a bulk-edit workflow:

1. Create a filtered list view — e.g., filter by Lead Status is any of [active values] to surface all current active leads.
2. Set page size to 100 to see all records at once.
3. Click "Edit columns" (top right of the list view) to add Contact Type as a visible column.
4. Select all contacts using the header checkbox.
5. Use the inline edit — click the Contact Type cell and choose a value; HubSpot will apply it to all selected records.
6. Save the view — don't forget to save after configuring columns and filters.

Pro tip: When working through a contact list, right-click a contact name and open it in a new tab. This lets you review and update the record without losing your place in the list.

Action Items

Related

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