If you want to improve sales lead generation and revenue opportunities for your business, you need a sales plan and strategy, your marketing and sales team need to work together and, most importantly, marketing needs to provide sales with all the tools sales need to be more efficient.
Fortunately, HubSpot provides such tools. Sequences, templates, meetings and others, all make it easier for your sales team to identify contacts, interact with them and nurture them to a point of purchase.
When it comes to lead engagement, however, one of the most effective tools in HubSpot is ‘Lists’. Using lists you can segment your contact database and create custom contact views for your sales team, allowing them to see specific leads at a glance and at the detail.
But what are lists and how do they work?
In this blog, we’ll go through eight HubSpot lists that you can compile right now to support your sales team, and help them to improve their sales efficiency overall.
What are lists in HubSpot?
Lists in HubSpot help you to segment your contacts based on specific, defined criteria. For example, you can use page views or form submissions to filter your lists, helping your sales team to see specific contacts. You can also use lists to send marketing emails or communication to a specific set of contacts.
You can create two types of lists in HubSpot: active and static.
The difference between HubSpot's active and static lists
Active lists
Active lists are dynamic and automatically update when contacts who meet the list criteria join the list. They will also leave when they no longer meet the list criteria. For instance, you could create a list that shows only leads with the lifecycle stage of marketing qualified leads (MQL). The moment an MQL contact becomes a sales-qualified lead (SQL), they are removed from the list.
Static lists
Static lists, on the other hand, do not update when new contacts meet the criteria. They instead provide you with a view of a group of contacts who meet certain criteria at a specific time. These lists remain unchanged unless you manually add or remove contacts.
Ideally, you should be using active lists for your sales team so that they have the most up-to-date information – and below, we’ll discuss the eight lists your sales team need to streamline sales engagement.
How do I create a list in HubSpot?
To get started, log into HubSpot and click on the "Contacts" dropdown menu.
Next, select "Lists" to be taken to the main lists page where you'll see all of your current lists, both active and static lists. You can also filter through any lists that you may not need anymore if you're coming up on the list limit for your HubSpot subscription.
At the top right of the page, click "Create List" to begin creating a new one.
You'll then have the option to create a list of Contacts or Companies depending on what type of data you want to store in it.
Once you've selected which type of list you'd like to create, fill out all necessary information such as name, description, criteria, etc., and click Save List when finished.
Your new list will now appear in your main lists page and be ready for use.
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Eight HubSpot lists to support your sales team
1. Contacts assigned to your salespeople
For marketers, one of the most important things to do when a new lead is generated is to transition that leads over to sales for nurturing. Unfortunately, this simple process is often overlooked and forgotten – resulting in leads being left in the CRM for days, weeks and – in extreme cases – months before they are engaged.
From a sales and revenue generation perspective – this is unacceptable. The leads you generate need to be passed on to the relevant sales representative as soon as possible. Your sales team is a precious resource which should only be used to drive sales opportunities, not manage leads within the CRM – that’s what workflows are for.
So, what can you do to make it easier for them?
First and foremost, you can set up workflows in HubSpot that automatically assign leads (specifically MQLs) to a lead owner. This can either be done in a round-robin fashion – meaning the leads are divided equally amongst your sales representatives – or you can assign specific lead owners to each lead.
The second step is to create an ‘active list’ in HubSpot – these lists automatically update and contacts will join when they meet the criteria and leave the list when they no longer meet the criteria – for new leads generated. Using an active list, you can then group contacts by lifecycle stage and lead owner, allowing a specific sales representative to see just MQLs assigned to them.
Using this process, your sales representatives are always up-to-date with all the contacts that are their responsibility!
2. Contacts that have visited the site today / this week
Another really cool list to set up for your sales team is ‘recent visits’ – this list will coincide with real-time lead revisit notifications (if you have HubSpot Sales you will see lead revisits within your HubSpot activity feed) and allow your sales team to quickly engage with leads.
Essentially, set up a list in HubSpot that segments contacts based on their lifecycle stage (in this instance, lead, MQL or SQL) and page viewed (whether exact or general). This list will allow your sales team to see leads, MQLs and SQLs who have visited specific pages and when. If you have real-time notifications set up alongside this list, the moment at which a lead arrives on the website and views a specific page, your sales team can be on hand to greet them and ask if they need any help.
3. Contacts that have visited bottom-of-the-funnel page
Without a doubt, it would be beneficial for you (and your sales team, most importantly) to have a list set up to show leads who have visited bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) web pages or downloaded BOFU content, such as a pricing document, or request a demo.
The above actions are all strong buying signals and your sales team needs to have visibility of the leads who have engaged in such activity. Along with real-time notifications, this list would help your sales team to prioritise their engagement and connect with leads at their moment of need. It’s also an opportunity to add more value to lead engagements, as your sales team can ask leads if they have found everything they need!
Navigate to lists in HubSpot, create a new list, select the lifecycle stages you wish to target – in this case, lead, MQL and SQL, and define the page(s) viewed. Save the list and now your sales team can quickly identify leads who have visited specific web pages.
4. Contacts with a HubSpot score over X
You should have already set up lead scoring on your website to score your leads based on certain criteria. For example, if a lead submits a form on a bottom-of-the-funnel content offer, assign them x points. Lead scoring helps your sales team to understand how “sales-ready” a lead is and prioritises their engagement.
As mentioned previously, your sales team is a precious resource and needs to focus on leads showing signs of being ready to buy. And you can help them have visibility of the best leads through – you guessed it – a list.
You can set up a list in HubSpot to show you a lead – again, of a specific lifecycle stage – with a certain lead score. Maybe you want to see leads with a lead score between 15-30? Easily done in HubSpot. Or maybe you want to see leads with a lead score between 80-100? Done.
Setting up the lists is easy – but what’s important is the insight and visibility they provide. On the surface, they help your sales team to prioritise engagement, but once you look into each contact with forensic accuracy, you can start to uncover trends and begin to understand how they interact with your website.
All valuable information to have if you want to improve your website and sales lead generation.
5. Contacts with a likelihood to close of X
The HubSpot property “likelihood to close” is a property which represents the “percentage probability of a contact closing as a customer within the next 90 days”.
It works by using predictive machine learning algorithms – essentially, artificial intelligence – to analyse your customers and determine the probability that open sales contacts will close as customers in 90 days.
Cool, right?
Of course, you want your sales team to prioritise these people but you need to ensure they know who these people are and have visibility of them. Remember – your sales team process a lot of information and whilst they are most likely aware of the “hottest leads” you need to make it easier to find them!
So, another list you’ll want to create is a list around the ‘likelihood to close’.
6. Contacts at the opportunity lifecycle stage
A tidy list of all your current opportunities will allow your sales team to check on who they need to follow up with – and who they need to nurture through to fruition.
You can create a simple list to keep tabs on those at the ‘opportunity’ lifecycle stage – all you need to do is navigate to Lists in HubSpot, create a new list, select contact property and choose ‘opportunity’.
Create the list and you’ll be able to see all the contacts currently at the ‘opportunity’ stage.
7. Contacts who are current customers
Marketing and selling don’t end once someone becomes a customer.
It’s important to appreciate the simple fact that potential customers care less about what you have to say and more about what your customers have to say about you.
In today’s world, your customers are your best advocates!
On that basis, it’s in your best interests to keep your customers happy (perhaps by keeping in touch) and assist them with any issues that they have.
Current customers might be forgotten as new leads pour in but keeping a list of current customers will ensure your sales team are always aware of them and can set a time to touch base and see how they are.
8. Contacts who completed a specific form
If you have a specific form on your website that has a fantastic lead-to-customer rate – for example, 25% of all people who fill in this form become customers in a certain amount of days or months – wouldn’t you want to make it easy for your sales team to see the leads who complete this form?
Well, you can! Just set up a list based on whether or not a contact has filled in a specific form on your website. This list will allow your sales team to see and prioritise these “hot leads” and nurture them over time.
These HubSpot lists ultimately make your sales team more efficient and should be a part of your HubSpot setup.
Remember, your sales team are a precious resource that you need to preserve until your contacts show signs of being ready to buy or wish to engage with your salespeople. If you have a lead and list management process in place to relieve your sales team, you can streamline your lead qualification, management and handover, leading to more efficient marketing and sales activity overall.
As your sales team begins to receive contacts in a timely fashion – and know exactly where they are – they can scale up their activities, spending more time on activities that help grow the business, rather than rushing over to marketing asking: “Where did you put all the leads?!”.
Set your sales teams up for success
Investing in a HubSpot Elite Partner like Huble can be a game-changer for your company when it comes to getting the most out of HubSpot's powerful tools.
With a team of certified experts and years of experience implementing and optimising HubSpot for hundreds of companies, we can help you unlock the full potential of HubSpot's platform and drive real results for your sales teams and company.
From customising your lists to align with your specific sales process to integrating them with other tools to streamline your workflow, we have the expertise to help you take your sales efforts to the next level.
