Every company claims to have a sales process. Few have one whose team follows every day. Even fewer have one reflected in their CRM in a way that helps them strengthen revenue operations.
When we advise clients on HubSpot, the conversation always returns to the same truth: the CRM only performs as well as the structure it is built on. When the structure is unclear, the system mirrors that lack of clarity. Pipelines drift. Forecasts wobble. Teams spend more time debating numbers than improving them.
Mapping your sales process in HubSpot CRM brings discipline to the parts of selling that often get handled on instinct. It forces you to slow down, define your approach, and give your team a reliable framework they can use without reinventing the wheel each quarter.
And once that structure is in place, HubSpot becomes far more than a database. It becomes a tool that reveals patterns, exposes bottlenecks, and shows you where revenue leaks happen long before you see them on a dashboard.
In this blog post, we’ll guide you through mapping the sales process in HubSpot CRM, aligning it with your sales behavior.
Mapping Your Sales Process in HubSpot CRM: 6 Key Steps
Here are the six key steps to build a sales process in your HubSpot CRM:
Step 1: Start by Understanding Your Sales Process Before You Begin
Before you open HubSpot, take a step that most teams skip. Discuss with your sales, SDR, marketing, and customer success teams and walk through the process when a new contact appears in your system. Forget the slides and the SOPs for a moment. Ask the team to describe what happens during a typical week without embellishment.
You will hear different answers, which is not a signal of failure. It is a signal that your CRM has been reflecting mixed assumptions. Some reps might create deals too early. Others might wait far too long. Some call every lead while others wait for a signal of interest. Marketing might believe they are delivering leads at the perfect time. Sales might feel those leads need another round of qualification.
Therefore, you should decide the criteria for the prospect moving from one stage to another. Ask yourself:
- When does a Lead become an Opportunity?
- What qualifies a deal as “Closed Won” versus “Closed Lost”?
This is the moment where you begin documenting the sales process. Write out the path a buyer takes from the first interaction until the point they decide. Keep it grounded in what happens, not what you hope will happen. If certain steps feel vague, note them. Those gaps typically explain why your pipeline has areas where deals accumulate without progress.
When the sales process is clear, you have the foundation you need. Everything inside HubSpot sits on top of these definitions.
Read More: Renewal Pipeline in HubSpot
Step 2: Translate the Process Into a Sales Pipeline
Once your team agrees on the key stages of the sales journey, open HubSpot and begin shaping your pipeline. The goal is not to create a perfect sequence. The goal is to create a sequence that your team recognizes from their daily work.
Although HubSpot provides a Sales Pipeline with pre-set stages, you need to customize it according to your process.
So, how do you set up the sales pipeline in HubSpot CRM?
In HubSpot, navigate to your deals pipeline settings and either start from scratch or modify the existing settings.
Most companies benefit from creating a new pipeline so they can build without navigating the debris of old habits. Name the pipeline in a way that leaves no confusion. For example, “Sales Pipeline – [Product/Market]”. 
Source: HubSpot
Then add the deal stages that represent your sales process. Stages should describe what has happened, not what you hope will happen.
HubSpot’s default pipeline includes seven deal stages – Appointment Scheduled, Qualified to Buy, Presentation Scheduled, Decision Maker Bought-In, Contract Sent, Closed Won, and Closed Lost.
As you add each stage, ask yourself whether every rep would interpret it the same way. If the answer is uncertain, refine the description before moving on. The more ambiguity you eliminate now, the easier it becomes to coach performance later.
HubSpot lets you assign deal probabilities, helping leaders forecast with a clearer view of revenue potential. For example, you might set a stage like “Proposal Sent” at 60%, meaning on average 60% of deals at that stage eventually close.
These probabilities do not need to be perfect on day one. Estimate them based on experience. Over time, adjust them as patterns emerge.
And do not overlook required fields. When a deal enters a certain stage, HubSpot can prompt reps to capture details that the business depends on. Budget range. Expected timeline. Stakeholder information. These guardrails ensure your data becomes more complete as deals mature.
Once the pipeline reflects how your team works, not how software diagrams are typically drawn, you create the foundation for consistent selling behavior.
Step 3: Map the Lead Stages with Lifecycle Stages and Lead Status
The deals board is only one part of your sales ecosystem. A significant portion of selling happens before a deal is created. HubSpot provides two tools that bring structure to early-stage engagement: Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status.
Lifecycle Stage lets you know where a contact is in the broader customer journey. These stages include Subscriber, Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), Opportunity, and Customer.
These stages help business leaders understand the broader phase of a contact. For example, when a new contact fills out a demo request form and is accepted by sales, you might move them to SQL.
If that contact has an associated deal created, HubSpot can automatically switch their lifecycle stage to Opportunity (and later to Customer once a deal is Closed Won).
You should keep the lifecycle stages updated so that teams can see if the lead is a fresh one, or an opportunity or an existing customer. It also helps bridge marketing and sales teams as marketing will know when to hand off (e.g., when someone becomes an MQL), and sales will know the context of how that lead was nurtured.
Lead Status, on the other hand, reflects the day-to-day progress of what your sales team is doing with the lead in the early and mid sales process. While the lifecycle stage explains the broad category, lead status is a custom field that you can tailor to fit your process.
HubSpot provides a default set of lead statuses, such as New, Open, In Progress, Open Deal, and Unqualified, but you should adjust these to match your workflow.
For instance, common lead statuses might include New Lead, Working, Connected, Qualified, Nurturing, Recycled, or Disqualified. These statuses let your sales reps label what’s happening with each person:
- Is this a brand-new inquiry we haven’t touched yet?
- Are we actively in conversation?
- Have we deemed them a good fit (qualified) or not a fit (disqualified)?
To configure Lead Status in HubSpot, go to Settings >Data Management> Properties, find the Lead Status contact property, and edit the options to align with your process.
For example, New could mean a lead that hasn’t been contacted, Working means the sales rep is actively attempting contact, Connected means you’ve had a conversation, Qualified means they met your criteria and a deal was created, etc.
The combination of Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status turns the first half of your funnel into a structured system rather than a loose collection of names. The more consistent these updates become, the more predictable your pipeline grows.
Step 4: Use Automation for Tasks and Reminders at Each Stage
One of the benefits of mapping your sales process in HubSpot is to automate routine tasks, ensuring timely follow-ups. HubSpot’s Sales Hub (Professional and above) allows you to set up pipeline stage automations.
This means you can have HubSpot automatically create tasks, send notifications, or even update fields whenever a stage changes.
Source: HubSpot
In HubSpot, you can configure the automation by Settings > Objects > Deals > Pipelines, selecting your pipeline, and clicking the Automate tab.
When a deal moves into a new stage, HubSpot can create a follow-up task. When a proposal is set out, it can schedule a future reminder. When a deal reaches a stage that typically requires sales manager oversight, HubSpot can notify the right person.
For a more complex process, you can use HubSpot’s Workflow tool (available in Professional and Enterprise tiers only).
Workflows allow branching logic by automating things like sending personalized emails to a contact when they hit a stage, updating multiple records, or enforcing data hygiene (e.g., if a deal is marked Closed Lost, a workflow could set the contact’s lifecycle stage to Lead again or add them to a nurture sequence).
By automating repetitive tasks and reminders, you free up your sales team to focus on selling. It also standardizes your process so that a deal that hits a given stage will receive the same follow-up steps, ensuring consistency.
Step 5: Assign Ownership and Manage Handoffs
Ownership is often the most overlooked part of process mapping. It is also the part that fixes more breakdowns than any dashboard ever will.
In HubSpot CRM, every contact and deal has an Owner property (typically the sales rep responsible).
Mapping your sales process should include deciding who owns a lead at each stage and when ownership changes. For instance, when and to whom does marketing hand off to sales? HubSpot provides tools to automate and manage the handoff process.
If marketing nurtures leads until they meet qualification criteria, could you document that handoff?
If SDRs handle first conversations and pass opportunities to another rep, build that sequence into HubSpot. If your account management team takes over once a contract is signed, ensure HubSpot reflects that transition without delay.
HubSpot supports round-robin assignment, territory-based routing, and automated reassignment when deals reach defined points. Use these tools to eliminate lapses in responsibility. When ownership is ambiguous, deals drift. When ownership is clear, deals move.
Therefore, mapping your sales process in HubSpot isn’t just about stages; it’s also about team members. Define who should work what and when, and use HubSpot’s assignment capabilities to enforce it.
Proper owner assignment and timely handoffs ensure every lead is followed up on and every deal is owned, improving conversion rates.
Step 6: Track the Performance Metrics of Your Sales Process
Source: HubSpot
Once your sales process is mapped in HubSpot with lifecycle stages, lead statuses, pipelines, automation, and ownership rules, you can track performance and spot bottlenecks.
The most important benefit of a well-mapped sales process is the clear visibility of the sales pipeline. You can view all deals in their respective stages, along with totals and even weighted forecasts per stage on the Deals board.
You can examine how long deals remain in each stage, which reveals friction you may have normalized. You can see how many leads move from MQL to SQL and how many never reach that point. You can start asking questions like:
- Are we qualifying consistently?
- Are we moving opportunities at the right pace?
- Are we engaging decision makers early enough?
To answer this, different types of reports are available in HubSpot reporting tools, including:
Funnel and Conversion Reports
Source: HubSpot
HubSpot offers funnel reports that allow you to measure conversion rates between stages. You can build a funnel report for lifecycle stages (e.g., Lead to MQL to SQL to Customer) to analyze the percentages of leads making it through each step.
Similarly, you can create deal pipeline funnel reports to analyze the percentage of deals moving from the initial stage to closed won.
Forecasting and Goal Tracking
Source: HubSpot
HubSpot generates a weighted forecast of revenue as deal stages have win probabilities and amounts. The sales managers can use the Forecast tool to track the sales target.
For example, if your quarter goal is $100k and the weighted pipeline shows $120k, you know you’re on track (assuming probabilities hold). If it’s showing only $50k, that’s a red flag to either generate more pipeline or improve conversion.
Deal and Activity Insights
Source: HubSpot
Mapping your process allows you to report on activity and efficiency. You can track how long deals stay in each stage on average, as HubSpot’s sales analytics can provide time-in-stage data.
You can also ensure your reps are following the process. For example, run a report of deals with missing next steps or of leads that have been in Working status for over 30 days without conversion.
With structured reporting, you’ll be able to answer questions like:
- How many SQLs did we get this month?
- What’s our win rate from demo to close?
- Which stage loses the most deals?
These insights will let you continuously refine your sales strategy.
How Can The Automation Strategy Group Help?
Most businesses do not contact us because they want help rebuilding their pipeline. Instead, they have bigger issues, such as poor forecasts, dashboards that do not align with quarterly expectations, leads entering the CRM but not progressing through the pipeline, and a sales organization trying to do their best within a system that does not support the way they sell.
We come in to help businesses build that foundation from the inside out. We examine how buyers make buying decisions, how sales reps have conversations, and where in the sales process deals get stuck. We then build a HubSpot system that will allow your sales organization to operate within it every day.
The system includes clearly defined stages of the sales process, defined life-cycle paths for leads, lead status options that support your sales team, automated processes to support instead of distracting your sales team, and robust reporting that gives leadership an accurate picture of what’s occurring at any moment.
The result is a CRM that a sales organization can trust. Pipeline reviews are based on information, and the follow-up process is more reliable. Forecasting becomes more predictable, and the HubSpot platform moves from a data storage solution to an operational driver for all revenue-generating activities.
If you want a HubSpot setup built around how your business sells, book a free strategy consultation with one of our HubSpot experts.
Final Thoughts
When you create a sales process in HubSpot, it gives your revenue operations structure and certainty. Ensure that when you go into HubSpot, you have mapped all your Lifecycle Stages, Lead Statuses, Deal Stages, and Follow-Up Tasks in a way that reflects how your sales team operates.
This will make it much easier for everyone to know where every prospect is in their journey through your funnel, what the next action should be, and how each deal is progressing. Having this structure will also allow for automated processes, which reduce time wasted on repetitive tasks and allow your sales teams to focus on having meaningful conversations and closing deals.
Your sales process will continue to develop; therefore, you should continually review your sales processes as your organization matures. As you evolve product lines, team members, and market conditions, some of your lifecycle stages and dictionaries may need to be redefined.
HubSpot provides easy ways for you to make changes to these terms and ensures fortnights updates will keep you informed about what stages are current. Talk to your sales team about what works, where the handoffs between marketing and sales occur, and what gaps of uncertainty exist in that process.
Working with a HubSpot-focused partner can help you execute your HubSpot implementation successfully. By having a HubSpot expert, you can expedite your installation process while avoiding common pitfalls.
Experts can optimize the lifecycle stages, automating processes and reporting so that your HubSpot CRM flows seamlessly and drives growth in your business.
