How to Automate HubSpot Lead Statuses (Practical Guide 2023)

Lifecycle stages' governance rules.

Before we begin, check the fundamental lifecycle stages' governance rules to keep in mind while doing automation.

Okay. It's time for heavy lifting. This is the process you should go through.

1. Defining stages and triggers
2. Building inclusion lists for each contact lead status
3. Building inclusion lists for each company lead status
4. Building workflows 

Define stages and triggers 

Before jumping into automating lead statuses, you need to define triggers that will move certain contacts and companies from one status to another.

Caution: in case of lead statuses, you need to create separate triggers, both on the contact and company levels.

Company lead statuses and triggers

Build inclusion lists for contacts and companies

In turn, the company inclusion lists make sure that the company inherits the correct lead status from the contact.

Remember, you need to build separate lists for contacts and for companies.

Let's look at the example of RAW and Assigned lead statuses inclusion lists.

Inclusion List for the RAW lead status

To make the company inherit RAW lead status from the contact you create a separate list that looks like this.

Keep in mind, that you need to build inclusion lists for all lead statuses, both on contact and company level.

Build workflows for lead statuses

In this step, you build 2 types of workflows:

1. Set lead status to contact - if contact meets the criteria defined for specific lead status, assign a lead status to it.
   
2. Set lead status to the company - the company inherits the highest lead status from the contact assigned to that company
   

Again, let's look at the example of RAW and Assigned lead statuses for contacts and companies.

Set New Contacts to RAW Workflow

Whenever a new contact is added to the database it will get lead status RAW.

Same thing with a company associated with that contact

Set RAW Lead Status to Company Workflow

Whenever a contact meets a trigger it will change status from RAW to Assigned.

This is how all properly set-up lead statuses work together with lifecycle stages in HubSpot.

If you want to learn how to automate lifecycle stages, read this article.

Remember, similar to Lifecycle Stages, to make Lead Statuses work you have to:

• define triggers for all lead statuses
• build inclusion lists both for contacts and companies
• build workflows both for contacts and companies
• turn on lead statuses workflows