The purpose of this page is to:
- serves as a walkthrough for using the Expansion pipeline to capture and monitor revenue growth opportunities and activities with our existing customers.
- It also illustrates the end-to-end journey — from adding a customer opportunity to the pipeline all the way through to officially logging a closed deal.
‼️ There are a lot of ways to assign a customer to a deal. For the purposes of being consistent with our processes in Hubspot, we should always start from the customer’s company record.
Setting up the deal record
Open the company record view of the customer (the org). Look for Deals at the right panel. Click +Add
Create Deal panel will pop up on the right side of the screen which will show all relevant properties that need to be accomplished.
- Deal name: You will find that this is automatically pre-populated. You can ignore this property since the Deal Name should automatically change to “<Company Name> - <Upsell Type>” in the overview once you’ve completed the deal creation.
- Pipeline: Please choose Expansion Pipeline
- Dependent properties: you will expect the fields below to pop up after you pick the Expansion Pipeline
- Reported by: while this would usually be the owner of the company, sometimes the team member reporting is distinguished in special cases.
- Deal - No. of Settings: indicate the number of settings included in the opportunity.
- If it’s an upgrade, we normally reflect the total number of sites the customer currently has with us.
- If it’s an additional site, we only project the number of additional sites reported
- In other special cases, we only specify the number of sites related to the opportunity
- New ARR: the new total ARR amount from the customer after the upsell
- Upsell type: this is where the team simply distinguishes the nature of the revenue increase (you can find more information here)
- Source: this defines the channel where the risk is confirmed from. (More definitions here)
- Campaign: an optional dropdown property that allows the user to tag if the opportunity is related to an ongoing campaign.
- Related product category: An optional property that can be used to deliver insights to our PE&G teams if the existing opportunity is relevant to them.
Choosing the Deal Stage
Choose the appropriate stage where the customer is at in the expansion journey. You will find more information about the different stages on the linked databased below:
Expansion pipeline stages (right click, open in side peek for easy access)
‼️ While stages are sequential, they are not prerequisites to each other. If an opportunity is confirmed, select Opportunity Confirmed. If a proposal is already sent at the same time, go straight to Proposal Sent. For direct upsell logs (e.g., additional sites), select Closed Won immediately.
These Dependent Properties will show up when the pipeline stages (Opportunity Confirmed, Solution shared, Negotiation, and Proposal Sent) are chosen:
- Forecast Category (more details here )
- Commit
- Best Case
- Pipeline
- Upsell Notes: This is where we provide every relevant context to the upsell opportunity that essentially answers the questions below?
- Why are we including the customer into the Expansion pipeline?
- What have we found out about the customer’s context (usage, engagement etc.) from our systems?
- How have we been engaging the customer?
- Any developments to the opportunity development process?
Were Concessions given to the customer? is an additional property that shows up when the Deal Stage is in Proposal Sent, Closed Won, and Closed Lost.
- If Yes —> Which Concessions?
- Time-limited discount
- Permanent discount
- Free add-on/s
- Trial
If Closed Won is chosen as a deal stage, the following dependent properties will also show up:
- Billing Start Date: defines when the additional revenue would kick in
- Confirmation Message: as we normally do, it is important that we continue to capture the written acknowledgement from the customer
If Closed Lost is chosen, we just need to make sure we update the Upsell Notes to elaborate why an opportunity did not fall through as we hoped it would. It is important that teams understand this stage exists as compared to simply deleting an upsell pipeline entry.
Wrapping up the deal associations
The Deal Owner property is normally set to the owner (Customer Success Manager or Key Account Manager) of the customer. This would be automated from the company property as well.
Close date is essentially the reported date for when the upsell is logged OR the target date for when an opportunity is expected to be resolved. It is imperative that the deal owner updates this every time.
The Associated Deal with segment is necessary so we can connect the deal object to the customer company. Since you are doing this from the company record, the Associate records property under Companies is pre-populated.
‼️ You can ignore the Contacts segment
Once you’ve completed all necessary information required, click Create at the bottom.
‼️ WE ARE NOT YET DONE HERE!
Updating the opportunity value
The deal record view will show up after you have created the deal. Notice that the name of the deal (after 2 mins delay) will also be updated.
we will still need to update the line items to distinguish the relevant package, amount, and discounts involved.
On the right-side panel of the record view, please scroll to the Line items segment and click +Add.
The line item page will open that allows you to input the package-related details. Click Select from product library. A window will open from the right where you have to choose the relevant package.
‼️ Avoiding confusion:
- if you are picking the annual pricing - the amount will show up as ARR
- if they are picking the monthly pricing - the amount will show up as MRR
The selected package will then appear on the line item page. The TCV, ACV, and ARR should all reveal the same expected total ARR amount.
We need to add the number of sites involved under the Quantity column. If the deal involves a permanent discount, please add the percentage under the Unit Discount property (can be in percentage or absolute value). If the deal involves a time limited discount - please add the percentage under the Time Limited Discount % column and the respective period under the Time Limited Discount Period (Months) column.
Click Save then Update Deal Amount .
You will be brought back to the deal record view where the Amount on the top left panel of the summary shows you the Upsell Value (difference between New ARR and Old ARR derived from the company property)
Slack Notifications
Every time a new entry into the Expansion pipeline is created, a slack notification will be sent to #upsell-pipeline
If an expansion deal is moved to Closed Won, the slack notification below will be sent to #upsell
FAQ:
- Why is the Amount negative? This happens when you the line item has not yet been updated.Exp[e