Optimized Deal Stages: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

As the holiday season rolls around, the spirit of giving is in the air. But let’s be real—most of us dread the feeling of buying a gift that just won’t get used (looking at you, fondue pot from last year). The same applies to your HubSpot deal stages. Do you know if your sales team is actively using them? Or are they sitting underutilized like a festive sweater two sizes too small?

If your deal pipeline feels like the white elephant gift no one’s excited about, don’t worry. With a few tweaks, you can transform it into a tool your sales team will actually want to use—and maybe even thank you for. (Miracles do happen this time of year.) Let’s dive into how to optimize your deal stages so they’re clear, effective, and user-friendly.

1. Simplify and Solidify Your Stages

The first step to deal stage nirvana is simplification. Ask yourself: Are your stages clear, actionable, and past-tense? A straightforward naming convention like "Proposal Sent" instead of just "Proposal" signals to everyone that progress has been made. This little change can create a sense of momentum in your sales process. Make a copy of this document and start mapping out what you think your deal stages should look like.

Why this matters: Simplified, past-tense stages make reporting more accurate and adoption easier for your team.

👉 Pro Tip: When in doubt, consolidate. Fewer stages mean fewer opportunities for deals to stall.

2. Define Stages with Your Sales Team

Your sales team knows the field better than anyone. If your deal stages don’t align with their actual process, they’ll get ignored. Collaborate with them to define stages that make sense for their workflow while maintaining consistency for reporting.

Remember: Collaboration = Adoption. When your team has input in shaping the process, they’ll be more likely to use it. Utilize your Pipeline document you created from Step 1 and build coherent definitions for each of the deal stages together with your sales team.

🎁 Bonus Tip: Standardization is key. While individuality is great, a unified system ensures reporting and forecasting are accurate across the board.

3. Add Guardrails with Required Properties

Ever tried baking cookies without double-checking the ingredients? It’s a recipe for disaster—and so is advancing deals without capturing key information. Requiring properties like “Next Steps” or “Decision Date” ensures your pipeline has all the ingredients it needs for success.

These small steps improve data integrity and give your team actionable insights to keep deals moving. In your planning document from Step 1 there is a column for required properties. Working with your Sales Team, start to identify what they know at any given stage of the sale and start to build properties to capture this. Once your properties are built, you can require them by stage in Settings → Deals → Pipelines.

📊 Pro Tip: If you know what pieces of information you plan to report on, make sure to add these properties to the required/conditional stage properties. This will help your sales team keep important information top of mind, and never forget to fill out vital fields!

4. Automate the Mundane

Let HubSpot do the heavy lifting this holiday season. Automate tasks like follow-ups, deal assignments, and even nudging stalled deals. For example, set up a workflow that alerts a rep if a deal has been sitting untouched for too long.

This not only saves time but also ensures no deal gets left behind—like the forgotten toy at the bottom of Santa’s bag.

🎄 Workflow Inspiration: If are having trouble knowing what to automate and where to get started check out our blog post on workflows that can save you time!

5. Measure What Matters

Your deal stages are only as good as the insights they generate. Base your reporting on the fields you’ve required and track metrics like conversion rates, average deal velocity, and pipeline health. These reports will help you identify bottlenecks and optimize further.

📊 Pro Tip: Use HubSpot's reporting tools to visualize these metrics and share them with your team during pipeline reviews​​. Also, use the required fields (from Step 3) as a basis for what you want to report on!

Final Thoughts

Optimizing your deal pipeline isn’t just a one-time gift—it’s a season-long celebration of efficiency and clarity. By streamlining your stages, collaborating with your team, and leveraging automation, you’re setting everyone up for a winning year ahead.

Need help decking your HubSpot halls? Reach out to us at Pyxis Growth Partners. We’re here to turn your pipeline into the gift that keeps on giving.

🎁 Schedule a free consultation and unwrap the full potential of your HubSpot deal stages today!