If your sales process is powered by a Google Sheet, some wishful thinking, and a CRM that only one person knows how to use, don’t worry, you’re in good company.
For a lot of B2B businesses, “sales process” means a tangled mess of disconnected tools, unclear handovers, and pipeline stages that were made up on the spot and never questioned again. You’re not scaling revenue, you’re duct-taping it together.
That’s where HubSpot comes in. And no, we’re not just talking about buying the software, we’re talking about setting it up in a way that supports how your business sells.
A smart, unified HubSpot sales process gives you structure, visibility, automation, and a CRM your sales team might use.
At Axon Garside, we’ve helped businesses across SaaS, manufacturing, and professional services swap chaos for clarity. We’ve rebuilt entire sales systems - turning “What’s happening with this lead?” into “Here’s what’s next, and here’s who’s responsible.”
In this blog, we’ll show you exactly how we do it.
We’ll cover:
You’ll get the playbook, not just the pitch.
Or get a quick look at what a smart setup should include over on our HubSpot CRM implementation page.
Let’s get one thing straight: HubSpot is not magic.
It won’t fix your sales process just by being installed. It won’t stop reps from working leads off a Post-it note. And it definitely won’t align your teams if they’re not even speaking the same language to begin with.
The reality is this: HubSpot is only as good as the sales process it’s built on.
One of the most common mistakes we see in B2B businesses is rushing to configure pipelines, automation, and dashboards before anyone’s agreed on what the actual sales process looks like.
The result? A Frankenstein portal of misaligned pipelines, mystery properties, and reports that make no sense to anyone outside the RevOps team (if you’re lucky enough to have one). Reps ignore the CRM. Managers stop trusting the numbers. Everyone blames “the system.”
But the problem wasn’t HubSpot. The problem was building a sales platform without a sales blueprint
Before you even open HubSpot, you need to agree on the fundamentals:
Without answers to those questions, your HubSpot setup is just guesswork.
Take qualification, for example. A lot of the confusion we see comes down to how teams interpret HubSpot leads versus lifecycle stages or lead statuses. If you’re not aligned on what a lead is, your whole pipeline falls apart before it’s even built.
The same goes for misunderstanding lead status vs. lifecycle stage vs. deals. If your team treats these like interchangeable labels, your CRM becomes a mess of inconsistent data, and your sales team starts tuning out.
Another reason to get your process straight before setting up HubSpot? Alignment.
Sales, marketing, and delivery teams all approach the CRM differently. If you don’t unify their expectations from the outset, you’ll end up with:
The sales process in HubSpot should act like connective tissue between all these functions. It can’t do that if the structure is muddled or inconsistent.
This is why many teams end up with the exact problem described in why sales teams hate their CRM - because the system was built without proper consultation, clarity, or consistency. And then they wonder why no one logs in.
Without a clearly defined sales process, HubSpot can’t give you reliable reporting. It’s that simple.
If pipeline stages don’t mean the same thing to everyone, then your deal velocity, conversion rates, and close probabilities will be worthless. And if those numbers are off, your forecasts will be too, and you’ll end up setting targets based on gut feel instead of data.
(Or worse, you’ll present a revenue forecast to the board that turns out to be complete fiction.)
With a structured process, though? You can track stage-to-stage conversion rates, spot bottlenecks, and understand why deals are stalling. You can start building forecasts based on real numbers, not sales optimism.
And HubSpot supports this beautifully… once the underlying process is solid.
When clients ask us to “help set up their HubSpot sales process,” this is where we begin. Not with pipeline design. Not with automation. With alignment.
We sit down with marketing, sales, and delivery and map out:
Then we design a system that reflects that reality.
We did exactly this with a client who had set up four separate pipelines, one for each type of product they sold. Each team had their own version of the truth. Forecasting was chaos.
Reporting was impossible.
We helped them consolidate everything into one shared pipeline with deal-type properties and filtered views. The impact? Alignment. Visibility. Clarity. And a sales process in HubSpot that finally made sense.
So if your current setup feels more like a spaghetti junction than a sales engine, don’t rush to rebuild it in HubSpot. Map the process first.
Then use the platform to bring it to life - properly, predictably, and profitably.
When most people think of HubSpot, they think inbound. But let’s be clear: outbound isn’t dead - it’s just disorganised in most B2B sales teams.
Cold outreach, follow-ups, calls, LinkedIn messages—done well, it works. But when it’s done without a system, it becomes inconsistent, untrackable, and incredibly hard to scale. That’s where HubSpot gives outbound the structure it’s been missing.
Here’s how we’d build an outbound sales process in HubSpot that actually gets results.
Before you even touch sequences or calls, you need a solid outbound sales strategy. That starts with knowing who you're targeting and what kind of sale you're making.
Are you selling a low-touch, transactional product? Or is this a longer sales cycle with multiple stakeholders, and a consultative approach? The answer dictates everything - from cadence design to qualification criteria.
Use HubSpot’s properties and filters to segment ideal customer profiles (ICPs), based on things like industry, revenue band, buyer role, and previous engagement. Create saved views in the CRM for priority segments so your sales team always knows who to call—and who not to.
HubSpot’s strength is in visibility. But you need to give it structure first.
This is where most outbound efforts fall apart. Reps dip in and out of outreach with no consistency. Follow-ups are missed. Opportunities die in the inbox.
HubSpot Sequences solve this by letting you build automated, multi-touch cadences, emails, tasks, and calls that keep outreach moving without needing micromanagement.
We break this down in detail in our post on HubSpot Sequences, but the key takeaway is this: you can scale personalised outreach without sacrificing control. Add reminders, manual steps, or call tasks into your sequences to keep things human.
For more advanced setups, triggering sequences based on deal stage, behaviour, or lead score, HubSpot’s automation tools take it to the next level. See our blog on HubSpot Sales Automation for how to use workflows to assign leads, rotate ownership, and trigger internal notifications automatically.
Outreach should feel consistent, relevant, and trackable. Sequences + workflows make that possible.
Outbound isn’t just email.
If you’re relying on HubSpot alone without plugging in your telephony tools, transcription software, or call tracking systems, you’re leaving valuable data on the table—and adding friction for your team.
HubSpot integrates with tools like Aircall, Dialpad, and JustCall to automatically log calls, pull in recordings, and track performance. Transcription tools like Gong or Fireflies add an extra layer of insight by highlighting objections, key themes, and talk-time ratios.
Everything should flow back into the CRM, call recordings, notes, transcripts—so reps, managers, and marketers get a single, shared view of what’s happening in each deal.
This also makes coaching easier. You can review calls in context and optimise messaging without relying on gut feel.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. And when it comes to outbound, most teams don’t track nearly enough.
In HubSpot, you can track:
Set up dashboards that visualise these metrics clearly. HubSpot lets you build out team dashboards as well as individual performance views, so SDRs and managers can stay aligned.
Using HubSpot Professional, you can also create sales goals directly in the CRM. Set monthly or quarterly activity goals, calls, meetings, deals created, and track performance against them.
This makes accountability easy and takes the guesswork out of whether your outbound motion is working.
Outbound isn't just about volume. It’s about precision, relevance, and consistency.
The best outbound sales processes in HubSpot are:
So your outbound engine’s firing. Great.
But that’s only half the story. What happens when someone raises their hand? Downloads an eBook? Books a call? That’s where your inbound sales process in HubSpot needs to kick in, and it can’t be a generic “one-size-fits-all” pipeline copied from a HubSpot template.
Your sales process should reflect what happens in your business, not what someone at a SaaS company dreamed up in a vacuum.
Time to break down how we’d build a true-to-life inbound funnel inside HubSpot.
Start by mapping your current sales journey, from the first proper sales interaction all the way to verbal agreement. If your pipeline stages don’t align with that, you're tracking friction, not progress.
Here’s a simplified version of what we often build for clients:
Sound simple? It should. The goal is clarity, not complexity.
This model ties directly into methodologies like BANT or MEDPIC. Each stage should correlate with key qualification milestones - Budget, Authority, Need, Timing, and help your reps gather the right info at the right time. That way, your pipeline becomes a living, breathing qualification tool, not just a graveyard of hopeful deals.
More importantly, your HubSpot sales pipeline should be built around this journey, not just sit alongside it. We explain how to structure it properly here.
This is where most businesses get it wrong.
Too many companies set up separate pipelines for every product, region, or team. One client—we’ll call them Makers - had 12 different pipelines running at once. Each campaign or offer had its own process. No one could see anything. Forecasting was chaos. Reporting? Forget it.
We helped them consolidate everything into a single, well-structured pipeline, with custom properties for things like service type or project category. Filters and dashboards did the segmentation—without creating silos.
(That same client worked with us on a full website project, too - you can read about it in our Makers case study.)
The principle is simple: one pipeline, one process. Use properties to filter, sort, and report—not separate pipelines.
This makes sales operations cleaner, deal reviews faster, and revenue tracking significantly more reliable. It also aligns sales with delivery, because operations need to know where each deal stands, not guess which pipeline it lives in.
Once your pipeline reflects reality, you can start doing the thing most leadership teams dream of: forecasting with actual confidence.
In HubSpot, you can track:
And because all of this is tied to clearly defined pipeline stages and structured deal records, you’re not making guesses. You’re making decisions.
We go into more detail in our post on sales KPIs, but the headline is this: HubSpot makes it easy to turn process into performance, if your pipeline’s been built with clarity and intent.
Forecasting doesn’t have to be an end-of-quarter panic. It should be a weekly checkpoint, baked into your CRM, and based on consistent activity and behaviour across your sales team.
Inbound sales work best when your CRM reflects how you sell, not how you wish you sold.
That means ditching cloned pipelines, aligning on qualification frameworks, and designing every stage to guide the buyer forward, not to pad the forecast.
Build your funnel around real rep conversations. Use HubSpot to enforce structure, automate admin, and surface real insight.
Because when the pipeline is right, the rest of the system works better, from lead routing and forecasting to delivery handovers and client satisfaction.
By now, you’ve got a clean pipeline, qualified leads flowing through it, and forecasts that don’t require three disclaimers. Good. Now, to talk about where most sales processes start to wobble: handover.
This is the moment your shiny new deal leaves the pipeline and lands in the hands of delivery. And if that handover consists of a Slack message and a vague “They want what we always do,” you're in trouble.
But HubSpot, when properly set up, can automate, track, and support every stage of the sales journey and what comes after. Here’s how we make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
Manual admin is the fastest way to kill momentum. The good news? HubSpot can automate almost everything, without turning your CRM into a black box nobody understands.
You can set up workflows to:
It’s not about removing humans. It’s about making sure they focus on selling, not chasing paperwork.
If your sales team is toggling between five tools just to get through a call, that’s not a tech stack, it’s a tech problem.
HubSpot integrates with a growing list of productivity tools—think meeting schedulers, transcription apps, sales enablement platforms, AI note-takers, and proposal builders. When set up properly, these tools work together to streamline the sales cycle and tee up delivery with everything they need.
Call recordings? Automatically pulled into the contact record. Meeting notes? Transcribed, tagged, and shared with the team. Collateral sent? Tracked and logged without anyone lifting a finger.
This kind of transparency not only improves follow-up, it gives your delivery team the full context of what was promised, when, and to whom. No more “I thought sales already covered that…” awkwardness.
Here’s where it all ties together. You’ve done the hard work of qualifying, nurturing, and closing a deal. But unless that deal lands with the delivery team cleanly, you’re still losing value.
Your HubSpot setup should support a seamless handover. That means:
When you pass that baton, it shouldn’t be fumbled. It should be more like a relay team—fast, smooth, and without anyone having to shout “Where’s the client brief?”
Set it up right, and the CRM becomes your glue - not just between sales and marketing, but between sales and delivery, too.
Automation and integrations aren’t about shiny features—they’re about reducing friction. If your sales process stops dead at “Closed Won,” you’re not selling - you’re stalling.
With HubSpot, you can keep deals moving, keep teams informed, and keep customers happy. Which, let’s be honest, is the whole point.
Up next? How to tie it all together with strategic oversight that drives performance, not just pipeline padding.
Everything we’ve covered - strategy, pipeline design, automation, reporting - it all leads to one thing: performance.
And not just the “we think it’s working” kind. We’re talking about measurable, repeatable, scalable sales performance driven by clarity, not chaos.
The reality is, most B2B sales teams aren’t lacking effort. They’re lacking structure.
Misaligned stages, unclear handovers, broken visibility between sales and delivery - it all adds up to wasted time, lost deals, and painful reporting conversations.
But when you centralise your sales process in HubSpot—and build it around how your team actually sells—you move from firefighting to forecasting. From gut feel to real data. From reactive to predictable.
This is what separates average CRMs from growth engines.
HubSpot gives you the tools. But if you want results, it starts with getting the process right first.
Download our free guide, The 5 Stages of a Successful HubSpot CRM Implementation. It’s the step-by-step blueprint we use with clients across manufacturing, SaaS, and professional services to reimplement their CRM and unlock serious commercial value.
You’ve seen how we’d set it up, now see how to make it happen.