On the Contacts screen inside HubSpot CRM, you'll see all of the leads you have access to. In many cases, that can mean seeing a list of hundreds or even thousands of contacts. As a
sales rep, you just want to see the people you need to be working with today. The question is, how do you find them? How do you make sure nobody's falling through the cracks?
The answer: you need to create some custom views. Click here for a video overview.
What are custom views?
HubSpot CRM has dozens of contact properties to capture important information about the people you're working with, including such basic details as name, email address, and phone number. You can filter your contacts so you only see the ones that have their properties set in a specific way, and you can also adjust the columns that are displayed so you only see the properties you're most interested in. A set combination of filters and columns is known as a view. HubSpot CRM comes with five standard views:
- My contacts - all of the contacts that are assigned to you.
- All contacts - all of the contacts that you have access to.
- My uncontacted - all of the contacts that are assigned to you and don't have any calls, emails, or meetings logged in the CRM.
- My recently assigned contacts - all of the contacts that have been assigned to you this month.
- Call queue - a playlist of contacts that you can cycle through. Click here for more information.
In addition to these standard views, you can create as many custom views as you want. Any time you filter the Contacts page, you'll be given the option to save a custom view using those filters. For instructions on creating custom views, check out this article in HubSpot's knowledge base.
Here are three ideas for custom views to help you organize your contacts into actionable lists.
View #1: My follow-ups
To create a custom view to help you know who to follow up with, add filters for these three properties:
- HubSpot Owner - This is the property that determines who a lead is assigned to. If you set this to "Me," it will show each user their own leads.
- Last Contacted - This property automatically populates with the date that the contact was most recently emailed or called or had a meeting. What you set this to will depend on how frequently you want to follow up with your leads, but "Last Week" or "Last Month" would be a good place to start. (NOTE: if you want internal actions such as notes and tasks included in this filter, use the Last Activity property instead.)
- Next Activity Date - This property only populates if the contact has a meeting or task scheduled for the future. If a person has something scheduled for the future, that means they haven't been forgotten, so you'll want to exclude any contacts that have a date in this property. To do this, select the "Is Unknown" option.
With the filters set this way, you'll see the contacts that are assigned to you that haven't been contacted within the past week or month and that don't have any scheduled activities in the future. By working through this view on a regular basis, you can ensure nobody's slipping through the cracks.
BONUS: If there's a minimum number of attempts you want to make, of if there's a particular number of attempts you want to give up after, you can add this additional filter:
- Number of Times Contacted - This property automatically updates with the number of times a contact has been called or emailed or had a meeting. Add a filter for this property and select "Is Greater Than" or "Is Less Than" and then enter a number.
View #2: Territories
Many sales teams divide leads up geographically. If you want to see all the new leads in your area that haven't been assigned to you yet, you'll want to create a view that looks something like this:
- HubSpot Owner - Set this to "Is Unknown" so you only see the leads that need to be assigned.
- State/Region - If your area is only one state, just put the appropriate state in the "Contains" box and you're done. In reality, though, most sales areas aren't quite that simple. Let's say, for example, you have a New England sales area. You can create a filter that includes all six New England states by putting the word OR (in all caps) between each one, like this: me OR vt OR nh OR ma OR ct OR ri.
This view will give you a list of all of the contacts in New England that haven't been assigned to a rep. If that's your territory, you can use the CRM's bulk edit feature to assign them to yourself.
View #3: Housekeeping
Is there a particular property that's especially important to your sales process? This might be a standard property such as phone number, or it might be a custom property you've created. If there's a property that's absolutely critical for every contact to have, you might want to create a housekeeping view to help you fill in the gaps. Here's how:
- HubSpot Owner - Set this to "Me."
- [important property] - Whatever the property is, you can add a filter for it and set it to "Is Unknown."
This will give you a list of your contacts that don't have this property filled in, and then you'll know where you need to add information.
Are there any custom views your team can't live without? Share them in the comments below!
