Alrighty. So building and managing life cycle stages. So this is the fun part where we actually begin building our life cycle stages.

So there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind before we actually jump into building. Your documentation and your discovery workshop sheet has to be fully completed if there is any communication or alignment that needs to happen before this phase. So if you haven't done that at this point, please do so now. And once you are aligned with all of your stakeholders and you are confirmed that these are the things that we have aligned on and we are ready to go ahead and build it.

So let's move on and actually start building out lifecycle stages. Alright. Before we start building out the inclusion list and the workflows for our lifecycle stages automations, let's quickly jump on ahead into the settings and disable some of the native automations that will conflict with our automation that we'll build as discussed in our previous video. So go to settings, click on context within the objects, and go to lifecycle stage.

Disable all of these settings right here. And then while you're here, please refer to your discovery worksheet and get your life cycle stages aligned right here as you have in your discovery workshop sheet. So I'm using an imaginary example where I'm running a SaaS company which is basically targeting both super users and enterprise customers with two different acquisition levers at the same time. One is PLG and another is inbound.

So you see on the left side, I have, our typical inbound terminology that is prospect lead, MQL, SQL, and then we have a PLG based terminology. So people have signed up as a user. They have converted into a product qualified lead and then a level two product qualified lead. And then opportunity is someone who has a open deal with us and customer is common between those, activation, impact and lifetime value.

So in your HubSpot instance, you might not see these many lifecycle stages, you might see more. So don't worry about that. Make sure you have an alignment on what are the internal names. So please check those.

So the internal ID for this is the subscriber that is provided out of the box. So again, when you're renaming this, don't go super overboard on naming this. And if you do, please make sure you have internal documentation saying that. Otherwise, if you have a already, you know, cleans portal and you're just starting out, don't hesitate to delete a particular life cycle stage even if it's out of the box and create your own if it doesn't fit your need.

But generally speaking, subscriber, lead, MQL, SQL, opportunity, these are fairly common across the industry, but don't hesitate to rename them as needed. Alright. Next is the inclusion list. So, again, inclusion lists are actually optional.

You can actually directly build these triggers that we have captured during our discovery workshop directly into the workflows. But as I'm using this imaginary example where I'm using two different acquisition channels, so it will be very difficult for me to keep things clean. So I'm using lists, but definitely feel free to do it. So let me go to this.

So I have two different inclusion list folders. One is acquisition channel is PLG and another acquisition channel is inbound. And you can see I have eight different inclusion lists, one for every single life cycle stage by my acquisition channel. So I have total of sixteen different inclusion lists.

And then, your, inclusion list can have and should have all of the triggers that you have collected in your discovery workshop sheet. So please go ahead and enter all of your triggers. If you have anything that you wanna opt out, this is a good place to do it. And you have another option to suppress them in the workflows itself.

Okay. This is not a comprehensive course on building lists or workflows or any of those tools. It's just to, you know, share you the concepts of how these components are attached with each other. You can check out Academy's different courses which actually go deep dive into these tool specific lessons.

So feel free to explore those. So now that we have created this list, ensure that they are, like, clean, nicely, name formatted, and correctly arranged in the folder. So if you wanna access them, it will be much easier lift. Next is we are gonna build automations.

So go to automations, click on workflows, and then make sure you have a folder created for life cycle stage automations.

And again, I use this naming convention so it's easier for me to just rearrange and see them. So for example, SQL life cycle stage, you will see I am using both of the inclusion lists. Either this or that will make this life cycle stage to SQL or PQL based on where it's coming from. So again, very straightforward.

Just use either, directly your triggers that you have jotted down in your discovery workshop sheet or right here and then use that to trigger your life cycle stage and progress your contact or company to move from from a life cycle stage to this. One another setting that is very critical that you do is go to settings and, go to properties, search for life cycle stage. So one of the key limitations as you remember by nature, it is everyone can actually, you know, do everything. So by default, you will have this setting, everyone allowed to view and edit this thing.

So make it everyone allowed to view. That's it. Allow everyone to view and nothing else. You can assign it to different users and teams, but I'll keep it here for now.

Unless you have, like, a very structured team and department built out, then feel free to, you know, use this option. So once you make this now this property will now be only viewed and cannot be manually edited on the contract record and that is what we want. We only want this property to be updated via automations and the automations will be powered by the automations triggers that we have aligned with our stakeholders. And, hey, these are the entry criterias.

These are the behavioral cues that actually progresses our contact from one life cycle stage to another. So that's how we do it. So now you have to make sure that you have one workflow for every single life cycle stage movement.

And once you have done this, then either you can build other set of workflows and if you don't wanna over complicate things, then you can add delays or things like that and add some basic actions that you wanna take when a contact or company hits a particular life cycle stage that you wanna take. So the cleaner approach is where you actually build out new workflows and then build all of your automation based on that. And, again, those are fairly straightforward, so I'm not gonna showcase any real world examples, any sample examples. So please build those automations, and I'll see you in the next video where we will be talking about the measure phase, and we'll be talking through a couple of reports and dashboards.

That's pretty much it. Stay awesome. Keep doing it big. I'll see you in the next video.