How smart sales teams manage contracts in HubSpot

Updated on 05/08/2024

For small sales teams using HubSpot, the board view of deals acts like the central hub to all sales activity. At a glance, teams should be able to see which deals are in progress and which have successfully closed. 

In the pipeline, this is all based on the deal stages, custom deal properties, and filters you can easily set up. According to HubSpot: 

“Deal pipelines can be used to predict revenue and identify roadblocks in your selling process. Deal stages are the steps in your pipeline that signify to your sales team that an opportunity is moving toward the point of closing.”  

A well thought-out deal pipeline that reflects your sales process can help you guarantee a smooth experience for both your leads and customers. 

And for smart sales teams that want to level up, having an organized system for managing their HubSpot contracts is the next logical step. 

The more automated and intelligent your contract management solution is, the better. By integrating contract management for HubSpot, you can:

• Create and send contracts way faster

• Make sure your projects are delivered on time 

• Make sure your projects stay within budget

• Leverage reporting on your closed deals

Check out how savvy sales teams use the HubSpot deal pipeline to better manage contracts. You’ll learn how to easily create, send, and track your contracts within HubSpot. 

1. Customize your deal properties in HubSpot to manage your contracts.

An easy way to optimize your contract management while keeping it within the HubSpot platform is to create what are called custom deal properties to manage all your different contracts.

Deal properties such as “Contract Status” can be assigned the following statuses:

• Draft

• Sent

• Approved

• Signed  

Doing this can help you create and send deals faster, and keep everyone in the loop who needs to be. 

Adding other useful properties like “Contract Start Date” and “Contract End Date” can help you always send renewal contracts on time. For more information, see this how-to on using custom properties in HubSpot and HubSpot's default deal properties. 

Together with date stamp properties, you can track whether or not contracts have been sent and when they have been signed. Having this important information visible in the deal record can be leveraged when setting up automated emails or task reminders, to ensure that a deal or contract never goes unnoticed. 

This is the most simplistic way to keep your contract management in HubSpot, and it will help you stay abreast of the status of each contract. However, you won’t be able to edit a contract here directly, nor securely send a contract to a customer. For that, you’ll have to use HubSpot Quotes or a contract management integration with HubSpot. 

2. Use HubSpot Quotes to manage your contracts and accept payments

HubSpot Quotes will let you get more seamless when it comes to managing your contracts. This functionality is built-in with the HubSpot ecosystem, so you don’t have to add anything or pay extra.

In HubSpot Quotes, you’ll basically be creating a contract from a deal, starting with a customer quote. You prepare one of these quotes by including line items and then adding the appropriate information, including taxes, fees, discounts, and payment schedules. 

From here, HubSpot Quotes can manage your contract with e-signature for secure verification and even let you instantly accept payment. 

As long as you have HubSpot Payments set up or are willing to use the Stripe processor, HubSpot quotes can take you from quote to cash with no hiccups. The exception here are HubSpot users that are using Shopify, as this requires some workarounds. 

More Info: Get the Most out of HubSpot Quotes with These 8 Tips

3. Integrate your contract or quoting software with HubSpot

It’s all fine and good to get into a routine of creating contracts and sending them off. But if you’re moving onto the next one without thinking about the contracts that you’ve delivered, then you’re missing out on opportunities to better engage with your leads. 

If you’re not using customized deal properties or HubSpot Quotes to manage your contracts, you’re likely setting up proposals in a software solution like Pandadoc, Proposify, or PSOhub. All three of these apps and more integrate with HubSpot, making it easy for you to create, send, and track contracts all within one deal’s activity in HubSpot. 

More Info: A HubSpot Contract Management Integration That Actually Works 

Through these integrations, you’re able to automatically generate proposals based on a deal property or the deal stage. And if yours is smart and self-driving like PSOhub, then it can also help you create smart templates for your contracts that also translate to smart billing and invoicing. 

For businesses who don’t use HubSpot Payments or Stripe (or don’t want to), HubSpot Quotes doesn’t make much sense. If you don’t want to use HubSpot Quotes and want your contracts to sync with relevant project data in the future, a contract management integration is in order. 

Contract Management Software with Native HubSpot Integration

Want to make creating, sending, and tracking contracts across sales and projects easier? Here are the following contract management software solutions that currently offer a native HubSpot integration: 

• PandaDoc
• PSOhub
• Proposify
• Juro
• DocuSign
• Oneflow
• HelloSign
• ContractWorks
• Conga Contracts 

If you haven’t yet, make your life easier with HubSpot contract management.

Good sales teams use HubSpot. Smart sales teams manage their contracts within the HubSpot platform to save them time, money, and errors. 

Once you begin incorporating contract management into your CRM and internal sales process, you are on your way to better reporting! Now you’ll know exactly which contracts are leading to more closed deals and higher revenue. And with a smart, automated system for HubSpot contract management, you can be sure you’ll never miss a renewal. 

The first way smart sales teams manage contracts in HubSpot is by simply customizing deal properties. Those that want to make the process more seamless should use either HubSpot Quotes or integrate their contract management software with the HubSpot environment.