How to Use HubSpot Sales to Track Deals and Pipelines

Most sales teams technically have a pipeline. The problem is that nobody quite trusts it. A rep says a deal is almost there, the CRM shows it still in qualification, and the close date has been pushed back three times. The board looks full, but the revenue is hard to call.

Learning how to use HubSpot Sales means understanding both the tool and the habits that make it useful. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the full process in sequence: setting up your pipeline, creating deals, tracking activity, using sequences and tasks, reviewing pipeline health, and building the habits that keep everything accurate.

Step 1: Set Up Your Pipeline and Deal Stages

Go to Settings > Data Management > Objects > Deals > Pipelines. 

From there, you can use the default pipeline, create a new one, and configure stages: rename them, add or remove them, reorder them, and set the probability for each.

Stage probabilities matter for weighted pipeline value. HubSpot multiplies each deal’s amount by its stage probability to show you a weighted total in board view, which gives a more realistic read on pipeline health than raw deal value alone.

For the stages themselves, use names that describe something observable rather than a feeling. Vague labels like “Warm” or “Interested” mean something different to every rep. Stages that describe what happened are more useful:

• Discovery Completed
• Decision-Maker Engaged
• Proposal Delivered
• Contract Under Review
• Closed Won / Closed Lost

Each stage should also have a clear exit criterion. A deal moves from Discovery to Proposal when the discovery conversation is complete and the buyer has agreed to review a proposal, not because the rep feels good about it. That specificity is what makes your pipeline a reliable forecast input.

Step 2: Navigate the Sales Workspace

Once your pipeline is configured, your reps’ daily home is the Sales Workspace. Navigate to Sales > Sales Workspace.

The Workspace surfaces your assigned deals, open tasks, upcoming meetings, and sequence activity in one view. It shows which contacts need follow-up, which deals have gone quiet, and what is on your plate for the day. The Deals board is for reviewing the broader pipeline; the Workspace is for getting through it.

Step 3: Create a Deal

Navigate to Sales > Deals or open the Workspace and select Create deal. Fill in these fields before saving:

• Deal name (specific enough to identify the opportunity at a glance)
• Amount and expected close date
• Pipeline and deal stage
• Deal owner
• Associated company and contacts

Associations connect the deal to the broader CRM record. A deal without the right company or contacts loses context for reporting, communication, and account history. If your team sells defined products, add line items so deal value reflects what is being sold rather than an estimate.

Step 4: Use the Deal Board and List View

The board view shows deals as cards across pipeline stages. You can drag a card into the next column to advance the stage, though opening the deal record and updating it directly gives you more control over what gets logged at the same time.

Customize board cards to show the fields your reps need at a glance: amount, close date, deal owner, and next step are the most useful.

Switch to list view when you need to sort or filter across the full pipeline. List view lets you filter by:

• Owner or team
• Close date range
• Stage
• Create date
• Any custom property

List view is particularly useful for pipeline reviews and spotting stale deals across multiple reps at once.

Step 5: Track Emails and Use Templates

Connect your Gmail or Outlook inbox under Settings > General > Email. 

Once connected, emails sent through HubSpot are logged to the contact and deal timeline automatically, and you can see when a prospect opened or clicked your message.

Email templates save the messages your reps write repeatedly. Go to Sales > Templates to create them. Templates support personalization tokens that pull from CRM properties, so the same template can address each contact by name, company, and relevant deal detail without manual editing every time.

Step 6: Enroll Contacts in Sequences

Sequences let you enroll a contact in a series of timed emails and tasks without managing each step manually. Every message goes out from the rep’s own email address and stops automatically when the contact replies.

• To create a sequence: go to Sales > Sequences, select Create sequence, and add your steps. Each step can be a templated email or a task reminder to call, connect on LinkedIn, or complete a custom action.
• To enroll a contact: open the contact record, click the Sequences tab, and select the sequence. You can preview and edit each email before it sends.

Sequences work best for structured outreach: new lead follow-up, post-event follow-through, or re-engaging a quiet deal.

Step 7: Log Activity and Manage Tasks

Every meaningful conversation should be logged on the deal record: calls, emails, meetings, and notes. The goal is for anyone on your team to open the deal and understand what happened last, what the buyer cares about, and what should happen next.

Create a task from any deal or contact record by clicking the Tasks tab. Each task should have a specific description and a due date. View your full task queue from the Sales Workspace or at Sales > Tasks.

Step 8: Keep Deal Records Current

A deal record is useful only when it reflects the current situation. As conversations progress, keep these fields updated:

• Stage, amount, and close date
• Associated contacts and decision-makers
• Last activity and next step
• Key qualification details

If a buyer’s timeline shifts, update the close date. Leaving a stale date in place makes the pipeline look healthier than it is and makes forecasting unreliable. Amount and close date should reflect what the buyer has told you, not what you are hoping for.

You can also require certain fields before a deal advances to the next stage. Go to your pipeline settings to configure stage-specific required properties, so a deal cannot move to Proposal until the decision-maker is identified, or to Contract Review without a confirmed close date.

Step 9: Spot and Address Stalled Deals

Review your pipeline weekly and watch for these signals:

• No activity logged in an unusual amount of time
• No open task or scheduled next step
• Close date pushed back more than once
• Deal sitting in stage longer than your average sales cycle
• Proposal sent with no follow-up movement

When you spot a stalled deal, make a decision: requalify it, define a new next step, move it backward if the buying process has changed, put it into nurture, or close it lost. A dead opportunity kept active does not strengthen the pipeline. It makes the pipeline harder to read for everyone.

Step 10: Use Reports to Monitor Pipeline Health

Build a dashboard around the questions your leadership is already asking. These metrics give you the clearest picture of pipeline health:

• Stage conversion rate: Where are opportunities dropping out?
• Time in stage: Where do deals consistently stall?
• Win rate: How often does qualified pipeline become revenue?
• Average deal size: Are you moving toward larger or smaller opportunities?
• Deal velocity: How quickly are opportunities progressing?
• Closed-lost reasons: What patterns appear in the deals you lose?

Pipeline health and sales forecasting are different. Your pipeline shows where opportunities are and how they are moving. A forecast estimates what you expect to close in a specific period, using pipeline data plus timing, probability, and sales judgment. Both break down when deal records are outdated.

Make Your Pipeline Something You Can Trust

Your team should be able to open the pipeline and immediately understand what is active, what is moving, what is stuck, and what revenue may close. A pipeline that needs interpretation before every meeting is not serving anyone well.

An imperfect pipeline can be fixed. Clarify your stage definitions, update your active deals, add specific next steps, and remove opportunities that no longer belong. The improvements compound quickly once the habit is in place.

If your team is still figuring out how to use HubSpot Sales in a way that makes your pipeline trustworthy, Good Team can help. We work with B2B sales teams to clean up deal stages, standardize properties, improve pipeline rules and reporting, and build a HubSpot sales setup that reflects how your team sells.

Talk to Good Team now.