I was in a working session with a client's new leadership team a few weeks ago, and we got stuck on one question: when does someone become a Lead?
Their answer was fit. Once we know enough about someone to say they match the ICP, they're a Lead.
My answer was action. Once someone has actually engaged with us, with a download, a form fill or a booked meeting, they're a Lead. Before that, they're something else.
Here's the thing about that question. It sounds like a naming argument, and it's really a reporting argument. Leads per month and lead-to-MQL rate are numbers a lot of teams report up. Change what Lead means and you change every rate after it, plus every goal attached to those rates. So this conversation gets tense. Kind of hostile, even, because nobody wants to be the person whose definition made the numbers look worse.
I had an answer I liked. I also knew I might be missing something. So instead of just picking one, I asked out loud, on a recorded call, with George B. Thomas and Chris Carolan at Friday's HubSpot Super Admin office hours. Neither of them is shy about telling me I'm wrong.
What I got back was better than a yes. Their advice: give people a starting line, call it Audience, and let them leave it from either direction. They didn't fully take my side. I'm still advocating for engagement, and I'll explain why.
Quick note: when I say Lead here, I mean the lifecycle stage, not the leads object. Same word, two different things in HubSpot. That comes up again below.
Why Subscriber Doesn't Fit Anymore
By default, the stage before Lead is Subscriber. As far as I know, it meant exactly what it sounds like: someone who subscribed to your emails. So, anyone reading this.
That made sense when HubSpot was mostly an email tool. HubSpot is a full CRM now, and for some teams it runs the whole business. Your CRM is not your email list. It's full of people who never subscribed to anything: cold imports, event lists, records pulled in from enrichment.
Calling them Subscribers just isn't accurate. Calling them Leads makes your lead numbers meaningless. They need a stage of their own.
And "lead" itself is a moving target. What it means in HubSpot has changed a lot in the years I've worked in it. It used to be just a lifecycle stage, and now there's a whole leads object too. When I tried to talk this issue through out loud before writing it, I lost the plot halfway through. If this topic makes your head spin a little, it's not just you.
What Lifecycle Stages Are Actually For
George said it more bluntly than I would have.
"If I import you into my database, you ain't done jack nothing. So I have to have a starting line stage."
Then he explained why it matters, and this is the part I want every portal owner to hear. George teaches lifecycle stages as a communication strategy. The better you know someone, the more personally you can talk to them. He walks it like a relationship: someone you just met at an event, then your brother, then your spouse, then your pastor. You talk to each of them differently.
That's how I've always thought about lifecycle stages too. They answer one question: how well does this person know us, and how should that change the way we talk to them? I think it's also why HubSpot built them to move forward and not back. Once someone knows you, they don't un-know you.
The starting line is the very first step.
"I just met you. I don't know jack squat about you. Let's get to know each other."
Give the First Stage a Name Everyone Understands
Chris cared most about the name. In his view, the name of that first stage decides whether it works at all. "Pre-lead" defines people by what they haven't done yet. "New" means something different in every company.
His pick is Audience.
"Anybody can look in the dictionary and see the word audience and see the same definition."
I'm a little less precious about the name than Chris is. I've seen New and Starting Line work fine. But Audience is a good word, and it's the one I'm recommending to my client. If your portal uses the leads object, getting the word "lead" out of your first stage saves everyone some confusion too.
Where They Landed: Both Lanes
So which of us was right, me or my client? Chris's answer was both. Audience gets two exits. They act, with a form, an assessment or a meeting link. Or you learn enough about them to act toward them. Either one moves them to Lead.
George agreed with him on the spot.
"There's definitely both lanes."
I'll be upfront that this is closer to where my client started than where I did. And I get the appeal. Nobody has to win the definition fight, because both kinds of movement count. Different businesses are going to land in different places on this, and for some of them, both lanes will be the right call.
If you want more of Chris's thinking on this, he's on Tuesday's Loop Marketing and AEO office hours with me, and Thursday's Unified Revenue View. Bring your lifecycle stages. He'll be happy to talk about it. Trust me 😉
How They Got to You Decides the Play
The other thing I took from George is that how someone arrived tells you what to do next.
If you brought them in (imports, event lists, scraped data, intent signals), they're in Audience, and it's on you to earn the first interaction. George described a three- or four-email engagement sequence for exactly this, plus forms that ask for persona, so you learn who someone is.
If they came to you (a download, a subscribe, a webinar), they're already a Lead. George's advice for them is the opposite.
"I let you download the thing and enjoy the thing. And when you decide it's the day that you want to book a meeting to talk to me, book a meeting to talk to me."
He closed the session with the same two modes.
"Thing one, you know when to just sit in the pocket … and wait. Thing number two, you know when to grab their hand, walk with them, and communicate in a way that helps them to get to the next step."
Most teams are better at the second one. Letting someone sit is a decision your team has to make on purpose, because no setting in the portal will make it for you.
Why I'm Still Advocating for Engagement
This part is mine, not something from the call.
I keep coming back to George's own frame. If lifecycle stages measure how well someone knows you, then learning they match your ICP doesn't move them. That's you knowing them. They still might never have heard your name.
So for me, Lead means they engaged. Whether someone's a good fit is a separate question, and I think it deserves its own property.
Not everyone in your CRM is a potential buyer. You've got partners, vendors, colleagues. And if your content is good, you've got people who love it and will never buy: students doing research, people in the industry whose work doesn't line up with what you sell. That's a great problem to have. It just doesn't belong in lifecycle stage.
Put fit in its own field and you can:
Filter non-buyers out of reporting and promos completely
Split them up, so partners, vendors and researchers each get their own value
See how many people in your audience are a good fit, and how many you don't know enough about yet
Then lifecycle stage can stick to what George described: measuring the relationship. And if you do go with both lanes, this property is still worth building. It's the cleanest way to run the second lane, with Fit hitting Good fit as the trigger. You can report on how many people in Audience become Leads, then how many of those Leads become MQLs. Two clean numbers instead of one muddy one.
Setting It Up in HubSpot
Three pieces: a new stage, a new property, and two workflows.
The stage: In lifecycle stage settings, add Audience directly before Lead. Give it a one-line definition everyone can repeat: people we care about who haven't engaged with us yet, and who we don't know enough about yet.
The property - Create a dropdown called Fit, with values like Good fit, Not a fit, Partner, Vendor and Unknown. Default it to Unknown. Use it to filter reporting and promos, never to move lifecycle stage.
Workflow 1: Audience by default - Trigger: contact is created. Delay: five minutes, so form submissions get their stage first. Filter: lifecycle stage is unknown. Action: set lifecycle stage to Audience. On every import, map a lifecycle stage column too, so nobody lands in Lead by accident.
Workflow 2: Engagement moves them to Lead - Trigger: contact submits any form, or books a meeting through a meetings link. Filter: lifecycle stage is Audience. Action: set lifecycle stage to Lead. For the second lane, add one more trigger: Fit becomes Good fit. Forms can also set lifecycle stage on submission, so check every form, including the old ones nobody remembers building.
Two caveats before you build:
The leads object - If the portal uses it, moving someone into the Lead lifecycle stage may also create a record in the leads object. Adding a stage in front of Lead changes when that happens, so map it before you turn anything on.
Moving backward - HubSpot moves lifecycle stage forward on its own, not backward. If someone ever needs to go back to Audience, the workflow has to clear the stage before setting it again.
One more, from George: give persona a home outside the form. He sets it after a meeting-link call, sometimes by hand, sometimes by having an agent read the call transcript and set it in HubSpot.
Try This Before You Change Anything
Pull every contact currently in Lead and add Original source as a column. Count how many came in through an import.
That's how many of your "leads" never did anything. It's also what your lead-to-MQL rate has been dividing by.
Bring that number to your next lifecycle conversation. It tends to end the naming argument pretty quickly.
I don't think I've got this fully figured out. What counts as a lead has already changed a few times since I started in HubSpot, and it'll probably change again. This is where I am today.
So hit reply and tell me how your portal does it: both lanes like George and Chris, or action only like I started with. And if you think I'm wrong, tell me that too. I'll read every one.
- Casey
Updates from last week worth your attention
Export your AEO prompt data | Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise | Live
AEO prompts now export to a CSV, one row per answer, plus a separate citation-by-URL export (Marketing > AEO > Prompts > Export). What to do: pull it once and read what HubSpot set up for you. Most AEO setups I walk into were clicked through rather than reviewed, and the export is how you audit the prompts, the ICPs and the products before you trust the coverage number. If you don't see it yet, it may not have reached your portal.
Consent-based email tracking | All hubs and tiers | Public beta
A consent record on each email address now governs open and click tracking for marketing and one-to-one emails, built for Italy's and France's rules. What to do: if you email contacts in either country, turn it on now. If you don't, it's still the cleanest way to answer "are we allowed to track this person" with a property instead of a policy doc.
Ask Breeze Assistant how your team uses Breeze Assistant | All hubs and tiers | Live
Message counts, adoption rates and team breakdowns over the last twelve months, inside the assistant. What to do: if Breeze adoption is on your plate, ask it this week and keep the answer. Chris called it his favorite of the day, and it's the first real way to check adoption without building a dashboard. Partners, note that you'll need super admin in the client's portal, which often isn't the HubSpot admin.
These came off the daily morning show, Another Orange Morning, where Chris Carolan, Casey Hawkins, and friends go through all of the updates live.
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