-Sage Levene, VP of Marketing, Hypha HubSpot Development

Open Mic

Understanding HubSpot’s Leads Tool vs Contacts: What Salesforce & Zoho Users Need to Know Prior To a Migration To HubSpot

By Iman Khondker, Technical Project Manager, Hypha HubSpot Development

I want to clarify one of the most confusing aspects of HubSpot for teams migrating from other CRMs: the distinction between Leads, Contacts, Lifecycle Stages, and Lead Status.

Here’s the thing Salesforce and Zoho users need to understand: In traditional CRMs like Salesforce, Zoho, and Pipedrive, Leads and Contacts are completely separate objects. A Lead is an unconverted prospect living in its own database, and once qualified, you convert that Lead into a Contact, Account, and Opportunity. The Lead essentially disappears after conversion, and it’s a one-way street.

HubSpot works in a fundamentally different way. In HubSpot, everyone starts as a Contact—whether they downloaded an ebook, filled out a demo form, or you met them at a trade show. The Contact is the single source of truth for every person in your CRM. There’s no conversion process, no separate database, no disappearing records.

Think of it like this: In Salesforce or Zoho, a Lead evolves into a Contact, like in Pokémon; it transforms into something new and the original disappears. In HubSpot, it’s more like tagging the same person and putting different badges on them. The Contact stays the same, but you’re adding layers—a “Sales is Working This” badge via the Leads Tool, a “MQL” badge via Lifecycle Stage, a “Currently Following Up” badge via Lead Status. It’s the same person, but these identifiers provide more context.

So what’s the Leads Tool then? It’s a sales-only workspace object; think of it as a prospecting view that helps sales reps organize their active outreach efforts. When a sales rep creates a Lead in HubSpot, they’re not creating a new record. They’re simply flagging an existing Contact as someone they’re actively working with. The Lead record connects back to that Contact, and when the rep creates a Deal, the Lead closes automatically while the Contact remains.

Now let’s talk about Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status. Here’s where the sales focus becomes critical. Lifecycle Stage is used by both marketing and sales to show someone’s position in the buyer’s journey: Lead, MQL, SQL, Opportunity, Customer. It’s the big-picture funnel position that everyone can see.

Lead Status, however, is exclusively a sales property. Only sales reps should update this, tracking real-time activity like New, Attempted to Contact, Connected, or Open Deal. Marketing shouldn’t touch it. It’s purely for sales to manage their day-to-day follow-up progress.

Think of it this way:

• Lifecycle Stage answers “Where are they in the funnel?”
• Lead Status answers “What’s my sales rep doing with them right now?”
• The Leads Tool answers “Who is sales actively prospecting?”

The key takeaway here is that, unlike Salesforce and Zoho, HubSpot doesn’t force you to convert records. Every person stays a Contact throughout their entire journey, with layers of sales-specific data, Lead Status, the Leads Tool, and Deals, adding context on top. Once you understand this fundamental difference, HubSpot makes a lot more sense.

Second Hand News

Business Insider: Inside the divide between Gen Z and hiring managers ➜

Shocking no one, Gen Z is not on the same page as hiring managers. And that’s not a slight at Gen Z. They’re old enough to have watched how business has been done, and they want something different for themselves. While it might not make it easy for them to find jobs in the current market, I do applaud them for sticking to their values. Hopefully, a middle ground can be found.

Social Media Today: Meta Shares Holiday Marketing Tips ➜

Meta just dropped its latest holiday season guide, packed with practical tips backed by real data. It suggests ways to maximize Meta’s ad tools and content features as we head into the busy end-of-year shopping period.

Hypha Highlights

Here’s something that catches nearly every HubSpot user off guard: those built-in “I do not consent” checkboxes in your form settings? They’re essentially cosmetic. They don’t automatically unsubscribe anyone, opt them out, or add them to exclusion lists. This gap can lead to accidentally emailing contacts who’ve declined communications—damaging trust or worse, triggering a marketing email suspension audit.

Our latest guide breaks down what’s actually required under U.S. law (spoiler: CAN-SPAM gives you flexibility with email, but TCPA is strict about SMS), why HubSpot’s native consent options fall short, and exactly how to build custom workarounds using consent properties and exclusion segments. The gap between technically legal and actually smart is where most email marketing problems live—this guide helps you bridge it.

Read: Email Marketing Consent in HubSpot: A Practical Guide ➜

HubSpot Hacks

Here are two great resources made available by HubSpot: 

• HubSpot/ChatGPT Prompt Library
• HubSpot/Claude Prompt Library

HubSpot was one of the first companies to roll out connectors to both of these platforms, so it makes perfect sense that they’d want your experience working between the two to be seamless. Use the prompts to guide you, or as a jumping off point for problem solving.

AI in Action

News, updates and tools from the AI industry.

OpenAI released results from an internal “stress-test” claiming GPT-5 models are 30% less biased than previous versions after testing responses to 100 divisive topics with questions from different political angles. The company found that strongly worded liberal prompts had more influence on the chatbot’s objectivity than conservative ones, with another AI grading responses for problems like dismissing user viewpoints, emotional escalation, and presenting only one side of an issue.

Slack is testing an upgrade to Slackbot that transforms it from a basic notification tool into an AI assistant that can create plans, search through messages using natural language, schedule meetings, and gather information across channels. According to Slack’s Rob Seaman, the company “rebuilt it from the ground up as a personalized AI companion,” with the feature already rolling out to Salesforce’s 70,000 employees and planned for broader release by year-end.

Microsoft launched MAI-Image-1, its first in-house AI image generator focused on creating photorealistic images with natural lighting and landscapes, continuing its shift away from relying on OpenAI. The model will soon be available in Copilot and Bing Image Creator.

Google released Veo 3.1, an updated AI video generation model that’s better at following prompts and converting images into videos, now available through the Gemini API and powering the company’s Flow video editor.

Google launched two new AI-powered features in Search and Discover to help users connect with web content more easily. The first is an upgraded Discover feature that shows brief previews of trending topics with links to explore content from multiple publishers, while the second adds a “What’s new” button in sports searches that reveals a feed of trending updates and articles about players and teams.

Anthropic released Claude Haiku 4.5, a smaller and more affordable AI model that matches the coding performance of Claude Sonnet 4 from just five months ago while running twice as fast and costing one-third the price.

1x Speed

The podcasts Team Hypha has queued up.

Digiday Podcast: The Sora-TikTok U.S. era of short-form video

“This week’s episode recaps Instagram eyeing the launch of a CTV app and Perplexity putting its ad business on pause. Then Digiday platforms reporter Krystal Scanlon joins the show to to discuss the state of the short-form video market as all-AI entrants like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes enter the fray alongside the impending TikTok U.S.”

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Case Study: HubSpot CMS Buildout

Thanks for reading! See you next week! -Team Hypha