- HubSpot & CRM Strategy
- 5 mins
The data you need to make better decisions is already in HubSpot. Here is how to find it.
Most small business owners are not short on hustle. They are short on clarity.
They are working hard, following up on leads, running campaigns, managing their team, and trying to grow. But when it comes to knowing what is actually driving results, the answer is often some version of a gut feeling or a rough idea based on recent conversations.
HubSpot stores an enormous amount of useful data about your leads, your pipeline, your marketing activity, and your sales performance. The challenge is not that the data is not there. It is knowing which reports to look at and what to do with what you find.
These five reports give business owners the clearest and most actionable view of what is working, what is not, and where to focus next.
1. Deal Pipeline Report
If you only look at one report regularly, make it this one.
The deal pipeline report shows you every open deal in your CRM, where each one sits in your sales process, and the total value of what is in progress. At a glance, you can see how full your pipeline is, how deals are distributed across stages, and whether anything is stalling.
For a small business owner, this report answers the most important question in sales: do we have enough in the pipeline to hit our goals? If the answer is no, you know you need to focus on generating more leads or re-engaging dormant ones. If deals are piling up in a particular stage and not moving forward, that signals a process or follow-up issue worth addressing.
Check this report at least weekly. It should be the starting point for any sales conversation you have with your team.
2. Deals Closed Won and Lost Report
Knowing how many deals you closed last month is useful. Understanding why you won or lost them is far more valuable.
HubSpot lets you track close reasons on both won and lost deals, and when you use that data consistently, patterns emerge. You start to see which types of clients convert most reliably, which deal sizes tend to stall, and what objections show up repeatedly before a loss.
This report is also useful for spotting trends over time. If your close rate dropped from one quarter to the next, you want to understand whether fewer leads came in, whether the quality of leads changed, or whether something shifted in how your team is handling conversations.
The insight only comes if your team is logging close reasons consistently. That is a small habit with a significant payoff.
3. Contact Lifecycle Stage Funnel Report
This report shows you how contacts are moving through your funnel, from new lead to marketing qualified lead to sales qualified lead to customer.
The value of this report is in spotting where contacts are dropping off. If you have a large number of leads sitting at the marketing qualified stage but very few advancing to sales qualified, that tells you something is not working in your nurturing process or handoff to sales. If contacts are reaching the sales stage but not converting to customers, the issue is likely in the sales conversation itself.
For this report to be meaningful, your lifecycle stages need to be set up correctly and kept clean. If you are not sure yours are in good shape, our post on how to align sales and marketing inside HubSpot covers how to think about those stages in a way that actually reflects your sales process.
4. Email Marketing Performance Report
If you are sending emails through HubSpot, whether marketing campaigns or one-to-one sales outreach, the email performance report tells you what is landing and what is not.
Open rates tell you whether your subject lines are compelling enough to get someone to stop scrolling. Click rates tell you whether the content inside is relevant enough to drive action. Unsubscribes tell you whether you are reaching the right people at the right frequency.
For small teams, email is often one of the highest-leverage channels available. Looking at this report regularly helps you stop guessing about what resonates and start making informed decisions about messaging, timing, and audience segmentation.
Over time, even small improvements in open or click rates compound into meaningfully more engagement with your content and your brand.
5. Sources Report (Traffic and Lead Sources)
This report answers a question that surprises a lot of business owners when they look at the data for the first time: where are my leads actually coming from?
The sources report in HubSpot breaks down your traffic and lead volume by channel: organic search, direct traffic, social media, email, paid advertising, and referrals. When you can see which channels are producing the most leads and which are producing the highest quality leads, you can make smarter decisions about where to invest your time and budget.
It is common for small businesses to discover that one or two channels are doing most of the heavy lifting while others they have been investing in are producing very little. That clarity alone can save significant time and money.
For this report to work well, your website needs to be connected to HubSpot so traffic data flows in automatically. If you have not set that up yet, it is worth prioritizing.
Using These Reports Together
Each of these reports is useful on its own, but the real value comes from looking at them together as part of a regular rhythm.
A weekly check of the pipeline report keeps your sales activity on track. A monthly review of the lifecycle funnel and sources report helps you spot trends before they become problems. A quarterly look at closed won and lost data gives you the strategic context to adjust your approach.
HubSpot makes it easy to pin these reports to a dashboard so they are always one click away. If you have not built a reporting dashboard yet, that is a straightforward setup that pays off quickly in time saved and decisions made with confidence rather than guesswork.
The Data Is Already There
One of the most common things we hear from small business owners who start using HubSpot reporting more consistently is that they wish they had started sooner. Not because the reports are complicated, but because the answers were sitting there the whole time.
You do not need to become a data analyst or spend hours in spreadsheets. You need five reports, checked on a regular schedule, that tell you what is working and where to focus next.
At Here 2 Help Services, we help small businesses set up dashboards that surface the right information without the noise. If your HubSpot reporting feels overwhelming or underused, we are happy to help you figure out where to start. And if you are curious about the broader picture of what HubSpot can show you about your marketing performance, our post on how HubSpot dashboards reveal what is really working in your marketing is a good place to continue.
