Getting Your Data Right: The Core Objects
Get your HubSpot Data Model right for Fran Dev
This this Lab Report
Your HubSpot data model determines what you can track, report on, and automate. Get these right and the rest of your HubSpot setup has something solid to build on.
Why this matters
Your HubSpot data model governs everything else. It determines what data you store, how you access it, how you can use it, what you can automate, what you can report on, and how useful it is in the AI era. A bad data model and bad data make it really challenging to get good results.
This isn’t just true of HubSpot. It’s every business system your Franchise uses.
A data model that mirrors your Franchise’s business makes everything else possible.
If your Franchise implemented HubSpot without planning out your data model needs, you’re making your data messier every day. Its like building a house with no blueprints.
This isn’t every object you’ll use in HubSpot. It’s the core set that makes franchise development work. Get these right and everything else becomes easier.
The primary Objects you should be using in HubSpot.
Contacts: Track All Your Critical People
Obviously, your leads need Contact records. You should also have Contact records for Brokers who bring you deals. When your leads become Franchisees, you need their Contact records to reflect that. You should also have key operational contacts like your franchisee’s managers in HubSpot. Even if you use another system for managing those communications, having these in HubSpot ensures your systems are in sync and your records are up to date.
Make sure you’re identifying and tracking all these critical people. They all belong in Contacts and they need to be distinguished from each other and properly associated with other records like…
Deals and Pipeline: for Your New FA Opportunities
Also obvious: this is how you track your diligence process. A well-designed Deal pipeline enables good reporting and automation.
When do you create the Deal for a lead?
This decision depends on your sales approach and lead volume. The decision is: before or after the discovery call? Its also be related to whether you use an Application (see below) and how much you’re nurturing Leads pre-discovery.
You should also use Deals for Transfers/Resales
Resales and Transfers are infrequent compared to new FAs, but they’re high-risk and high-effort. They’re multiparty transactions with more moving pieces than a new FA sale. They need more attention and have a completely different process.
Create a dedicated Deal Pipeline specifically for handling Resales and Transfers. Different process, different data needs, different pipeline.
Companies: Owner Groups
Use Companies to keep records and data for the legal entities your Franchisee Owners establish once they’re in place. The Company will often have different information than the Owners and Locations (legal address, entity name and type, etc)
You’ll also use Companies for other records like partners and vendors, but make sure you’re using them to organize Owner Groups and associating all the Owners and Locations (see below) with the Company record.
Custom Object: Applications
Not all franchises have a long form application as part of their diligence. If you do—and it’s an in-depth form collecting lots of details—you should create a Custom Object for it. Contact properties and forms are not sufficient.
Here’s why Contact properties don’t work:
Applications have distinct reporting and automation needs.
Applications have different data needs than other records.
Applications have a review and approval process so they need a pipeline.
One Contact may need to submit an application more than once so Contact properties cause problems.
Multiple Contacts can be involved in one new FA so you need discrete Applications for each partner.
Custom Object: Agreements
Critical information your teams need gets locked inside Franchise Agreement PDFs. Your team needs that data to do their jobs, but most of them don’t have—and don’t need—access to the actual contracts. Capture the critical data like Agreement Terms, Development Timelines, etc. on properties on the Agreement record.
Plus, Agreements get renewed and amended. They relate to multiple objects: the Contacts who are parties to them, the Locations/Territories they cover, the New FA Deal they were part of, the Owner Group entity. If you’re tracking all that data in scattered properties across different records, you’re making it impossible to find.
Here’s what works: Create a single record for each Agreement. Associate it with all the related records—Contacts, Locations, the Deal, the Company.
This makes the data easy to find. It also lets you use rollup and sync properties to surface Agreement data exactly where your team needs it, without duplicating it everywhere.
Custom Object: Locations/Territories
You need to capture the relationships between individual franchise Locations/Territories and the Contacts and Owner Group Company. You also need to track Agreement data that relates to specific Locations/Territories.
Without this in HubSpot: Tracking is manual and painful. Something as simple as emailing all Owners in specific states becomes a project instead of a quick filter and send.
With a Locations Custom Object: You create a record for each Locations/Territories Associate it with the franchisee Contact, the owner Company, and the Agreement. Now tracking is automatic, and tasks like state-specific communications are easy.
Wondering why a Custom Object and not the Listing from the Object Library? Most integrations don’t support the Object Library yet, so using the Listing Object limits what you can do for now. That will change one day, but for now a Custom Object is the best choice.
So…now what?
Review your HubSpot data model. Look at what you’re tracking and what you’re not.
Where are the gaps? What data do you need that’s currently scattered, buried, or missing? What relationships between records aren’t captured?
Fix those gaps now. The longer you wait, the more manual work you’re doing and the more opportunities you’re missing.
See you in the next Lab Report.