Valliance gained clearer pipeline visibility and a more structured sales process, with HubSpot supporting its commercial operations and launch preparations.
Building commercial foundations for an ambitious consultancy
Valliance is a consultancy operating across the UK and Netherlands, serving senior business leaders. Its commercial model combines fixed consulting fees with contingent fees linked to the measurable value it creates for clients.
As the business prepared for launch, it needed a consistent way to manage relationships, track opportunities and understand potential revenue. Forbidden helped establish a HubSpot setup around that business model, giving the team a clearer foundation for sales, reporting and marketing activity.
Valliance
The Challenge
A growing network needed more structure than basic opportunity tracking could provide.
Valliance’s relationships largely sat in LinkedIn, while opportunities were tracked through a basic Notion setup. This made it harder to maintain a shared view of conversations, follow-up activity and pipeline progress.
Its revenue model added complexity. Fixed fees and contingent income carried different levels of certainty, so treating them alike could distort forecasts. The team needed clear definitions of opportunity stages, when revenue should enter the forecast and what counted as a won deal.
With a website launch and outreach activity approaching, Valliance also needed reliable data, useful reporting and a team confident using the system.
Valliance
What we did
We shaped HubSpot around Valliance’s sales process, revenue model and ways of working.
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1
Established a clear CRM foundation
We helped identify the correct paid HubSpot account and resolve access confusion across multiple portals. From there, the implementation followed a phased approach covering setup, data structure, integrations, training and reporting.
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2
Defined meaningful sales stages
We agreed a lead journey from initial contact through to qualification, alongside opportunity stages covering validation, proposals, negotiation and contracting. A signed contract defined a won deal, giving the team a consistent point at which to recognise confirmed business.
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3
Separated revenue by its level of certainty
The agreed approach distinguished fixed consulting fees from contingent income. A separate pipeline for value-sharing fees allowed these opportunities to be considered on their own terms, supporting a clearer view of committed and potential revenue.
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4
Strengthened data and financial processes
The team began using deduplication, company hierarchies, lead source tracking and lost-reason fields to improve record quality and reporting context. Invoice settings, reminders and the Xero sync path were also configured to support more consistent financial administration.
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5
Supported adoption and launch readiness
The rollout included practical training and reporting sessions to help the team use HubSpot in its day-to-day commercial activity. We also worked through website tracking and email setup, while clarifying the handoff between sales activity in HubSpot and delivery tasks managed elsewhere.
Valliance
The impact
Valliance now has better visibility of leads, deals, forecasts and stage progression, supporting the move from basic Notion tracking towards a shared commercial process in HubSpot.
Lead source and lost-reason tracking give the team more context for reviewing performance, while data quality improvements provide a stronger basis for leadership reporting. The distinction between fixed and contingent fees helps the business assess potential revenue more clearly.
Alongside these improvements, Valliance has a more structured invoicing setup and a clearer foundation for launch communications. Together, the changes give the team greater control as the business develops.
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