Knowledge Base

Application → Member Flow

The end-to-end journey of a single applicant, from a prospect contact in HubSpot to a fully onboarded, paid-up member — including every pipeline stage in the Member Acquisition pipeline.

This page traces one applicant all the way through the HubSpot pipeline — from first contact to paid membership.

Phase 1 — Contact lifecycle: Prospect → MQL → SQL

Everything starts at the Contact level, not the Deal level.

Prospect — person is in HubSpot but hasn't shown serious intent. Chapter manager or marketing sets this.
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) — person has shown enough interest to be worth a conversation. Set manually or by a form/workflow trigger.
SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) — chapter team has reviewed and confirmed this person is ready to enter the formal application pipeline. Chapter manager sets this.

When a contact reaches SQL, that is the trigger to create a Deal.

Phase 2 — A Deal is created in the Member Acquisition pipeline

Once a contact is marked SQL, the chapter manager (or an automation) creates a Deal linked to that contact inside the Member Acquisition pipeline. The deal represents a single application in progress. All subsequent tracking happens on the deal, not the contact.

Phase 3 — Deal moves through the pipeline stages

Connect & Qualify20%
Chapter manager makes first contact and confirms the prospect meets basic EO eligibility criteria.
Experience EO40%
Prospect attends an EO event or forum visit to understand what membership really means before committing.
Formal Interview50%
Chapter leadership conducts the formal membership interview to assess fit and readiness.
Chapter Approval60%
Chapter board votes and approves the applicant internally. A HubSpot task is automatically raised to notify the global membership team.
Global Approval70%
This is the integration trigger. When the global membership team approves, HubSpot pushes the applicant into Altai (EO's membership system of record) as a Contact and Participation Record — with the correct chapter, membership type, dates, and status. Altai then instructs ChargeBee to send the applicant a payment link automatically.
Warning
The Altai push fires on this specific stage transition — not on Payment Request or Closed Won. Moving a deal here before everything is ready will fire the integration prematurely. See Critical Rules.
Payment Request80%
The payment link has been sent. The deal sits in this stage while the applicant completes payment. No manual action is needed — this stage is a waiting state.
Closed Won100%
Payment confirmed. The applicant is a fully onboarded member. During the transition period, the record is also synced back to the legacy system so existing processes keep working until they are retired.

Deals that do not proceed are moved to Closed Lost (0%).

Why the order matters

Each step only begins when the previous one finishes cleanly. If a contact is never marked SQL, no deal gets created. If a stage is skipped, chapter or global approval is bypassed. If the Altai record is incomplete when the Global Approval push fires, ChargeBee never sends the payment link and the applicant is left waiting in Payment Request. That is why the required Altai fields must be correct before anyone is approved.

Quick reference: who does what

Marcom Chair
Prospect → MQL → SQL
Membership Chair
SQL → Member Acquisition pipeline → Closed Won

Lead Status — how Lead Status works alongside Lifecycle Stage.
Lifecycle Stage — detailed explanation of MQL, SQL, and the other stages.
Critical Rules — the guardrails around this flow.
Tutorial — the separate, chapter-level onboarding walkthrough.