You run franchise development, and you have to be able to fully trust your pipeline. If you’re not sure you can, or if your process is being properly run, here are 11 questions that will tell you if your HubSpot pipeline is set up to run your Fran Dev process effectively.
Can you find critical data?
The first six questions are the data lens: can you see the true state of your pipeline right now? They're the tactical half of The Two Question HubSpot Audit: does the data reflect reality?
"Can I see what's projected to close this month? Revenue and units?"
Capturing the Close Date, FA Revenue, and Total Units on a Deal is table stakes for projections and reporting. If that data is set and maintained on every Deal, your reports and Dashboards can give you an up-to-the-minute view into the state of your pipeline.
If you have to ask your Directors, check spreadsheets, or cross check Discovery Day attendance, you don’t have accurate, useful, consistent data that you need and should expect.
"Can I see which Deals have been sitting in a stage too long?"
Lots of open Deals with Franchise Candidates is good…if they’re active and working through the process. But if they’re stalling and falling through the cracks and no one can see it, a lot of open Deals is a huge problem.
HubSpot calculates time in stage for you: Date Entered Current Stage and Time in Current Stage are standard Deal properties. Are you using it? Is it visible? Do you have defined rules for how long in a stage is too long and what to do about it?
"Can I see who's in FDD Cooling Off and FDD Blackout?"
The FDD is a fixed milestone in your process. On each Deal, and at the pipeline level, you should have instant visibility into the state of the FDD for a given Deal. Is the state in blackout while you wait for approval of the latest FDD? Is an individual Deal in the Cooling Off period? These can be managed with the bare minimum of overhead and make it incredibly simple to spring into action when the constraint is removed.
"Can I see which Brokers and lead sources produce Deals we actually win?"
This is the million dollar question. Literally. If you’re investing in organic leads that’s doubly true. What sources are delivering? It requires correct attribution on your Deals, not a text property where someone writes in a value or letting vendors claim which leads they brought you. You should have a dashboard that includes attribution source for last month’s Closed Won deals always available.
"Can I see where we lose Deals, and why?"
Which step in the process is your biggest bottleneck (after getting people on the Discovery Call, I mean)? Where is there an abnormality in the funnel? And why, at each stage do you lose people? Not anecdotes from last week. With data. Over time. If you’re losing Candidates at Discovery Day over the investment level you have a big problem in your pipeline. If one Rep kills more Deals due to Fit than anyone else, that’s worth looking into.
"Can I see which open Deals haven't been touched in two weeks?"
This is the counterpart to deals sitting a stage for too long. A Deal that has slowed down or has a legitimate gap (Candidate is on vacation, SBA Pre-approval is in process, coordinating with partners) can still be actively worked. But a Deal stalling out with no activity should be brought to someone’s attention quickly. The difference here is you should have visibility into Deals with no touchpoints. A Deal Tag for Aging status is a great way to do this.
Is the system set up?
The last five questions are the system lens: does your pipeline behave the way it should without policing it? Your process and automation should keep Deals current and make it easy to run the process smoothly.
"Do Reps get prompted to add and update information as the Deal advances?"
As a Deal moves through the diligence process it should be gathering data like a snowball rolling downhill: updates to the Close Date, data from your Application, a PFS, specific Net Worth and Liquid Capital, their Funding Strategy, a fit assessment for your brand, FDD execution status, Candidate background, etc.
As Deals advance through the pipeline, the pipeline should have required and conditional properties that collect or confirm this data with Rep so the Deal can’t enter the next stage if all the critical information hasn’t been collected.
"Do our pipeline stages match the actual steps of our diligence process?"
It may seem ridiculous but I see big problems with this in the Franchise HubSpot portals I audit all the time. Extra stages. Stages for “waiting”. Multiple Won and Lost stages that should be properties. Stages no one uses. Stages with different names than what actually happens there.
One Stage for each critical milestone, in the actual order you do them. Each stage representing the progress so far (”Territory Selected”). Activities that happen in a stage should be tasks or, if they’re outcomes, properties.
If your stages are a mess, your reporting will be a mess.
"Do stalled Deals get flagged and put back in front of the Rep automatically?"
This is the system that supports Reps when their Deals go Aging or spend too long in a stage. It includes automations (tasks or notifications), Dashboard reports that list their Deals in these states (for them and for the VP Fran Dev), and Views of their pipeline filtered to include these Deals. Make it easy to see and act on them.
"Do Reps get prompted when a Deal has a problem, like a lapsed Close Date?"
A lapsed Close Date is an open Deal claiming it closed last month. It messes up your reporting and projections and it usually means the Deal isn’t getting touched or the Rep isn’t managing the Candidates' expectations for your process. Like Aging Deals, hygiene views, tags, and notifications should alert Franchise Development Directors to problems with the Deals so they can act on them.
"Does our notetaker keep our Deals up to date after calls?"
You're probably recording calls with an AI notetaker by now. If not, you’re losing a lot of data and wasting a lot of time. The question in 2026 is where the information goes. Notes that are just in the notetaker account are nice but not giving you leverage. Plus, there’s way more data in those calls than just summaries. Franchises using Call Catalyst AI get data extracted for those calls and updated in HubSpot automatically, keeping the Deal on track without manual work or copy/paste by the Rep.
Run the list
You don't need to know how to build any of this to grade it; you only need to know whether the answers exist. Bring the list to your admin or to your next pipeline review. If you can’t get answers, form a game plan. These are 2026 table stakes from Fran Dev.