Most conversations about CRMs end in buying something. This one does not.
These five things are already in your HubSpot. No integrations, no higher plan, and no us. All that is missing is somebody looking, and each one takes a few minutes to save as a view.
They come with the exact filter so you do not have to take this article's word for it.
1. Deals whose close date has already passed
The cheapest one and the one that stings. A deal dated last month that is still open is not a deal that slipped: it is one nobody has looked after, because whoever owns it has not even gone in to move the date.
The filter. Deals → Advanced filters → Close date is before today, and Deal stage is none of the closed ones.
What to do with the list. Nothing bulk. This is the Monday meeting list: one by one, either the date moves or the deal is closed as lost. What it cannot do is stay as it is.
2. Deals with no next step at all
A deal with no task or meeting on a future date is not advancing. It is waiting for somebody to remember it, and usually nobody does.
The filter. Deals → Next activity date is unknown, and Deal stage is none of the closed ones.
What to do. This is the indicator that best predicts what will look identical a month from now. Sort by amount and start at the top.
3. Deals that have been in the same stage too long
There is a trap here that almost everybody falls into, and it is worth understanding because it changes the number.
What the CRM shows by default is "last activity X days ago", which means somebody logged something X days ago. It does not mean the deal has not moved.
What you want is a different thing: how many days the deal has been in the stage it is in. And HubSpot stores that on its own, without depending on anybody writing a note.
The filter. In the deals report, the Date entered <stage name> field, one per stage. Filter by is before whatever date matches your real cycle.
What to do. Compare it against your sales cycle. If you sell in six weeks and there are deals that have spent ten in "Negotiation", those are not in negotiation.
4. Quotes about to expire
A quote has an expiry date and almost nobody watches it. The day it lapses the conversation reopens from zero, usually at a worse price.
The filter. Quotes → Expiration date in the next 14 days, and Status is not accepted or rejected.
What to do. This is the best effort-to-money ratio of the five. One call before it expires is worth more than any report.
5. Leads created with nothing opened
Somebody created the record, marked it as a lead, and there it stayed. No opportunity, no task, sometimes with an email conversation behind it.
The filter. Companies → Lifecycle stage is Lead, and Number of associated deals is 0.
What to do. Careful with this list, because it comes out noisier than the others: suppliers, old imports and records created by mistake all land in it. The way to separate them is to check whether there is a real conversation, and the CRM only knows that if the email was logged, which is exactly the next section.
And the two it will never tell you
The five above are filters. You can build them today, free, and it is worth doing before considering buying anything.
These two are not filters, and no HubSpot configuration produces them.
A client who has moved and the CRM never noticed
The client wrote on Tuesday. The record still says "no activity for three weeks" and the deal is still in the same stage it always was.
To see it you have to compare what is on the record against what is in the mailbox. And there is the problem: we measured a freshly created HubSpot portal and out of the box not one email was logged. Incoming mail from existing contacts is, if you have the inbox connection on. Outgoing needs an extension installed in each rep's browser. Nothing sent from a phone is logged at all.
A company you talk to every week that is not in the CRM
Email in both directions, over weeks, with somebody who is not on file as a contact.
This one is not hard, it is impossible by construction. A CRM logs activity from the contacts that exist in it, so it cannot show you the ones that do not. It has nothing to compare itself against.
What this says about your CRM
Nothing bad. HubSpot is designed for working inside it, and for that it works well. The five lists above come out of its own fields and are genuinely useful.
What it cannot do, and nor can any tool that lives only inside the CRM, is tell you what was never written into it. For that you have to read the mailbox from outside and cross-check.
That is what CERUNA does: it reads the headers of your team's email and calendar, compares them against what the CRM has logged, and names the difference. Start with a Revenue Blind Spot Audit: €750, report in 72 hours, refunded if it does not find three things you did not know.
And if you would rather start with the free half, build the five views above and read what each number means. It is half the road and it costs nothing. If any term here sounds unfamiliar, it is defined with an example in the glossary.