For CRM users, duplication is the enemy. Duplicate contact and company data can lead to wasted time, mistakes when engaging with prospects, and a poor customer experience. So why are there two objects in your CRM for people?
That’s right, people can be both Contacts and Leads. While the subtle difference between the two terms may be clear to the savvy marketer or sales rep, having two data fields can make integrations difficult, leading to synching and duplicate management problems, reporting issues and a likelihood of duplicate records. This can make it extremely inefficient to search the database for matches using multiple objects. Wouldn’t it be better to consolidate everything into Contact objects?
Not necessarily. Depending on the CRM you use – and it’s likely Salesforce – there may be some benefits to sticking with Leads. First of all, using both fields can help eliminate junk data out of the Accounts and Contacts tables. Secondly, having the Lead option provides some additional capabilities such as the ability to queue leads, assign rules to leads, report on lead conversions, and use the “unread by owner” flag. That’s why many Salesforce users still use both fields.
But given the drawbacks, it may be a better idea to eliminate the Leads field altogether. After all, you can still use the Contacts field to perform most of the operations mentioned above, without the downside of duplicate info cluttering up the database and complicating integrations with other systems.
How do you do it? Here are five best practices to combining your Contact and Lead info, and doing away with the Lead object once and for all.
1. Match leads to accounts
The first step is to implement an effective Lead-to-Account matching tool such as LeanData, RingLead, or Engagio. These tools automatically convert Leads created in Salesforce to Contacts and associate them with the correct Accounts. Then you can create routing rules to assign Owners. While some Leads may have to be reviewed manually, Lead-to-Account matching eliminates much of the tedious manual work and duplication. We dive deeper into RingLead in this DemandGen TV series.
2. Capture good data.
Often, lead data is bad data. People intentionally fill in forms with wrong information, or make mistakes. This problem can be remediated by making certain fields required or embedding logic into your forms to improve the quality of data entered. Or, preferably, you can leverage smart forms that prepopulate with user data. Not only does this help improve data quality, it provides a better user experience.
3. Use the Status field.
Salesforce Leads allow you to indicate the Status. Since this isn’t included on the Contacts object, you have to add a picklist that aligns with stages in your Demand Funnel. You should also include a picklist field for “Type” on your Account to indicate whether the Account is a prospect, customer, partner or other relationship to your business.
4. Create the Opportunity record earlier.
Instead of using the Lead object to indicate status as the lead progresses through the funnel, convert the lead to an Opportunity earlier – prior to it being an SQL. You can add additional stages to Opportunity, such as 0, 1, etc., and ensure you associate the correct Owners with each of the stages to avoid confusion. This approach also involves creating Closed/Lost stages to simplify management of recycled and disqualified Opportunities.
5. Remove read access to the Lead object.
After everything’s reconfigured, and you’ve tested it to make sure it works correctly, hide the Lead object to avoid future mistakes and duplicates.
Don’t forget to Update Your Reports
Now that you’ve operationalized your Contact-only approach, you’ll have to update your reporting templates to reflect that change. You may even need to scrap existing reports and create new ones that incorporate the new Status values and stages. While this can be a time-consuming process involving multiple stakeholders, in the long run it will be worth it – and it’s probably well overdue!
A few words of caution: There may be intentional duplication to reflect different product interests. This may impact how you set up and track different Opportunities and associate them with Owners. For example, one Contact may be responsible for purchasing a product and a managed service, which may be handled by different Account reps (i.e. Owners). Additionally, there are no equivalents for Lead Assignment Rules and Queues for the Contact object in Salesforce, but LeanData’s Routing toolset can help straighten that out.
Get More Value from Your Data
While doing away with Leads and shifting to using Contacts seems like a daunting task, it’s worthwhile. BDO Digital can help you define a solid Lead Management Process and align with your Sales Ops team, to help get everyone on board with the change. Our team can help you turn your CRM data into an engine of insight and strategic value, and design a CRM strategy that meets your unique business goals. Contact us today to get started.
The post 5 Best Practices for Switching to a Contacts-Only Approach in Salesforce appeared first on DemandGen.
