Associating other contacts to deals vs. custom deal properties
SOLVE
Hello,
I am getting started with HubSpot for our investment business. Our customers are individuals and we deal with them in three ways:
Direct - sourced and managed by our internal sales team
Introducer - introduced by a third party (individual) to our sales team
Distribution - sourced and managed by a third party (company)
I'm importing historical deals into HubSpot, and I want to make sure I'm doing this in the intended and/or most logical way.
For 1, it's simple, the deal is associated with the contact record for the individual customer.
For 2, the deal is associated with the contact record for the individual customer, and: (a) I create a custom deal property called "introducer" where I specify the introducer, OR (b) I create a contact record for each introducer and associate that contact record with the deal.
For 3, the deal is associated with the contact record for the individual customer, and is associated with the company record for the Distributor, and: (a) I create a custom deal property called "distributor sales rep" where the third party sales rep is listed, OR: (b) I create a contact record for the distributor's sales rep, and associate that contact with the deal.
If I go for option (b) on both, the issue is that I can't specify the 'role' of the other contacts on the deal record. So looking at the deal, there's no way to tell which of the associated contacts is the customer and which is the introducer.
I'm envisaging this will interfere with reporting, e.g. if I wanted to create a report to show my top customers, it might end up being the contact records for introducers at the top of this list. I suppose in that case I could filter based on 'customer' lifecycle stage too, but that's just one example.
Does anyone have any thoughts/ideas or similar experience on this? Thanks in advance!
Associating other contacts to deals vs. custom deal properties
SOLVE
There's not a way to specify an associated contact type. I would combine your methods and do both. Create and associate the contact and have a field that identifies the 3rd part introducer for easier reference. I would also set the lifecycle stage of your 3rd party contacts as "Evangelists" and create custom Contact/Company dropdown Property called "Contact Type" where you can identify the relationship. I use this method for Brokers that introduce leads to our company.
Associating other contacts to deals vs. custom deal properties
SOLVE
Hi @bw-ipim to echo what @ndwilliams3 suggested. I think that adding the custom deal property will give you visibility from the deal record without doing too much digging.
Another layer you can add if you want to take it a step further for reporting purposes is to use and identify contacts with the HubSpot property "buying role" and customize the responses to your business. That way you can report on deals with an added layer of what role an associated contact played in the deal. This can be helpful if you want to find out which introducer has resulted in the most closed deals, most in revenue, count of new business and whatever else is important for your team to know about your partners.
Hope that helps!
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Out of the box HubSpot hasn't handled the "relationships" between specific contacts and companies or deals very well – until recently.
HubSpot's new Accounts Based Marketing (ABM) tools allow you to specifiy Roles within a Company... So, you could make your relationships – with a deal - via the company.
We're still wrapping our head around the ABM tools. If it's useful for you we could meet on Zoom to discuss your business cases to see if it's a good fit for you.
Alternately, we had a client (we're a HubSpot Agency based in New Zealand) who needed a Primary Contact in a Company (years before the ABM tools were released). So, we built a custom HubSpot Integration to set the Primary Contact for a Company. Since we launched we've had requests to add a Primary Contact for a Deal – which is our next feature.
Feel free to send me a message if you'd like to chat.
I think the ABM add on could be something to explore in the future, but I think I will just do as you @ndwilliams3 suggested for now - associate the introducer contacts and also create a custom property to specify the introducer role. I'll have a look into buying roles too.
Associating other contacts to deals vs. custom deal properties
SOLVE
Hi @bw-ipim to echo what @ndwilliams3 suggested. I think that adding the custom deal property will give you visibility from the deal record without doing too much digging.
Another layer you can add if you want to take it a step further for reporting purposes is to use and identify contacts with the HubSpot property "buying role" and customize the responses to your business. That way you can report on deals with an added layer of what role an associated contact played in the deal. This can be helpful if you want to find out which introducer has resulted in the most closed deals, most in revenue, count of new business and whatever else is important for your team to know about your partners.
Hope that helps!
Did this post help solve your problem? Help the community and mark it as a solution.
Associating other contacts to deals vs. custom deal properties
SOLVE
There's not a way to specify an associated contact type. I would combine your methods and do both. Create and associate the contact and have a field that identifies the 3rd part introducer for easier reference. I would also set the lifecycle stage of your 3rd party contacts as "Evangelists" and create custom Contact/Company dropdown Property called "Contact Type" where you can identify the relationship. I use this method for Brokers that introduce leads to our company.