Multiple account association to contacts - looking for best practices

[toricook]

We have a B2B company in which contacts and companies have a many-to-many relationship. One contact can be associated to multiple companies. And a company can have multiple contacts associated to it.

HubSpot has a many-to-one relationship where you can only link one company to a contact's account.

I'm looking for best practices on how to navigate this issue in HubSpot. Of course, ideally, we'd be able to configure HubSpot to allow a many-to-many relationship, but until we get to that point what are your best practices around this?

When considering which company we choose to associate to the contact.... is it more important to:

a) Keep the original company that was linked often associated with a first deal or the first organization that person was affiliated with when they became a lead.

b) Keep the most recent company for the most recent deal or most recent engagement.

c) Prioritize based on lifecycle stage or customer status? For example, always keep the company that is a customer associated to the contact first... instead of the company that is not a customer or lower down the lifecycle stage totem pole?

d) Prioritize based on their role/authority in the organization such as decision-maker versus user?

e) Other?

Here's an example:

A contact is a customer with one company and also is affiliated with another company that has an open deal. Which company would you leave associated to the contact?

Would you keep the contact associated to the company that is a customer so you always know they are a customer first (for support purposes)? (We do use HubSpot Service Pro.)

Do you instead associate the company with the open deal to the contact so that sales can see that clearly?

What if that person's role/authority is different for each organization. Let's say they are simply a "user" for the customer company but a "decision-maker" for the new company? Does that change which company they should be associated with?

FYI, in most cases these contacts are listed as "Lifecycle stage" = Customer and "Lead Status" = Open Deal. There is a closed/won deal correctly associated to the customer company. And there is an open deal correctly associated to the new company that is looking to buy.

Looking forward to your recommendations!

[Bruno_Teixeira · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I should assume that configuring Hubspot the way you wish will not be that simple. However, as first step I would suggest to you to start adding a parent or child company to the existing companies. 

By using that, you can easier have some of the informations you'd like by using the reports. 

For your questions :

A contact is a customer with one company and also is affiliated with another company that has an open deal. Which company would you leave associated to the contact?

-> For me, it would be the last lifecycle stage, so in this case the customer.

Would you keep the contact associated to the company that is a customer so you always know they are a customer first (for support purposes)?

-> Yes, I would to that.

Do you instead associate the company with the open deal to the contact so that sales can see that clearly?

-> It depends on how is your process internally. But this could also be a solution, however, I prefer to be based on the contact / company associated with the latest lifecycle stage.

[toricook]

Thanks, Bruno! That validates my own feelings as well. 

[lynton]

If you're using a HubSpot Enterprise subscription, consider a custom objects solution to manage multiple company to contact associations. It's not perfect but it does fill a gap. 

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @toricook 

Thank you for reaching out!

I want to tag some of our experts on this @JonPayne @lynton @Phil_Vallender @Bruno_Teixeira any thoughts to share with @toricook on this? 

Thank you!

Best

Tiphaine