HubSpot Ideas

DBowers3

Associate one contact to multiple companies

Think business consultant or sales broker - We'd like to be able to have one contact associated with multiple companies in Sales CRM.

 

379 Replies
SteveMatlick
Contributor

Is there a bug currently with this feature?  We are seeing, when a contact is actually associated to a company it is also appearing in the Related Contacts section seven times - once for each of the seven pre-defined roles currently available.  

Thomas_BBike
Member

@ErikGron - as far as I know, the current beta-version does not allow any changes. There are several requests set to  the development team yet as far as I know. I would prefer an option to change the pre-set roles myself. 

 

Cheers, Thomas

Thomas_BBike
Member

@SteveMatlick  - yes, I have the same issue. It just seems as there were 7 contacts but in fact there is just one. HubSpot replied to me, this might be a problem in this beta-version and will be fixed asap. 

 

Cheers

Thomas

Hatchman
Participant

I like the idea of the presets but we should be able to use types of our own naming.   Most of the types currently available have absolutely no bearing on our manufacturing business.   We needs things like sales rep, engineer, project mgr, purchasing buyer, etc.

jsg121
HubSpot Product Team

Hi all,

 

We're currently looking into why we're displaying 7 contacts or 7 companies! We hope to have this fixed soon.

 

The team has been working on deciding how to move forward with the Related Companies feature. While there are no immediate plans for this implementation, we hope in the future to allow multiple relationships between objects (ie a contact can be associated with 5 companies and these would all display on the contact record via the normal "Companies" card), and we'd also like to support custom roles for all relationship types.

 

Thank you to those who have been making use of this beta and for the feedback you've provided! We will keep you posted as developments occur.

ErikGron
Participant

Yeah, me too, setting the roles yourself makes more sense.

 

TopJobTeri
Member

We need this feature YESTERDAY!  People are multifaceted and have their fingers in many pies.  Almost no one has only one company directly associated with them, especially in small towns.  In our line of work we have people like a guy who is the Mayor of a city, he owns his home through a trust is the HOA president, and owns a company.  Has anyone figured out a work around?

kimcpa2000
Participant

Would love to see a contact be able to be associated with more than one company.  We have contacts that work for one company, but approach us as a member of an industry association and would like to maintain information on both.

ErikGron
Participant

@kimcpa2000 You can, there is a beta option that allow you to associate a contact to multiple companies, you have to request it. The bad thing about it is that you will only see the main company associated with that contact and to see others you need to go through the details. But for filter/classification purposes it works great. Also, you will have to detail the rol of that contact in other associations, which is also a bit lame, because there are only 7 (I think) pre-defined roles.

 

Hopes this clarifies something to you.

 

All the best

Erik

richardwalsh
Participant | Platinum Partner

This beta is working quite well within its simple state. Seeing those custom roles would be amazing, but we've found a way to work around it for now.

 

I think the next big piece would be the ability to use the association in workflows, and someway to set various emails for each association, while picking a primary. Wouldn't want to accidentally send them a marketing email to all addresses.

BurtonHohman
Member

Are you still accepting new users? I filled out the beta form last week but haven't heard a reply yet. We very much need this feature! 

BurtonHohman
Member

In a Company workflow is there any way to send emails to users that are "Related Contacts" right now it my tests it looks like emails only went to the main contacts and not to the related contacts

raedt
Member

My client also has this as their main issue. They have 1 contact with 1 primary company and up to 10 related companies. Marketing emails when triggered, only 1 email gets sent to 1 contact. Instead of 10 emails to 1 contact (1 for each company)

 

unfortunately. I do foresee an issue on why Hubspot might not want to build this feature. For example, You have a marketing email that has company variables in it. For example a company name. when 1 marketing email is sent, How does it figure out which related company it should select and fill the variable properties from? Primary only? All? custom select?

 

I have a developer's background and was able to code a custom widget that solved my client's issue. I am wondering if there other Hubspot users that have this issue and maybe it's worth building this widget and publishing it?

 

@BurtonHohman Let me know, I'd be interested in building this out together

 

BurtonHohman
Member

@raedt I understand how it could be difficult but that is certainly our use case.

 

Our ideal scenario would be to send out a monthly marketing email recapping some custom company properties to any contact associated with that company.

 

So if you were associated with 3 companies our ideal interaction would be you would get three individual unique marketing emails with the company properties of each company.

 

So the workflow would trigger for Company A and send you an email with company properties for Company A. Then the workflow would trigger for Company B and send you an email with company properties for Company B, etc, etc.

 

If you have a solution for a situation like this that'd be killer.

DominicHobbs
Member

Hi

 

Loving this idea and can see it on our HS contacts page (I'm assuming we have been 'ungated' for beta?).

However, I'm not seeing it in the API feed for the contact. Can I assume this is a pending change for the API and is there any word on when it might be added?

 

Thanks

erickievit
Participant

Hi there, 

 

We just noticed that the beta functionality is released. Which is great! thanks for that. Just a few bugs that we have encountered, hope it helps to further perfect the feature. 

 

On the contact card:

  • We see the company and often (but not always) 7 related companies which are all the same as the original company. 
  • We see a multitude of related companies, however, if we click on the view more, we still only get shown one related company. We do not see the full list

On the company card

  • With some company cards we see the system has pre-populated a large list related contacts, is this due to parent child relationships or due to the domain resemblance?
  • When we review the large list of related contacts and click on view more, we do get to see more related contacts, but never the full list. It seems there is a limit. 
  • The system seems to have pre-populated the roles with all the related contacts, however, we do not understand why, nor can we bulk edit change these roles. 
  • If we create a new related contact, we can set the role. However, for related contacts that already have a role set, we are also unable to edit this anymore. (also related to the bullet above).

On the general contacts view

  • We are unable to display or filter on number of related companies

On the general companies view

  • We are unable to display or filter on number of related contacts. 

 

Hope the above is clear and helpful for further improvement. Thanks for your efforts so far!!

 

elegeert
Member | Partner

@erickievit I guess that being able to notice the beta functionality is only possiblle as part of the beta program that @jsg121 mentions? Thanks for the feedback, it would be great to be able to use the functionality of associating one contact to multiple companies. Whether this is in beta - or even better - the real thing. I can't wait!

 

FriendlyManager
Participant

Hi can someone tell me please how to get the beta of this turned on in my system - We really need this feature. 

Adrecomedia
Member

My company just recently joined HubSpot CRM (free of course)  to test out and see if it will fit our needs. We operate a website development and online marketing company and have customers that own multiple businesses so being able to associate a single contact with multiple businesses would be a very important and useful feature for us. 

ccaron3
Member

This feature would be extremely useful as some of my contacts own multiple businesses, such as restaurants among others.