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.

 

HubSpot Updates
Delivered
June 09, 2023 06:48 AM

Hi everyone,

I’m Maggie the Product Manager for Associations at HubSpot. I'm very pleased to announce that this feature was delivered to all customers back in April of 2022. Specifically, you can associate a contact, deal or ticket to multiple companies. Apologies for the delay in updating you all here. If you're interested in learning more, this Knowledge Base article about associating records is a great place to start. 

 

Thank you for all of your guidance and submissions about this need.

 

Maggie

In Beta
October 04, 2021 12:08 PM

Hey all, happy to report this functionality is now in public beta. To review the updates and see how to opt your portal in to the updates, please head to this post. This will also be covered from the big stage at INBOUND, so there's even more to come here.

 

This has been a long time coming, I so appreciate all of you sharing your use cases and upvotes. We review them all, and it has a big impact on prioritization. Looking forward to your feedback on this release.

Jeff

In Beta
April 28, 2021 03:52 PM

Hello all, I apologize for the radio silence on our end. Excited to share the new multiple companies on a contact functionality is now available in private beta.

 

If you're interested in what's included (and of course you are!), watch this quick overview video created by HubSpot Academy Professor Kyle Jepsen.

 

While in limited private beta, you will need to ask your HubSpot contact (CSM, Technical Specialist, Onboarding Specialist, etc.) to request access on your behalf. From there, we'll review the request and ungate your portal to the beta. In some cases, we may not be able to ungate you - we'll follow up if that's the case.

 

We plan to go public with this functionality later this year, so if you don't get access in the beta, this will still be coming your way soon.

 

Can't wait to hear your feedback!

jeff

March 15, 2021 11:55 AM

Hi all, really appreciate the enthusiasm around this functionality. We can't wait to deliver it.

 

We are still actively working on supporting multiple companies on a contact - not just within the CRM, but across all parts of the HubSpot platform. Once we are in public beta, I will send out opt-in information.

 

Thanks for your patience - this stuff may seem straightforward, but being good stewards of your data comes first for us. Nothing is worth more than your trust. Updates to come as soon as possible.

In Planning
October 14, 2020 01:27 PM

As mentioned in the previous update, we are now in development of updates to the CRM that will make adding multiple companies to a single contact possible. Not making timeline promises in this forum, but as soon as the beta is available, I'll notify this thread.

 

To those wondering about using Custom Objects for associations - I would recommend against it. Custom Objects are great for the "nouns" of your business (think inventory, shipments, appointments, real estate) but not as good for describing the relationships between things.

 

We're focused on getting this updated functionality to you soon. Stay tuned for updates.

September 08, 2020 12:46 PM

Hi there! I'm Jeff, from the HubSpot CRM team.

 

Thanks so much to everyone who has been a part of the "related companies" beta. You've given a lot of excellent feedback on how this will need to work in order to be rolled out to all.

 

At this time, we're closing the "related companies" beta so we can prep for an improved version of this functionality, built on a new infrastructure, which is coming in the near-term future.

Because this beta and the "related companies" beta are built differently, enrolling more portals in the "related companies" beta now will make it more difficult to migrate eventually. I appreciate you keeping the comments about your use case for functionality like this coming, and we'll be back soon with more updates and timelines.

 

For anyone already on the "related companies" beta: no action needed at this time, and you aren't losing any functionality right now. We'll be in touch with migration plans when they are ready.

January 21, 2020 07:33 AM

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.

October 22, 2019 08:22 AM

Thanks @krispag! That's exactly right. From the contact record, you would just need to check the associations of each call to see which office the call is associated with.

October 21, 2019 12:18 PM

Hi @gelflex-cc , I haven't heard much feedback about this (others, feel free to chime in!), but the feature works using a set of seven defined roles (advisor, board member, contractor, manager, owner, partner, reseller). Via the "Related companies" card that displays on the contact record, you can choose to select a company that the contact is related to and select their role in that company out of the seven listed above. The feature still allows you to keep your businesses separate, but just gives you an easy way to tie a contact with a second company based on their role there. 

October 18, 2019 07:32 AM

Hi @aminco  - there isn't any communication sent once you're ungated as I'm just manually going through all of the requests each day. You can expect to be ungated around 4PM EDT on the business day that you submitted the form, so your portal is all set. You'll see the additional "Related Companies" card on all contact records in your portal.

April 26, 2019 07:17 AM

Hi @kevinelite , the limit is 10,000 related companies.

In Beta
April 11, 2019 12:37 PM

Hi all, thank you for your interest in this feature! Please fill out this form if you would like to be ungated for our "Related Companies" beta feature.

 

This feature will add a secondary card to your Contact records called "Related Companies". From this card, you can add a related company and choose the contact's role at that company from a pre-set list: Board Member, Contractor, Manager, Owner, Partner, Reseller. These roles cannot be modified at this time.

 

Please note that this is the extent of the feature at this time - contacts can not be segmented based on their related companies, and the related company and role cannot be imported at this time.

379 Replies
Palmaricciotti
Member

Hi, this is so common for our business and critical. We have individual consultants / buyers that are the main and ONLY contact for multiple companies of ours. Not sure how I am going to overcome this. Anybody with any ideas? Might have to create the same contact multiple times e.g. Joe Smith Company A, Joe Smith Company B, etc. Hopefully added soon into Hubspot.

erinmb
Member

I would use this

LindsayAgor
Participant

Much needed to work with Salesforce Contact to Multiple Accounts.... right now when Salesforce feature is enabled HUbspot throws sync errors 

 

This is the Salesforce feature guide

https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=shared_contacts_overview.htm&type=5

brockpardo
Member

An absolute must for us in real estate.

 

Also: need to make sure that a contact can also have a deal independent of their company. I.e. you can purchase one home as an individual, another as part of a company.

 

A deal with a company should auto-associate all linked contacts, but a deal with a contact shouldn't auto-associate their linked companies.

tlpaul
Member

We also need this.  We've spent a # of cycles trying unsuccessfully to work around this.

 

@Hubspot Team: If you have an update, please let us know.  Otherwise, we are planning to leave and move over to Zoho, which does support this.

DanniTinez
Member

We really need this functionality too, finding it really difficult mapping our parent and child companies in the CRM.

tlpaul
Member

Can anyone recommend another product/company that supports this?

 

We've currently found that Zoho and I think Salesforce can do this; but that ActiveCampaign and HubSpot cannot.

 

We are looking for an all in one option with email tracking, crm (that can associate multiple companies with a single contact), and marketing automation.  Seems like it doesn't really exist.

Palmaricciotti
Member

Hi all, Hubspot replied to me saying this in production and had developed it and was in testing and I think released soon. So good news. Would be good to hear from Hubspot where this is at.

 

Robert

tlpaul
Member

Robert, thanks for the update.

 

That is significant news.  I wish we could get an official communication from them with more reliable timing.  I sent them a message on Twitter but no reply.

 

Salesforce + Pardot are sending a team over on Tue. to pitch us on their combined suite.  So far, it's our only option, aside from Zoho.

Palmaricciotti
Member

yes, I was sent a Beta version to look at, I replied and got an answer some time later. That was weeks agao, not sure where it is at now.  Given the amount of requests for this, I would have thought Hubspot would be eagerly communicating the good news and its progress.

tlpaul
Member

Likewise.  Thanks for the field report.

 

(I am replying in part in the hopes that someone from HubSpot notices activity on this thread and chooses to update us on this issue.)

davidrevis
Contributor

This is really really needed by us for things like associating Facilities Managers with both the FM company they work for and the end client who we are selling to whose buildings they manage. 

ShanePunt
Contributor | Elite Partner

This is 100% needed as any company with dealerships or businesses with agents (i.e. property) cant use the CRM. 

 

Not having this feature is one of the key reasons why some of our clients cant use HubSpot even though they love the marketing side of the platform. This is needed yesterday. 

sergiob
Member

Please do this asap! It is overdifficulting our processes

Ariel_Kadro
Member

So here is another Use Case 

 

In this use case Contact-Patricia K works for Commerce.  However she is the CSM for Staybridge and Tallars.  What is the best way for me to associate Patricia with these other companies and keep her at Commerce? 

 

In other CRMs I can add a custom field that makes you pick from existing contacts.  Zoho does this, I hope HubSpot can   

terho
Member | Platinum Partner

Hi,
I'm planning a new implementation and confronting this issue of not being able to associate a single contact to more than one company.
Can Hubspot tell anything about the schedule of the implementation?

 

Best Regards,

Terho Norja, Roger Studio Oy

ShanePunt
Contributor | Elite Partner

Hi All

 

So we have a real bastardised solution for our client who manages multiple property tenants/ owners and needs to send emails based on the buildings people live in/ own and the owner/ renter status. We have created a "holding" pipeline and use deals in there as the unique identifier based on deal custom deal properties. Because deals can have multiple contacts associated with them this allows us to associate contacts who are owners or tenants but live in the same building (the building is the "deal").

 

Like I said its a bastardised solution, but allows us to build our mailing lists as needed.

DBowers3
Participant | Partner

Thanks Shane,

 

We've done that as well. However, it does not work for many of our business needs. I am happy to report that I am beta testing this feature, and while not perfect (due to pre-defined roles) it does work and I would expect it to be available soon.

Ariel_Kadro
Member

@DBowers3 are you saying HubSpot has this in Beta?  

tlpaul
Member

We've been testing this but it breaks when it comes to making lists.

 

Here's our test:

 
We created:
  • Test Contact
  • Test Company 1
  • Test Company 2
When you view the contact from within HubSpot CRM, you can see that Test Company 1 is this contact's Company.  Then if you scroll down further on the left side you see that it also has 1 Related Company: Test Company 2. <-- This is the new feature.
 
That's better than before, where you couldn't establish a relationship at all.  At least now you can see all of the companies associated with a contact, even if there's an implied hierarchy that doesn't really make sense in our context. 
 
But here's the problem: Creating lists.
 
We gave Test Company 1 a Revenue value of $1,000,001 and Test Company 2 a Revenue value of $1,000,002.  Then we created 2 simple lists:
 
Test Rev 1,000,001  
Test Rev 1,000,002
 
Only the 1st one returns the Test Contact. So  the Related Companies feature is not useful for generating lists based on Related Company attributes. 
 
If we made a mistake and someone else has had luck with this, let me know!