My marketing team has suggested having a contact property that receives the Deal Stage, so they can export and analyze data without having to worry about associating deals and contacts. They would rather just export the contact database and know the deal stage from there. I mentioned we can have a trigger "deal stage is known" in a workflow that copies it to the contact property as long as the values are the same.
However I can see this not being a common practice, since - a contact can be associated to multiple deals - a deal can be associated to multiple contacts - the values will be overwritten and historical analysis won't make sense.
But for evaluating results short-term (within 3 months) from contacts coming from PPC it could make sense.
Does this sound right? Is there a better to do this?
@Felipe-CS Are you currently leveraging lifecycle stages in your portal? In addition, you could also leverage association labels to notate who the primary point of contact is on the deal. That would give you the ability to pull a specific associated contact to the deal.
If your lifecycle stages are tied to your deal stages then you could pull the data like that. For example, when the deal reaches Demo Scheduled stage in the pipeline, the associated contact's lifecycle stage gets updated to Opportunity.
I don't think this is the right way to go. Maybe let's take a step back, what exactly and how would the marketing team like to analyze data?
For example, if deal data is required to segment contacts for email sends, exclude certain contacts from marketing emails, then contact lists can reference deal properties directly. No need to copy the information. Whatever is stored on the deal record can be used in list building.
Similarly, if the need is for better reports and dashboards, the custom report builder allows pulling in multiple data sources, contacts AND deals. If there is anything stored on the deal record and on the contact record, these reports will be able to visualize this.
"without having to worry about associating deals and contacts" – this would be, in my opinion, part of good CRM hygiene. Records must under all circumstances be associated correctly. (If they aren't, workflows couldn't copy any information anyway, by the way.)
So if I were you, I would challenge the request and try to get to the root of it. There are likely better ways to achieve the goal.
Best regards!
Karsten Köhler HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer
- It is not a good practice to get the values of the deal stage on contacts by copying it because of multiple associations between both, also the values will be overwritten.
- More than this, we can't copy values via workflows also if there are no associations between both objects.
- I will recommend going for Hubspot reports seeing all these metrics in custom reports by using various filters as per the requirements.
- It is not a good practice to get the values of the deal stage on contacts by copying it because of multiple associations between both, also the values will be overwritten.
- More than this, we can't copy values via workflows also if there are no associations between both objects.
- I will recommend going for Hubspot reports seeing all these metrics in custom reports by using various filters as per the requirements.
I don't think this is the right way to go. Maybe let's take a step back, what exactly and how would the marketing team like to analyze data?
For example, if deal data is required to segment contacts for email sends, exclude certain contacts from marketing emails, then contact lists can reference deal properties directly. No need to copy the information. Whatever is stored on the deal record can be used in list building.
Similarly, if the need is for better reports and dashboards, the custom report builder allows pulling in multiple data sources, contacts AND deals. If there is anything stored on the deal record and on the contact record, these reports will be able to visualize this.
"without having to worry about associating deals and contacts" – this would be, in my opinion, part of good CRM hygiene. Records must under all circumstances be associated correctly. (If they aren't, workflows couldn't copy any information anyway, by the way.)
So if I were you, I would challenge the request and try to get to the root of it. There are likely better ways to achieve the goal.
Best regards!
Karsten Köhler HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer
@Felipe-CS Are you currently leveraging lifecycle stages in your portal? In addition, you could also leverage association labels to notate who the primary point of contact is on the deal. That would give you the ability to pull a specific associated contact to the deal.
If your lifecycle stages are tied to your deal stages then you could pull the data like that. For example, when the deal reaches Demo Scheduled stage in the pipeline, the associated contact's lifecycle stage gets updated to Opportunity.