Multiple B2B contacts against a deal - which one came first?

[TMasalski]

Hi there

We are a SaaS company that sells software that benefits several personas across our target companies.  Often we need to open the doors to personas that are not involved at the time of closing and the sales cycle is usually 6+ months.

My question is how did/ do you manage to get marketing attribution for getting the first company contact in the door? 

Often these are not assigned to the deal (and we end up doing this ourselves) so lets assume that they are.

What I don't know is, how can we pull a report to show which of the associated contacts first opened the door?   So we can get the attribution of which contacts initiated the deals (and which ones were brought in by marketing and which were sales?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @TMasalski,

Like contacts, deals have Original source properties. These will look at the original source of the associated contact (or company) with the oldest value for Time first seen. Looking at these properties, you'll understand whether the contacts associated with a deal can be attributed to marketing or not.

---

• Original source data 1: additional information about the original source for the associated contact, or associated company if there is no contact, with the oldest value for the Time first seen property.
• Original source data 2: additional information about the original source for the associated contact, or associated company if there is no contact, with the oldest value for the Time first seen property.
• Original source: the original source for the associated contact, or associated company if there is no contact, with the oldest value for the Time first seen property.

---

The original source values are explained in this article: Understand 'Original source drill-down' properties

Of course, the first touchpoint of a deal is not necessarily the contact who opened the door, as you put it.

While writing, I'm realizing that the question and solution here might actually be a bit easier: You can create an active list of contacts who have sales activity against them (e.g. a positive Lead status combined with a known value for Last activity date; or any other property value that identifies them as being the "door opener", this could also include the Buying role property). Additionally, you'd filter this list to only display contacts who have a closed won deal associated with them.

Once you have this list, you can create a custom report and display these contacts by Original source. This report is then effectively telling you whether the contacts who were in contact with your sales team and who are associated with an open deal originated from marketing activities.

Let me know if you're getting stuck and whether I should share more details, happy to help.

Best regards!