Adding stages to the contact object in Salesforce
Hi all,
We use Hubspot as our marketing automation tool. Because of this, we can't have all inbound inquiries come in as leads. This means that if a contact already exists in Salesforce, Hubspot will update it with the new campaign but cannot create a separate lead record.
As of right now, we don't have stages on contacts the way we do with leads. This has caused some pain for reps as well as for the routing system. Reps don't really know at a glance where a contact is in the lifecycle of a prospect. It also means that we can't do some advanced routing -- like SLA reminders.
In short, I want to implement stages on the contact object. Has anyone done this? Any pitfalls I should avoid? Any arguments AGAINST doing it? Does anyone have a way to show/quantify how it has helped?
Many thanks,
Christine
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Hi Christine!
Thank you for your post! Want to start by clarifying if you're referring to implementing a contact "stage" field, or a contact "status" field. Reason I ask is because sometimes folks use these fields for overlapping reasons. If you've created a field on the lead called "Lead Stage" and you're looking to create the same field on the contact level, I don't foresee any downstream impacts of that and I think creating that field is a good idea so that you can more or less mimic your sales process on the contact side with the lead side.
If you are using the standard "status" field on the lead object to track stages, then there's a little bit of a snag. Since it's a standard field, it cannot be mapped to a field on the contact (when you convert the lead to a contact that field will not carry over). For this you'll need a workaround such as creating a "lead stage" field that automatically gets populated with the status field's value through a process builder, and then map that lead stage field to the contact status field that you create on the contact.
As far as creating that field though, no real pitfalls to having more information on your contact records to help with tracking and reporting. I would also consider making sure your contact stages match exactly with your lead stages to reduce confusion.
Just in case, when I say "map", this is referring to when you go into the setup under lead fields there's an option to "map lead fields". This is where you control which values are passed from custom fields on the lead, to custom fields on the contact upon conversion.
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