(*) Discussion - Convert? Multiple Leads? Opportunity? Changed lead name or multiple contacts.

[davemaxg]

We purchased a list of targeted leads but sometimes when calling a lead, we are referred to a different person.  In some cases the original person has left the company or the position and in these cases, we would change the information in the lead record.  I can see some value in making a new lead record with the same company information and setting the status of the old lead record to 'dead' or 'wrong person' and marking the new lead 'open'.

I've toyed with the idea of just converting these into Accounts with multiple Contacts but it is so early in the process that no conversations have occurred with the lead to merit converting them into a prospect with an associated opportunity.

I'm hoping this can begin a discussion of what others do in similar situations.  Obviously there are many different scenarios, but I'd like to have a set of rules that our telemarketers can follow for consistency across most situations.

Thanks,

David

[jkucera]

I'd recommend your idea of leaving the lead there and marking it "dead" either with a Lead Status and/or changing the Lead Owner.  That way future lists with the dead email addresses can be deduped.

For the new person you are referred to, create the 2nd lead and mark open.  

The only exception to this would be for existing accounts, I'd recommend converting the dupe lead into a new contact, and marking that contact as "dead" for the same tracking purposes.  If you find your dedupe process only works for leads against leads and contacts against contacts, consider having 2 dead records: 1 lead & 1 contact for an existing account.

[davemaxg]

I should have laid out the scenarios more clearly in my post, but what about this scenario.  You have the contact information for the CEO of a small company but you find out that you should really be dealing with the head of HR.  You want to maintain the CEO's name and contact information but he is not the best point of contact for the lead. 

In this scenario, we change the contact information in the lead but put the CEO information in the description or comments field of the lead record which would then map to a similar field in the Account record upon conversion.  Upon conversion, it would probably make sense to create a contact record for the CEO( and if we're feeling ambitious update the org chart info).

Is this what others do in similar situations?

[jkucera]

Thanks for the example - that makes sense.  If you want to automate it all, I think the best approach (requires code) would be:

 - create the HR lead

 - mark the CEO lead as "dead"

 - Upon Account creation, have a trigger find all leads where Account.Name matches Lead.Company, and auto-create contacts (convert those leads to contacts but don't create an oppty) for that account

This avoids the more complex custom field workarounds and scales to multiple "dead" leads.  

The problem with the custom field approach is that it is easier to make a mistake & it requries creating the contact manually once the account is created, so there's a greater chance you'll lose the history of the CEO's contact info.

I can help with the trigger syntax if you'd like to use the above approach.

[davemaxg]

John,

Thanks for your suggestion.  That sounds like a good idea, but we're currently on Professional edition so it is not an option.  I was hoping that others would jump in on this thread to chime in on their methods for handling these situations. 

There's got to be a lot of different and good ideas out there.  Right? 

David