cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12565350
RE: sales CRMs like salesforce or zoho
Don’t expect much of an audience for this on Lemmy, but:
Maybe it’s just the places I’ve worked, but seems like I’m constantly wading through contacts who are gone - I don’t want to delete them because the history could be helpful, but seems like there should be a quick, native way to mark them. Maybe once marked those names are grayed out or something.
My one company had a custom field that you could check, but then there was no special handling of those contacts in terms of how they’re displayed - just you could use it to exclude results in reports.
This highly depends on the philosophy of the CRM. But in most of the companies i worked for this is actually a desired thing. But this is for companies who track persons/individuals.
The thing is: it sometimes is hard to track and keep the record up to date, even if you have a data broker involved.
So either the company lost track of this individual or doesn’t care about individuals and only keeps track of the „responsible person“.
In your companies where this was considered desirable, what was the reason?
Your second line is why I think it’s a needed feature - as a salesperson if I open an account and look for the best contacts, I’m going to find of all the people listed a ton of them aren’t there anymore.
Once I’ve done the work of looking up their linkedin or whatever, it would be great if there was a one click button to store that knowledge for future sales reps (and my future self).
Instead I have the option to 1) delete the contact - not desirable because would be good to know what previous conversations we had with them or 2) modify the contact record in some way to store that information.
Which I do now, but it’s cumbersome (I replace the title with an “x” and put their old title and email in the description field, so hopefully they’re not getting a bunch of hard bounces if added to marketing emails) and the changes I make are ad hoc, other people may not know that my notations mean the contact isn’t there anymore, and it doesn’t make skimming a list of people easier in terms of directing attention.
I am probably the person who decides the strategy and gives the order to implement it.
So, why would i want it? For many reasons, but one is activity history. I have this person in my CRM for a reason. And the person probably has been visited already. So i can lookup previous calls (maybe even from a different sales representative).
Another thing - if your contact changes, you presume the next role will be either something similar or a bit up. Time to visit an old friend, i guess, and tie your bond again.
Expense and sample tracking was another reason, as my market is strictly regulated and a person cannot recieve more than a certain amount per year.
Ah, I think we’re talking past each other.
I don’t mean that the contact should be deleted, I think it should still be in the database. For the reason you said, so you can see the history of activity. But I’m saying there should be a way to mark they’re not at that organization anymore. A one click button that flags them as past employee rather than active - and then those contacts are still in the database but displayed differently to make it easier for the sale team to direct their attention.
Marked as moved and displayed on the „old“ account as inactive/moved as well as active on the „new“ account. I think i know pretty well what case you are talking about.
This is one thing which is a bit complicated. Because what you want to avoid are duplicates as good as you can. The person still exists, but is on another account. So what you want is a contact history.
Account = company/building Contact = person you can talk to Call = the activity you do with a contact
If you already have calls documented on this account it is easy. The calls are stille there, but the contact is gone (moved). Call history is implemented by standard. Contact history is a different thing, though. This probably needs to be customised.
If the data on the contact, email address, phone, cell phone, is all tied to their former company, and they are no longer with that company, the data is useless and they should be deleted.
Unless you want a record of previous communication, and which email or phone number it went to.
Oh, and some tips regarding getting this functionality. It might be already implemented but you don’t know about that or don’t have the rights. Open s ticket and ask support.
But i guess nobody actually thought about it. Ask your peers if they find it useful as well. The more the merrier. (First question the GM or ceo asks me: is is relevant?). If so, get your regional manager involved. Maybe you have „power user“ for the crm, get them involved, too.
Then contact your crm manager and discuss this idea. It might even be a nice project that looks good on your resume or development plan.
I built a couple of bespoke CRMs in the early 00’s and built this option in by using a separate table for companies and individuals, then associating them, which made add/remove with a button trivial.
I look at current SaaS CRM’s and shake my head; we’ve gone backwards.