Transforming Salesforce: Transition to a Contact-Only Model

Hey everyone, Jonathan from CRM Hacker here! I've been hearing a lot about the lead-to-contact debate within Salesforce. Should you use leads? Should you transition to a contact-only model? Having helped companies transition from a lead model to a contact-only model for about 8 years, I wanted to share some insights.

Why Transition to a Contact-Only Model?

In today's B2B world, the Account-Based approach is the most effective go-to-market strategy. We're selling to businesses and the people within those businesses, so why do we still use the leads object? Leads are disjointed from all other objects except campaign members. It doesn't make sense to use them anymore.

Key Benefits of a Contact-Only Model

Transitioning to a contact-only model provides several significant advantages:

Enhanced Reporting

• Simplified Reporting: You only need one type of report instead of multiple or joined reports. This clears up the issue of juggling between different report types and simplifies your analytics.

• Better Insights: Having all contacts linked to their respective accounts provides a holistic view of engagement and intent, which is crucial for better forecasting and predictive analytics.
  

Sales Efficiency

• Streamlined Process: Your sales team will have a more efficient process as they only use contacts, eliminating the need to jump back and forth between leads and contacts.

• Avoid Duplicate Outreach: This approach helps prevent the embarrassing scenario of an SDR reaching out to a prospect lead that an AE is already speaking with as part of an open opportunity's sales cycle.

Improved Data Quality

• Consistent Data: Managing flows, apex, and triggers for contacts is more efficient, leading to cleaner and more accurate data.

• Single Object Management: Salesforce admins will have an easier job as they only need to manage one object type instead of two, reducing complexity.

Holistic Account View

• Complete Visibility: Having all contacts associated with their accounts brings all of their data together under one view. This provides a better picture of account engagement, intent analysis, and overall account health.

• Enhanced Segmentation and Personalization: This approach leads to improved segmentation and personalization, making your sales and marketing outreach more relevant and effective.

How to Transition to a Contact-Only Model

Transitioning to a contact-only model involves several key steps:

Auto-Convert Leads to Contacts

• Use tools like LeanData to match leads to accounts and automatically convert them to contacts. This ensures a smooth and accurate transition process.
  

Handle Orphaned Contacts

• Create an Orphaned Contact Account for unmatched records, such as those with personal Gmail-type email addresses. Decide whether to enrich these contacts with additional information or delete them altogether.

Update Lead Conversion Reporting

• Modify your lead conversion reporting to focus solely on the contact object. This may require some light customization around custom fields and reports.

Revise Sales Processes

• Update your sales process to create opportunities directly from contacts, not from accounts. This ensures better data sourcing and accuracy, which your marketing team will appreciate.

Check Integrations

• Ensure any integrations tied to the leads object are updated to map properly to contacts. This is crucial for maintaining data consistency and integrity across your CRM system.

Despite these considerations, the advantages far outweigh the challenges. By converting all leads to contacts and running a contact-only model, you can achieve better and easier reporting, increased efficiency for both the sales team and Salesforce operations, improved segmentation and personalization, cleaner data, and a clearer view of account engagement and intent.

I've been setting up this type of process for about 8 years now, and I can confidently say that transitioning to a contact-only model can transform your sales process and CRM efficiency. If you have any questions or would like to start moving your system away from leads to a contact-only approach, please contact us today.