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Denise_Greenbe7
Denise_Greenbe7
Level 3
May 17, 2019
Question

Target Account Flagging - Looking for Ideas & Advice

  • May 17, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 6021 views

I've been asked to create a checkbox field called Target Account 2019 and set it to True for... you guessed it... our Target Accounts for the year. I'm reluctant to create new Target Account field every year from 2019 going forward. You know, Target Account 2020, Target Acount 2021....... Target Account 2030.... as opposed to one Target Account field that gets unchecked if the company is no longer a Target Account. But I can understand how creating a new field for each year allows for reporting comparing Opps and Revenue from Target Accounts from year to year. I'm interested in how other people handle this. Am I wrong to be reluctant to create a new Target Account field for every year? Is there a better way to achieve the same thing? I would appreciate any advice or ideas. Thank you!

4 replies

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
May 17, 2019

Why not a (implicitly) multivalued string field that holds every year for which a company is a target?

   2019;2022;2023

Booleans aren't any better than String [contains], as long as the [contains] is unambiguous. Since years are always 4 letters, [contains] "2019" and [contains] "2020" will always be accurate.

    Chris_Wilcox
    Chris_Wilcox
    Level 8
    May 17, 2019

    I fully support this solution. You can still use the current year in all your lead scoring and nurture programs with the contains constraint, but keep the history side by side in the same field. Best of both worlds. 

    Ronnie_Duke2
    Ronnie_Duke2
    Level 3
    May 20, 2019

    Sanford Whiteman‌ - wouldn't you need a shadow field (i.e. Target - Historical) to preserve current values and concatenate the new year in the string field going forward? So when 2020 rolls around, your flow step would be to change the value to {{lead.target - historical}}; 2020 to add them together?

    Unless Denise Greenberg is not doing these in batches and manually adding values to individual leads...

    SanfordWhiteman
    SanfordWhiteman
    Level 10
    May 20, 2019

    You can do it in a flow step. You don't need another field.

    Now, accurately pruning this field -- as with all multivalued fields -- to remove only a specific value, if that should be necessary, would require a webhook.

    Denise_Greenbe7
    Denise_Greenbe7Author
    Level 3
    May 20, 2019

    Actually, Ronnie's question makes me realize I have a harder problem than I was thinking about at first. The Target Account field has to be on the Account - and Marketo can't write to Account fields.

    Denise_Greenbe7
    Denise_Greenbe7Author
    Level 3
    May 22, 2019

    So here's the thing, I was thinking I could export a smart list from Marketo of the Target Accounts and them update them by importing the list into SFDC with the Target Account filled in. But you can only use the SFDC import wizard to do that if the SFDC Account ID is in the list. The SFDC Account ID isn't in Marketo. Any ideas as to how to get it there or some other method? I tried creating a report in SFDC and putting in all the Accounts to get the IDs that way but the report only lets you put a limited number of characters in the Account Name contains filter so that didn't work.

    Ronnie_Duke2
    Ronnie_Duke2
    Level 3
    May 22, 2019

    What if you put the contacts into an SFDC campaign then ran a campaign member report? You might have to create a custom Campaign Member formula field to pull in the Account ID, but that could be a feasible approach.

    Another idea would be to create the field on the Contact, then create some Apex code to pull it onto the Account in SFDC.

    ChristinaZuniga
    ChristinaZuniga
    Level 9
    November 11, 2019

    I did what Sanford recommends, but I created two fields. One was visible to Sales called "Target Account" and they would check it true by a certain day in the quarter. Then that field would "freeze" (be removed from their permission set to edit) and I would say "any company with Target Account = True update Target Account Multi-Select and it would add the year and quarter (my updates were quarterly) selection. Then I could report that this account was a target 2018Q2, 2019Q1, 2019Q2, etc. while sales only saw a simple checkbox. 

    Otherwise what will happen is Sales will:

    1) Backfill the year and quarter it SHOULD have been a target if they have access to the multi-select

    2) Try to add people after the date the field "freezes" and claim it was selected all along

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