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Amanda_Thomas6
Amanda_Thomas6
Level 8
May 19, 2016
Question

Why Sales Needs To Use Contact Roles

  • May 19, 2016
  • 13 replies
  • 10523 views

Hi All!

After getting new and exciting report ideas from Marketo Summit​, I ran back into a little issue that comes up for almost every marketing team. I needed more information in salesforce in order to make these new reports mean something! One of those salesforce things I needed was contact roles. I have stressed the importance of this information to sales, but it didn't stick for long. So, I created this slide deck, attached, and shared on a call. This can be used for stressing a specific field, or just to stress the importance of filling out all fields with care in salesforce. Obviously, I'm preaching to the choir on this outlet, but I thought maybe some of you are going through the same thing and could use these high level slides to remind sales to use contact roles. Enjoy!

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    13 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    May 19, 2016

    Thank you! This is one of my struggles right now and had an internal webinar with Sales about it. Still fight each step of the way to get this on their to do lists when working a lead!!

      A
      Anonymous
      May 19, 2016

      Thanks this is very helpful!

        A
        Anonymous
        May 19, 2016

        Awesome - and I love the images with it! Nearly every client I've had has not used contact roles, and it means you're missing out on important analytics on both sides! I have figured out ways in SFDC to make the field mandatory, which does help adoption, and also create adoption reports to show who is keeping in line.

          Grégoire_Miche2
          Grégoire_Miche2
          Level 10
          May 19, 2016

          Hi Amanda,

          Thx, this is useful.

          FYI, this is an issue that we face on almost all of the projects. You may also want to point out that the absence of contacts roles reveals a sales management weakness and a compliance issue:

          • If a sales person quits, how do we know how we should talk to and there role on the ongoing opportunity?
          • In a business review, one of the key questions that is being asked is : who are you talking to? Are these persons able to make a decision? ... So if this is asked, why not just putting it in the system so thta we remember next week?

          Also, in SFDC, there is no way you can control this easily by default. But adding some controls on this is not that a hard task:

          • Start to remove the "new opportunity" button from the account layout sub lists. Sales will then have to go to the opportunity tab to create an oppy or to the contact, in which case you will have at least 1 contact in the contact roles
          • You also can create some SFDC triggers or process builders to compute the number of contact roles in an oppy and, once this is done, you can set validation rules on the oppy to check minimum number of contacts are appended to the oppy. Usually, you check this in combination with the stage of the oppy. It is acceptable that an oppy has no contact role at the very beginning of the sales cycle, but not when getting close to closing.

          -Greg

            Amanda_Thomas6
            Amanda_Thomas6Author
            Level 8
            May 19, 2016

            Great additions! Thanks, @Gregoire Michel! I really like the validation rules idea. I think I might set one up where they can't mark it closed won without having at least a primary contact.

            Amanda_Thomas6
            Amanda_Thomas6Author
            Level 8
            May 19, 2016

            By the way, I never know how to tag you, Greg! lol There seems to be a plethora of profiles to choose from.

            Adam_Benitez1
            Adam_Benitez1
            Level 3
            May 20, 2016

            While at Summit, I heard about this SFDC free app that requires Opportunities to have identified Contact Role or Primary Contact Assigned at a certain stage in the Opportunity Selling Process. An easily customizable validation rule to fit your specific selling methodology.

            The app is called

            Opportunity Contact Roles Validation

            and can be found here: Opportunity Contact Roles Validation - Pactera Technology International, Ltd. - AppExchange

            I'm looking to test it out with our company as well.

              Amanda_Thomas6
              Amanda_Thomas6Author
              Level 8
              May 20, 2016

              Awesome! Thank You @Adam Benitez​!

              A
              Anonymous
              May 20, 2016

              Thanks for putting this together. We see this all the time too. Getting Sales to adhere to process is a big challenge for everyone. Its great that you took the step to educate the team.

                A
                Anonymous
                May 20, 2016

                Great presentation. I'd mostly given up on it ever happening so we switched to the hybrid model in RCE. It's not perfect but better than getting no roles on opportunities. Our sales leadership won't let us make Contact Role required. "Nags" to complete it are built in, but the percent completion is still atrocious. I may try your approach and see if it helps. Thanks again.

                  Amanda_Thomas6
                  Amanda_Thomas6Author
                  Level 8
                  May 20, 2016

                  Hey Mike Turner. I hear ya. It's a battle to make something required, but it's so much easier to get the contact role down then to back track it. I've had to go from opportunities to account to all contacts, to all activity, manually, to pull information. There is so much time wasted in that method and lots of room for human error. I haven't checked out the "hybrid model in RCE". Something I'll look into.

                  Chris_Willis1
                  Adobe Champion
                  Chris_Willis1Adobe Champion
                  Adobe Champion
                  May 20, 2016

                  @Amanda Thomas​ This deck is really great.  Have you seen a good response from your Sales reps since presenting this deck? 

                  What type of sales profile are most of these folks?  I have conducted the same type of presentations (less the cool memes), and because our reps are mainly outside reps we get varying levels of compliance.  I've found that most of these trainings tend to get institutionalized more quickly with inside reps or SDR types. 

                  Chris Willis - Fractional GTM Operations Consultant
                    Amanda_Thomas6
                    Amanda_Thomas6Author
                    Level 8
                    May 20, 2016

                    Hey @Chris Willis​! Great questions! We're a start up comprised of 3 outside reps one in WA, one in CO, and one in GA. That definitely makes it a little harder to implement things, but luckily, as a small group we work closely with the CEO.

                    The CEO has a weekly sales review with them every Monday, where they go through pipeline and projections. I put together all the reporting, graphs, and the slide deck he uses for the Monday call on Friday. So on Friday we review the presentation, and I present him with one salesforce idea. (What needs to be better, what's new, etc.) This way he learns why we're doing what we're doing and how it benefits the company. Then he touches on the topic Monday, and I present on the topic Tuesday during our sales ops call. It seems a little redundant, but having the CEO telling the reps the need for something, gives my call to action precedence and more credibility.

                    As for enforcing, I just presented this on Tuesday. Next Tuesday, as part of the sales ops call, I will pull an opportunities with contact roles report to share. That way all of us can see progress made!

                    A
                    Anonymous
                    May 20, 2016

                    This is great, Amanda, thanks for the resource!

                      A
                      Anonymous
                      May 26, 2016

                      Nice job @Amanda Thomas​

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