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Managing multiple contacts in the same company

When prospecting, you often interact with large companies, and the question of how to manage several contacts inside the company arises. With classical CRM systems, there is usually a company object in which there are contacts. It seems simple and natural but in reality it generates lots of admin works to maintain and does not necessarily helps to close a deal more efficiently. no, as the name suggests, is not a CRM; it's focus lies on the lead. So, how should multiple contacts be managed in a lead focused system?

The first question that you have to ask yourself is: are those contacts concerned by the same sale or do you want to sell them different things on separate deals?

The golden rule of a lead management system is:

1 potential sale in real life = 1 Lead created in the software.

Big sales case

So if you’re trying to sell a Boeing 777 or an Airbus A380, you will need to have several contacts inside one lead. You can add a new contact to a lead description at all times. When you do that, try to keep the most important contact at the top of the list so you can access his contact info more easily.

New contacts can also be added in the comment section of a lead. At the moment, they appear in the process, but if the sales process is long we clearly recommend to add it to the description of the lead in order not to contact the wrong person when you follow-up after a long time.

If you often try to close complex deals with several contacts involved, the best thing to do is probably to directly define default fields for your leads with several contacts. Typical default fields could be:

  • Main contact name:
  • Main contact email:
  • Main contact phone:
  • Contact 2 name:
  • Contact 2 Job Title:
  • Contact 2 email:
  • Contact 2 phone:
  • Contact 3 name:

Numerous smaller sales

If you're selling to different people in the same company - for example selling trainings to different teams of the same company - then you should have several leads grouped together in the same Client Folder. The contact in each lead will be the person that can take the decision for that precise lead. You should not add contacts not related to that precise sell even if they are in the same company.

Grouping all those leads inside the same client folder will help you get the context of a lead and will allow you to easily find references of previous deals to help you conclude the currents one. You can access leads by going to the client folders main page and also access client folders by their lead.

Specific cases when there is a buyer between you and the final customer

For example, in the advertising business, when you sell ads to a customer such as Coca-Cola, you can sell the ads directly to Coca-Cola but most of the time you sell it to its media agency like MediaCom or Carat. So here the question you have to ask is slightly more complex, as the final customer is not directly the one involved in the selling process. In this case you should of course only have one contact in each lead. But the question would be what is the client folder? Do we group the leads under CocaCola or do we group them under Carat.

There is no absolute rule about this and it should depend of your own experience, but if the number of buyers (media agencies in this case) is low, our recommendation would be to group the leads under the CocaCola client folder and to add an Carat tag to each lead. Like this, if you want to have access to all the leads with one media agency, you can easily filter it based on the correct tag and if CocaCola moves to another media agency or start to buy directly from you, you still have access to the full history of your deals.

Upsells and renewal

When you need to resell the same product or service to the same person you will of course use the duplicate function of the lead so you will keep all the contact info that you need. To discover more about how to manage upsell, renewal and also how to manage a customer on an operational perspective when the lead is won please have a look to this other post here: (

Next post: Admin, Team Manager & User

Table of contents

  1. Organizing your sales activity
    1. Our Philosophy
    2. Suspects (Unqualified Prospects) vs. Leads
    3. Prospecting Lists, Leads & Client Folders
    4. Status vs. Sales Steps
    5. Defining Key Information on Leads
    6. The Importance of Categorizing Your Leads
    7. Managing Multiple Contacts in the Same Company
    8. Admin, Team Manager & User
    9. Customizing Your Account Interface
  2. Organizing Your Daily Activities
    3. Set Reminders and Synchronize Your Account with Your Calendar
    4. Sort Activities for a Better Understanding of Your Leads
    5. Extended, Compact & Pipeline Mode
    6. Create Several Pipelines to Analyse Different Sales Processes
    7. Make your Most Important Leads Stand Out
    8. Find Leads by Using Filters
  3. Learn How to Use Prospecting Lists
    1. When and How to Use Prospecting Lists
    3. The Importance of Using Column Names
    4. Magic Columns
  4. Working on the Go
    1. Mobile App
    2. Using the Speech Recognition
    3. Scan your Business Cards
  5. Adding Leads from External Sources
    1. By E-mail
    2. From your Partners
    3. From a Contact Form
    1. Analyze your business and sales team performance
    2. Analyze your Activity by Category or by Salesperson
    3. Find the Leads That Have Been Pending for too Long
    5. Using the Activity Feed to Manage your Team
    7. Exporting your Data for Reporting or Marketing Purposes
  7. Manage your Existing Customers
    1. Following up on your Won Clients
  8. Connect to Other Apps
    1. How to Connect: Zapier, API & Direct Integration
    2. Send Notifications or Fire Actions Based on Events
    3. How to connect noCRM to your own Information System