Contacts

Department and seniority are selects because the reports group by them. A manager asking whether the team is talking to finance on the deals stuck at proposal needs those two fields filled the same way on every contact.

The same person is a champion on one deal and a blocker on another. The role therefore lives on the deal, in the opportunity contacts list, and the contact record stays the master of who the person is. On each deal, every contact involved is listed with a buying role and a stance:

Stance is supportive, neutral, opposed or unknown, and the date each person was last contacted sits beside it. A stage’s exit criteria can require that an economic buyer and a champion are identified before a deal leaves discovery, which is how the manager stops a deal reaching proposal with one contact on it.

Email opt-in records the email preference alongside its source and date. The current consent source choices also include business context, so that field alone cannot be treated as proof of consent. Channel rules and suppression must be configured with the customer’s policy before connecting outbound tools. Do not contact is checked independently of opt-in, and disabling email opt-in does not grant permission to use another channel.

A confirmed delivery failure can flag a contact as Bounced. A departure report requires review by the responsible user before changing Status to left company; an out-of-office reply alone is insufficient. The change is visible on the account and the deals involving that contact so the owner can review the buying committee.

Reports-to links contacts into a tree per account. The org chart is drawn from it on the account page and in the relationship map on the account plan, so an executive sponsor can see at a glance who above the champion has not been met.

Duplicates are the usual failure. The system matches on email and on name plus account when a contact is created or imported, and offers the existing record. A lead that converts against an existing account is matched to the existing person the same way, and the lead’s activities move onto that contact. Sales operations can merge duplicates, and the merge moves activities, deal roles and consent history to the surviving record with the merge logged.

• My Active Contacts: the current user’s active relationships, with account, job title, seniority, email opt-in and last activity date.
• The buying committee on each deal, with role, stance and last contact date.
• Sort My Active Contacts by last activity date to review relationships with no recent completed activity, then check the related opportunities before planning contact.