How to enter leads with several contacts from the same company?

[ThomasB]

Normally, you enter a lead as a person or just as a company name.

However, when you attend a trade show, you may end up with several business cards from different people at the same company—for example, the marketing director, the CEO, and the technical director.

How do you record these people in the CRM?

I could add them as three leads. Or I could add the company as a lead and the people as contacts. However, contacts aren’t linked to leads—only to customers or companies.

As far as I know, you only add a company if you have a customer relationship with it, not if it’s just a lead, right?

How do others solve this problem?

[yuri]

Hi Thomas,

There's no single right approach.

It's normal that Accounts and Contacts are created before they become customers. Leads are usually very raw. Once they are qualified, the Opportunity, Account and Contacts are created.

You can create a custom relationship between Lead and Contact (one-to-many or many-to-many). In this case sales persons can work with a single Lead while having multiple additional Contacts associated.

[ThomasB]

Ok, thanks. I know that there is no one-fits-all solution but was hoping for advise. Not to make same mistakes others have done.

Maybe I just add new leads with company anme only and link contacts to leads as you suggested.