Rules for Leads, Contacts, and Companies

Welcome to Broadlume Lead Management’s Customer Management Module. Unlike other CRMs and lead management software in the marketplace, the Customer Management Module from RLM has two unique features that others simply don’t have:

1. The ability to create a Lead and have the system automatically create the Company and the Contact from that Lead.
2. The ability to link the Company and Contact together directly from the lead.

These two features are incredible time savers. With other CRMs, you have to build the Company, then build the Contact, and then create the Lead or sales opportunity. Being the only CRM or lead management software on the market today with these unique features, we had to build some standard rules into our software in terms of how things work.

Let’s review those rules and features:

Rules of Contacts

When manually building a Contact, the system will allow you to build multiple Contacts with the same name as many times as you want. However, if you enter an email address with the Contact, the system makes that Contact unique. Why do we do that? Because there are thousands of John Smiths around, and you need to be able to build all of them. But to make the Contact unique in our system, just add the email address.

When building a Lead, you have the option to select from existing Contacts or have the system automatically create a new Contact from the Lead. If you select the “Create New Contact” option when building a Lead, the system will automatically build that Contact, regardless of whether the Contact already exists in the system. This is the only time when a unique Contact may be duplicated.

Rules of Companies

When manually building a Company, the system will allow you to build multiple Companies with the same name as many times as you want.  However if you enter a zip code with the Company, the system makes that Company unique.

When building a Lead, you have the option to select from existing Companies or have the system automatically create a new Company from the Lead. If you select the “Create New Company” option when building the Lead, the system will automatically build that Company, regardless of whether the Company already exists in the system. This is the only time when a unique Company may be duplicated.

Rules of Leads in relation to Contacts and Companies

A Lead can be associated with a Contact regardless of whether or not the Contact has an email address. But by using an email address, you have made the Contact unique. When building a Lead, the system will automatically perform a search for existing Contacts based on the information you begin to enter in the First Name, Last Name, or Email field.  To associate a Lead with an existing Contact, select that Contact from the search results.  If you do not want to link a lead to an existing Contact, select “Create New Contact” from the top of the search results menu and a new Contact will be automatically created in the system. Remember, a unique Contact may be duplicated when using this feature.

A Lead can be associated with a Company regardless of whether or not the Company has a zip code. But by using a zip code, you have made the Company unique.  When building a Lead, the system will automatically perform a search for existing Companies based on the information you begin to enter in the Company field.  To associate a Lead with an existing Company, select that Company from the search results.  If you do not want to link a lead to an existing Company, select “Create New Company” from the top of the search results menu and a new Company will be automatically created in the system. Remember, a unique Company may be duplicated when using the feature.

When creating a Lead that has a Company and a Contact and one or both are new to the system, the system will ask you whether or not you want to link the Company with the Contact. Companies and Contacts should only be linked if the Contact is an employee of or otherwise directly associated with the Company.  In all other cases you should not link the two. Pipelines can be set to automatically associate a Lead’s Company and Contact, which will not prompt the question to be asked.