Loading Leads

Aside from serving as one of the company’s most valuable assets, our CRM is also an integral tool for interacting with our prospects. Lead Generation is charged with maintaining the accuracy and completeness of this database in numerous ways, but checking for duplicates is the simplest way to ensure frictionless communication between our AEs and potential clients.

If Lead Generation fails to check for duplicates, a number of things go wrong:

• A business owner may be contacted by two different salespeople who are unaware of each other’s efforts, conveying that we are disorganized and overly aggressive
• Our CRM database’s integrity suffers. Leadership uses Close and its data to inform company strategy, meaning we cannot afford to have inaccurate or duplicate data
• AE disputes over “who gets to keep the lead” are painful and time-consuming. These are disagreements that absorb the time of Sales Management and Sales Ops, and in which there are no winners

To ensure the lead is not a duplicate, search the following in Close:

Suppose a LGA is scraping and comes across the following company:

• Genieva’s Kayak Rentals
• Owner is Genieva Croley
• Her contact info is 720-555-5555 or the office number 303-555-5555
• Email address is Genieva@GKR.com
• Website is https://www.GKR.com

Below are the ways to search each piece of information to ensure you aren’t loading a duplicate lead:

• Company’s name
  • Search: Genieva’s Kayak Rentals
  • Company: Genieva’s Kayak Rentals
  • “Genieva’s Kayak Rentals”
• Company’s website URL
  • URL: GKR.com
    • i.e. Remove the “http:// or https://” and “www” from the URL structure and search using only the domain.
  • “GKR.com”
  • Description: GKR.com
• Company’s email addresses
  • Genieva@GKR.com
  • “Genieva@GKR.com”
  • contact(email(email:”Genieva@GKR.com“))
• Company’s phone numbers
  • Use country codes
  • For phone numbers outside the US, search with and without a ‘0’ following the country code
    • +4405555555
    • +445555555
  • No spaces
    • 7205555555
    • 3035555555

If there are results when searching for duplicates, investigate to make sure the lead is a true duplicate. If the lead is a duplicate, do not load the lead. If the lead is not a duplicate but shares contact information in which you determine the leads are not related, write a BD_CS note detailing which information is shared and its history.

BD_CS

When two or more leads share contact information but are separate businesses, write a note in the leads (note: Lead Generation never writes notes in Live Customer leads). The Note starts with “BD_CS”, translating to Business Development Contact Shared. Then state exactly what contact information is shared between the leads using the respective company name in both notes, and explain any details or history found in researching the leads.

Enter all of the following information in the lead:

• Status
  • Select Potential for leads that can be worked by a salesperson (Account Executive aka AE)
  • Look in the PSP Column in the AirTable embed provided in the Live Country help page to determine if Stripe operates in the country. If Stripe does not work in the country, then the lead status is International.
• Basic Information
  • Company name
  • Company website URL
  • Company address: at least the city and country
    • Do not use special characters in text fields
    • Use English translation of all cities
    • If found, add the zip code
    • Always add the state for US, Canada, Mexico, and Australia
      • Use 2 letter abbreviations for US, Canada and Mexico
      • Use 2-3 letter abbreviations for Australia
  • Description: If the URL is not functioning write “Website not live”, important information, multiple locations, additional TA URLs.
• Contact Information
  • Name
  • Title
    • Use English translations
  • Phone numbers
    • Add + in front of phone numbers outside the US or +1 will auto-add to the number
  • Email addresses

The URL Object houses all the custom fields that are required for LG except custom fields associated with account tier, location, and opportunities. Each URL added is named using the website’s domain.

Manually add these Custom Fields:

• URL
  • Website’s domain
  • Not required in leads that are not live

The Location Object contains all the location custom fields. Each location added is named using the city of operation. Use the following custom fields to properly identify where a company is located.

Manually add these Custom Fields:

• Location Reference
  • URL that is linked to this location
• Location – Country
  • Required in every lead
• Location – State
  • Required for leads in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Australia
• Social URL – Google Reviews

Custom fields that auto-populate:

• Location – City
• Location – Country – Europe
• Location – Island
  • For leads in New Zealand, Hawaii, US Virgin Islands and European islands
• Location – Region
• Location – Sub-Region
• Location – UK Country
  • For leads in the UK

Account Tier for Live Customer leads is determined by the annual booking fee revenue the account earns (see Tier Thresholds). Account Tiers on Potential or International sales leads are simply FareHarbor’s best guess at what the company is likely to generate once it goes live.

On a Tier scale of 0-5 (Tier 5 being the most profitable), Lead Generation manually enters the Tier number up to a Tier 3 (Tier 4 in RARE instances and must require a note in the lead with ample evidence/reasoning to justify it). See Account Tier Guidelines to determine the account Tier.

Manually add these Custom Fields:

• Account Tier
  • If the Tier borders 2/3 or 3/4 then Tier the lead as a 3
  • If you find a good lead that should receive immediate attention, use the Power Hour Form
• Language – Primary
  • Potential client’s primary language (based on Country)

Custom field that auto-populates:

• Account Tier – Update Date

Opportunities are applied to all global potential sales leads. If a status of a lead is changed back to potential an opportunity is required. Please assign the sales owner to the URL object after the opportunity is created. The opportunity user should always be SalesOps.

• Status: Dashboard Sales – Potential
• User: SalesOps (usually) or AE if there’s already one assigned

Custom fields that need to be manually added:

• Associated URL(s)
  • URL that is associated with the opportunity

If you find a company/event that seems like a good fit and clearly associated with a Production Company, please follow instructions below.

Production Companies are usually listed in the footer of the URL or it’ll be mentioned in an article

1. Load the lead as normal
2. List out any additional location URLs in the description
3. Add the Associations custom field – this should be the name of the Production Company
4. If it’s not in the list, task Lauren Gornik “Please add (name of Production Company) as a PC Association”
5. If the lead shares contact information with other leads in Close, be sure to leave BD_CS notes
6. Task Sales Ops “New lead loaded – Production Company. See Association”

Here are links to any info sources you may need in order to load a lead:

• Account Tier Guidelines
• Country Live Status and Lead Information
• SEMrush
• Type Library