What is Lead to Account Matching, and Why It Matters

As an organization gets larger, it becomes more and more difficult for different departments, and different employees within the same department, to communicate. Unfortunately, this can lead to a "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" scenario.

It's bad when the communication failure occurs internally, but it's considerably worse when potential or existing customers are privy to the breakdown.

From a sales standpoint, you may have sent a sales email to a prospect, only to be met with a reply of, "I'm already working with John" or "I've been a customer for five years … and no one has gotten back to me from my last question. Can you check into that?"

This is precious time that the salesperson and the organization can never get back. The salesperson could have spent that time emailing actual prospects. Instead, they're now tracking down the person in charge of that account or someone who can fix the customer's problem. Plus, they've wasted the customer's time (and potentially irritated them).

If this has become an issue inside your organization, and you'd like your salesforce to do what they were hired to do — bring in more business — it may be time to consider Lead to Account Matching tools.

What is lead to account matching?

Lead to Account Matching is connecting leads to the appropriate accounts through an automated process. When this is enabled, a new lead that comes in will be automatically attached to the organization they belong to, and if that organization is already represented by a sales or account rep from your company, they'll be connected to their record.

Why is lead to account matching important for your business?

Time is money, no matter what industry or space you exist in, and keeping your customers happy is the only way to create ongoing revenue and a healthy pipeline. If too much time is spent chasing the wrong lead, you may miss out on a quality lead that's now buying elsewhere. Thankfully, Lead to Account Matching can help you make the most out of the leads you receive and:

Minimize Wasted Time

Any time that sales people spend not making phone calls, not sending emails, and not prospecting for new customers or checking in with their current customers, is wasted time. That means any running around they have to do to find answers to questions or work with other salespeople on that person's existing customer, is a waste of time and a loss of revenue.

Lead to Account Matching ensures that the right person is notified when a lead comes in and then your salespeople can spend more time bringing in actual sales for your organization.

In addition, massive database cleanups can take days if not weeks to complete. Rather than wasting manpower on a project of this magnitude, allow the program to be consistently working.

Minimize Customer Annoyance and Loss of Trust

Put yourself in your customer's shoes for a moment. Your inbox is about to burst. You've got sales emails coming out of your ears, and you just got one more. The worst part is that now, you're being introduced to a company and a product that you already use.

It's not only infuriating and a waste of time, but it also degrades your trust in the company. After all, if one person doesn't know what another one is doing, how are they handling your actual business?

Salespeople need to instill trust in the company, the product, and the service … not degrade it. Lead to Account Matching can help you avoid this embarrassing and detrimental snafu.

Increase Efficiency

Paying for leads, or acquiring them through other means, is absolutely useless if you don't treat them properly. If your sales team is spending time on the wrong leads, that's money down the drain. A Lead to Account Matching tool helps them to set and follow a good lead flow so potential and existing customers are handled quickly and efficiently for maximum return on investment.  

Measure Smarter

A murky database filled with duplicates and expired contacts will never produce the true data that can help you evaluate your sales performance to improve your processes and provide training where necessary. A clean database, on the other hand, will allow you to gather the data you need to make necessary changes.  

How does lead to account matching work?

Depending on which Lead to Account Matching technology you use, there are different features available to you. However, every tool works off of one basic concept. It will scan your leads for specific characteristics and then match those leads to the correct account. It does this using different fields in your lead record.

For example, this software can associate a contact with a company by matching the domain in a contact's email field to the company's domain name field. That means that Bob@thebestcompanyever.com will be associated with www.bestcompanyever.com. Let's say that another salesperson in your organization is working with another employee at Best Company Ever when Bob's lead comes in. That lead will be assigned to that salesperson.

Sure, you could do this manually, but why waste your most valuable asset on clerical work that could be handled more efficiently using technology. Products like Leadangel will do this automatically, integrating with your existing CRM and bridging the gap between marketing automation and your CRM.

If you're using a full suite CRM like HubSpot, this tool is built into the system and ready to work for you. In order to enable this function in your HubSpot account:

1. Go to the settings icon from the main navigation bar.

2. Navigate to Objects > Companies on the left sidebar menu.

3. From the Automation Section, select the checkbox to Create and associate companies with contacts.

4. To allow HubSpot to create new company records and associations based on your existing contacts' email addresses, click Yes.

This will not only associate new contacts with company records based on their email addresses, it will also go through your database to update existing records.

Lead to Account Matching technology is not only helpful for your business, it's essential. Why waste time and money contacting people who are already engaged with your company and working with another member of your sales team? Turn your sales department into an efficient, money-making machine and see more sales and happier customers.