Multiple Reps for the same company different product lines

[SMohan3]

Hi All,

I’m looking for advice on account ownership structure in HubSpot.

For companies where a single customer buys from multiple lines of business (e.g., different product lines or service offerings) and different sales reps specialize in each line, how do you manage ownership in HubSpot?

• Do you split company ownerships by product lines?

Would love to hear how you’ve set this up in HubSpot and what’s worked (or not worked) for your teams.

Thanks in Advance

@Victor_Becerra 

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @SMohan3,

If you want the ability to filter by owner by product line, then separate owner properties are the way to go. When you create a new HubSpot property, choose the property type 'HubSpot user' and name it '[product line name] owner', then repeat as many times as needed. You can now filter for specific product line owners, whether they're known, missing etc. This is also the option that offers better reportability.

If it's mainly about managing permissions and company record access, a HubSpot user multi-select property will do just as well.

In both cases, the main company owner field could/should be filled with the main account owner.

Best regards

PS. If it's just about reporting, a custom report across companies and deals could also surface various deal owners per company. It really depends on what you want to achieve.

[SMohan3]

Hi Karsten,
Thank you for your response! Apologies i should have phrased the question better. 

Yes, we have the option to create multiple company owner properties per segment but this system doesn't seem scalable in the long run. The same company could have more than 5 segments, that would mean 5 different company owners. 

How is accountablity tracked at this point? What are the pros and cons of having it set up like this?

I was wondering if a company has a scenario like this and if so how did they tackle this? Is creating multiple ownership properties the right way to go? or is there a different scalable solution to this.

[karstenkoehler]

@SMohan3 I have had this scenario before - the solution really depends in what exactly your desired outcome is. After everything is configured, leaving HubSpot features aside, what are you able to do that you currently aren't? What do you mean by accountability - what would a user be accountable for if they're one of many company owners? If it's shared accountability, then - see my previous reply - a multi select user property could be the solution.

I find 5 owner properties acceptable as long as new product lines aren't added on a regular basis. But again: it depends in your desired outcome. There are plenty scenarios where a dedicated owner information on the company isn't needed.

[SMohan3]

At the moment, we assign company ownership based on state and company size, which works well because one company owner is responsible for prospecting the entire account, regardless of business line.

We’re now debating a new model where company assignments are done by segment. In this model, we have three segments, so there would be three different owners at both the company and contact level. The decision-maker (on the prospect side) for all three segments might be the same person, or they might differ.

If we move to this multi-ownership, segment-based model, I have a few concerns and questions:

• How do other companies decide who the single person is that owns the overall prospect relationship across all segments?

• How do they ensure there is no communication overlap, i.e., three different reps reaching out to the same decision-maker about different segments at the same time?

Overall, I’m trying to understand the advantages of segment-level ownership, because based on my limited experience so far, I mostly see downsides to this approach.

But i also understand my question is very specific to our HubSpot usecase, so it might not be the same for everyone. 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

@SMohan3 it sounds like this is less a question about how to configure this in HubSpot and more so a decision on account ownership in general.

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@SMohan3 wrote:
How do other companies decide who the single person is that owns the overall prospect relationship across all segments?

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I think there are two approaches here. One is determining who the single main owner of an account is - or keeping ownership to the deal level where each rep is responsible for communications around whatever they sold.

If you go for a single main ownership (and then additional ownership for other reps), you could use the main company owner field for whoever made the first sale. 

Another approach could be to set a hierarchy of your business lines and say that whenever product line A is sold, the corresponding rep is the one who becomes the main owner.

Without knowing more about your business, actual products and services and customers, it's hard to say which "rule" makes most sense here.

Any additional reps on that company could be "collected" within a multi-select property so that they can be easily notified about changes. The main copmany owner rep would be the one owning communication to that account.

Alternatively, the company is owned based on state and company size rules - assigned one definitive account owner who then manages the communication and checks with the sales reps who sold the individual product lines. Those would be tracked as deal owners.

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@SMohan3 wrote:
How do they ensure there is no communication overlap, i.e., three different reps reaching out to the same decision-maker about different segments at the same time?

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You can do this through permissions or training / enablement.

Permissions would be a very strict approach, where only a main company owner could communicate and everyone else would have to align with them. It would be useful if you think that it's going to be close to impossible to avoid communication chaos with 5 or more people having sold different product lines to a customer.

Alternatively, train and enable your team to understand that - for example - there is one main account owner who owns and controls communication and alignment should always happen with them before any communication goes to the customer.

Here as well the details depend on the exact relationship with the clients. Does each rep talk with their own person of contact at the customer? Do they all have a shared person of contact? Do you want to show a single face to your customer or would the customer rather have one person of contact per business line?

From the context I have, I would probably go with a single company owner based on clear assignment rules, an additional multiselect field for all involved sales reps, and clear internal rules that all communication goes through the main company owner - to avoid any chaos.

[SMohan3]

Ah, thank you so much for adding your perspective to this