Multiple Contacts With Leads

[BizLeads]

We are new users of SugarCRM - in our sales process we have one identified decision maker who is the contact in the Lead, but we would like to have multiple "influencers" contact information (Name, title, phone number, email) from the same account associated with a Lead. How do we do this? Also, when we convert the Lead into an Opportunity, the multiple contacts convert to Contacts -all associated with the same Opportunity/Account.

Insights on how to do will be appreciated.

[eggsurplus]

You may be able to create a relationship between Leads and Contacts in Studio. However, it'll take custom code to copy those contacts over to the Opportunity.

In modules/Leads/ConvertLead.php (not upgrade safe) look for the "if newopportunity is set" area and add the following code to the bottom of that if statement:

         /** [eggsurplus] associate any contacts of the lead with the account */
        $existing_contacts = $lead->get_related_list(new Contact(),"contacts");
        $opportunity->get_contacts();
        foreach($existing_contacts['list'] as $key=>$existing_contact) {
            $opportunity->contacts->add($existing_contact->id);    
        }        
        /** end [eggsurplus] */ 
  

[BizLeads]

Thanks for the response - so understand how that contacts would convert - but how set up multiple contacts associated within one lead - this is prior to converting.

[roblaus]

Jason meant to set up a custom 1:n relationship in studio in order to see a contacts subpanel underneath the lead.
Since all that might get complicated - why not inventing a category "Lead" for your accounts (and probably rename accounts then to "Companies"? And skip the separate entity Lead altogether?

[eggsurplus]

Thanks Robert,

Sometime I forget to add in those details. In our case we manually added the relationship but it may be possible through Studio although the link name may be messed up.

The fact of the matter is that Sugar really needs to support B2B as another option. From what I've seen info@hand does this well. During install you can choose your model and the look and feel will change appropriately.

[roblaus]

Agreed. The system I was working with before had an easy way of changing screens depending on e.g. customer parameters (hiding certain fields, rearranging them). If I chose "private person" as qualification for an account things like ddi, assistant, delivery address etc. simply disappeared and we were left just with the essentil ones.
The customization behind was extremely easy - there were n possible templates and you had to create/select one dropdown as trigger.