Automated New Business/Logo Identification for Subscription Services in Salesforce
Many organizations treat new accounts, often referred to as “new logos,” differently from existing businesses. These distinctions typically involve:
- Specialized pricing structures for new business,
- Unique discount levels,
- Customized order acceptance processes, such as credit checks and deposit requirements,
- Commission plans designed to incentivize growth in new accounts.
Accurate, automated identification of new logos in CRM systems is critical for effective sales reporting. Metrics such as new revenue versus upsell or cross-sell performance are essential KPIs for most businesses.
Beyond sales, this identification also impacts downstream operations, including:
- Order delivery priorities and customer communication,
- First invoice preparation and review,
- Priority support ticket handling and other service management processes.
However, many organizations rely on manual flagging of CRM accounts or opportunities as new logos. This approach often results in errors and increases maintenance overhead. Automating this identification process eliminates human error, enhances reporting accuracy, and ensures seamless post-sale operations.
This post provides insights into automating new logo identification, with a focus on subscription-based services and Salesforce. While tailored for Salesforce, the principles discussed apply to any CRM system.
New Logo Identification
The most common definition is:
A new logo / brand-new customer is one that has no prior sales (i.e., orders or subscription services).
This is simple enough definition, although there are some subtleties to consider:
- How to treat a customer who canceled the first and only order?
- Is there a time-frame? For example, if a customer canceled last service five years ago, should it still be considered an “existing business”?
- Should “New Logo” flag be set only once, upon opportunity creation or updated in case one of five active opportunities has been won?
Vanilla CRM Implementation
When CRM is only used for sales, new logos may be determined using closed-won opportunities: initially, each account is a ‘new logo’, but once the first opportunity is closed won the flag is cleared, and account is treated as an existing business. This or similar logic would be easy to implement in the process builder.
Things may get a little bit more complicated when a customer have may have multiple open opportunities — does closing a new opportunity affect all other open opportunities for the account?
Account De-Duplication
A problem may arise when duplicate accounts are present in the system. It is a good idea to implement duplicate entry prevention to ensure that the new logo identification is accurate.
Adding Order Processing and Service Inventory
Implementing order processing and service inventory in the CRM (such as adding Nextian to your Salesforce instance) simplifies new logo identification.
Since end-to-end service life cycle is tracked entirely in the CRM (Opportunity → Quote → Order → Work Order → Subscription Service), a new account is just an account with no services and order history.
It is a good practice to consider both services and orders for new logo identification. Orders usually are not migrated from legacy systems (it is important what service is provided, not necessarily how it got turned up; also, orders typically are usually much harder to migrate than services).
Automated Approach — An Example
Nextian CPQ & Sales sets the “New Account / Logo” flag not at the account level, but on opportunity and then propagates through quote to cash process as follows:
Opportunity → Quote → Order → Work Order → Subscription Service
The justification for not having new logo indicator on an account is that it can be easily inferred from account statistics: services, locations, orders, etc.
Nextian uses the following logic for new logo detection:
- When an opportunity is created, “New Account / Logo” is set when no services or orders are associated with the account (Total Services and Total Orders on account statistics are zero).
- When a customer order is created, all opportunities different than the one associated with the order being created (the first order) have “New Account / Logo” flag cleared.
Therefore:
- For a single new account, all open opportunities have “New Account / Logo” checked.
- The moment one of them is closed-won and an order is created, “New Account / Logo” is cleared for all other opportunities.
- The original flag is preserved, so the first closed-won opportunity for an account will always be flagged as “New Account / Logo” opportunity.
The “New Account / Logo” flag is propagated onto the following objects:
Opportunity → Quote → Order
This enables for different quoting rules for new accounts, order prioritization and accurate reporting.
Nextian also provides “New Logo / Account” list views for these objects.
This gives all required data points to make process decisions at all the stages of quote-to-cash.
Conclusions
Differentiating between “new logos” vs. “existing business” is important for driving key business processes, including product pricing, order acceptance, service delivery and customer support.
Automating the identification of new logos streamlines operations, reduces errors, and improves overall Quote-to-Cash (QTC) processes.
Nextian specializes in Quote-to-Cash (QTC) software and services for cloud and communications — including CPQ and Sales Management — helping providers accelerate growth and increase customer lifetime value.
Contact us today to find out how we can help you!
