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How to Handle Rep Departures

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Amber Garrett
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Handling Rep Departures

There comes a time where a rep active in Outreach will leave your company or transition into a new role. At that point you will need to transfer everything over the new rep. This guide will walk you through the steps to complete this efficiently.

 

How do I transfer ownership from a rep that is leaving?

Outreach to Salesforce Sync
Prospect or Account ownership often drives what actions end users take in Outreach. Within your Salesforce Plugin in Outreach, you have mapped Prospect and Account Ownership to a specific field in Salesforce. This is set up during your initial implementation, and part of Outreach’s out-of-the-box configuration. With this field mapping, there are two ways data can flow:

  • Single Direction Sync
    • New and/or updated data will flow from one system to the other. Most customers set this up in order to bring changes from Salesforce into Outreach, but not push changes from Outreach into Salesforce. This maintains Salesforce as the “system of record”. We refer to this as Inbound Sync.
  • Bi-Directional Sync
    • New and/or updated data will flow both ways. Any change made in Outreach will flow to Salesforce and vice versa.

The way your data flow is set will determine which method described below you can use. More information on how to create your sync between Outreach and Salesforce can be found in the document attached below (Titled: Outreach Salesforce Configuration Overview).

 

Propagate Prospect Ownership
In the sections below we are referencing the “Propagate Prospect Ownership’ setting in Outreach. With this setting enabled Outreach allows for a seamless transition when the ownership of a prospect changes from one user to another. So any time a prospect's ownership changes in Outreach, all existing tasks assigned to the original owner will transfer to the new owner. If the prospect is being sequenced by the original owner, then the sequencer is also changed to the new owner.

 

One-to-One Transfer
Below are the steps when transferring all ownerships (prospects/tasks) from the departing rep to a single new rep. The advantage when fully reassigning prospect ownership and all corresponding tasks to a single new user is that the new rep can simply pick up the tasks where the other rep left off. Luckily this is a quick and easy process within Outreach.

  • Within Outreach:
    • Note that this requires a bi-directional ownership sync to Salesforce so that ownership updates made in Outreach flow to Salesforce.
      • Ensure you have the setting “Propagate Prospect Ownership” enabled. (support article)
      • Navigate to Prospects > filter down to the rep that is leaving > select all Prospects
      • Assign all Prospects to the new owner (gif)
      • Repeat the same step for Accounts by navigating to Accounts > filter down to the rep that is leaving and select all Accounts
      • Assign all Accounts to the new owner
  • Within Salesforce:
    • Note that this requires a one directional ownership sync from Salesforce to Outreach
      • Find the Leads/Contacts/Accounts owned by the user that is leaving
      • Update ownership for those Leads/Contacts/Accounts in Salesforce
      • The ownership update will sync down into Outreach where the “Propagate Prospect Ownership” will make all updates

 

One-to-Many Transfer
When you decide to transfer ownership of Prospects/Accounts in Outreach from a single departing rep to multiple new reps you have two options.

  • Within Outreach, you would repeat the steps 1-5 for every user that would get Prospects and Accounts assigned to them. Note as the method above this requires a bi-directional ownership sync to Salesforce so that ownership updates made in Outreach flow to Salesforce.
  • Within Salesforce, if inbound update for Prospect ownership is enabled you can make the ownership update in Salesforce and the ‘Propagate Ownership’ settings will ensure all outstanding tasks are moved over. Note that this requires a one-directional ownership sync from Salesforce so that ownership updates made in Salesforce flow to Outreach.

 

Other Considerations

  • Delete Old Tasks
    • This is a great opportunity to clean up old tasks not completed by a rep so the new rep getting the account has a clean slate to work with
  • Remove the user from Teams
    • Remove the user from the Teams to make sure they don’t appear in future reporting
    • Navigate to Settings > Teams > Select the team > Select the user > Click the trash can button at the top
  • Remove phone numbers tied to the user
    • Removing the phone number(s) tied to the user will ensure you will not get charged for them
    • Navigate to Settings > Phones > Open Views & Filters > Under Owner select ‘Only certain users’ > Select name of the user > Select all phone numbers > Click the trash icon
  • Lock the seat once all steps above are completed. This will open the seat up for a new user.
    • On the left navigation bar select Users. Find the user and click on the ellipsis to Lock the user

Note: If you do not want to enable the Propagate Prospect Ownership feature you can still change ownership manually by following the steps described here.

 

Resources

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