Suggested Contacts

If the Suggested Contacts sidebar is empty or missing someone you expected to see, work through the checks below in order — each one covers a confirmed cause, so you can rule things out quickly instead of guessing.

Contents

• What Suggested Contacts shows

• Confirm the account is activated

• Give generation time to finish

• Review your Functions and Personas

• Check which LinkedIn page is mapped to the account

• Watch for duplicate account records

• Add a contact that isn't in Centralize yet

• Need help?

What Suggested Contacts shows

Suggested Contacts is an AI-generated shortlist of people at an account who match one of your org's configured Personas (a Persona is a Function + Seniority combination, such as "VP+ Customer Success"). It's distinct from the contacts already on your Stakeholder Map: Mapped Contacts are people you've engaged with, who've engaged with you, warm connections, or opportunity stakeholders, while Suggested Contacts are candidates Centralize thinks you should add because they fit a target persona but aren't mapped yet. Similar Contacts — triggered from an individual contact's card — is a related but separate way people can appear in the same sidebar; see "Find Similar Contacts" if you're trying to expand around one specific champion or blocker rather than troubleshoot the sidebar generally.

Confirm the account is activated

Suggested contacts only populate for activated accounts, since activation is what starts the sync that builds them.

1. Open the account in Centralize.

2. Check whether it shows "Click to Activate." If it does, suggested contacts haven't started generating for this account yet.

3. If the account should have activated automatically, check the CRM fields your org's activation rule depends on (region, owner, opportunity stage, or a custom tier field). A single blank field on an otherwise-matching account is enough to block auto-activation, and it's the single most common reason an account you expected to activate didn't.

Note: An account that was activated automatically can later be deactivated again if it stops matching your org's rules. This looks identical to an account that was never activated — no notification, no visual difference. If you manually activated an account yourself and it later shows "Click to Activate" again, that's unexpected; contact support if you see it.

Give generation time to finish

The first time suggested contacts are requested for an account, generation runs in the background and isn't instant. An empty list right after activation typically means generation just started, not that nothing will surface — wait a few minutes and check again before assuming something is wrong.

Review your Functions and Personas

Suggested Contacts only surfaces people who match a configured Persona, and a Persona is built from two pieces that both have to be right.

1. Open Settings and review your Functions. Confirm the titles and keywords for the function you care about are broad enough to catch how that role is actually titled at your target accounts — for example, "Sales Director," "Account Director," and "Strategic Account Director" may all need to map to the same function even though they read differently.

2. Review your Personas and confirm each one includes every seniority level you want represented. A persona scoped to "VP, Director" won't surface a Manager-level contact even if their title and function are a perfect match otherwise.

If a specific contact you expected to see has a title or seniority that doesn't clearly map to any configured Function or Persona, that's the most likely reason they were skipped rather than a bug. Widening a Function's keywords or a Persona's seniority range, both configurable in Settings, is usually what's needed.

Check which LinkedIn page is mapped to the account

Centralize identifies an account using the domain from your CRM and maps that to a corresponding LinkedIn company page, and suggested contacts are sourced from that page. If the wrong LinkedIn page got mapped to the account — for example, a similarly-named company or a regional subsidiary page — suggested contacts can come back empty even though everything else on the account looks correctly configured.

1. Open the account's settings and check the LinkedIn page currently mapped to it.

2. Correct the mapping if it doesn't match the company you're actually selling into.

Suggested contacts should begin populating shortly after the correction.

Watch for duplicate account records

If your CRM has more than one account record for the same company — for example, one created manually before the CRM sync and a second, CRM-linked record created later — contact and suggestion data can end up split across both. A contact who's already mapped or suggested on one duplicate may not also show up on the other one you're viewing. If a suggested contact seems to be missing only on one version of an account, check your CRM for a duplicate record for that company and consolidate them.

Add a contact that isn't in Centralize yet

Suggested Contacts can only recommend people Centralize already knows about. If someone doesn't show up in Centralize search at all — not just missing from Suggested Contacts — they haven't been added yet, and no amount of Persona or Function tuning will surface them.

1. Navigate to the person's LinkedIn profile.

2. Open the Centralize Chrome extension.

3. Use the extension to create the contact in Centralize.

Once they're created, they're searchable and can be evaluated against your Personas like any other contact, or added to your Stakeholder Map directly.

Need help?

If you've worked through these checks and a contact still isn't surfacing where you'd expect, contact support@usecentralize.com for assistance.