Lead to Contact Process - Need Outside Perspective

c.wilson · February 15

I’d like to gather some perspectives on Lead-to-Contact conversion strategies and policies. We are currently working with an external Salesforce consultant who proposes changes to our process, and I am unsure whether I should continue pushing back or adopt the new approach.

My company primarily uses the Account and Contact objects in Salesforce, as our marketing and sales efforts follow an Account-based strategy. We prioritize visibility into how Accounts and Contacts are engaging with our company across different stages, campaigns, and programs. While we still use the Lead object for traditional inbound lead flows (e.g., Pardot, Marketo), we convert Leads to Contacts and Accounts after confirming the lead is a legitimate person and account—even if they are not yet ready to become an opportunity. This approach ensures we maintain visibility at the Account level, as keeping records as Leads limits that visibility.

The external consultant suggests we keep records as Leads until they are ready to become Opportunities. While I understand this was Salesforce’s original architecture, I believe this model no longer aligns with companies like ours that are adopting an Account-based strategy.

In my view, keeping records as Leads longer than necessary, merely to adhere to outdated Salesforce architecture, complicates visibility for sales reps. For instance, under the consultant's proposed process, one rep might be working a Lead, waiting for it to become an Opportunity, while another rep may have received a 6QA from the same Account and begun prospecting. This creates unnecessary overlap and data discrepancies, as some lifecycle data resides on the Lead while most data is on the Contact.

I’d appreciate feedback on your own Lead-to-Contact conversion policies. Am I off-track with my thinking? When do you convert Leads to Contacts? Should I concede or continue to push back on this change?

The example above is just one scenario, but I have others involving different channels and campaigns where this approach could lead to similar overlaps.

Jana_Marketing_Maven · February 20

My 2 cents - keep pushing back.

Our process is even stricter than yours. Marketing Operations is the only team that can see the lead object in SFDC. Sales can only see contacts. MOps reviews leads as they come in and converts them to contacts. We do, however, have a custom object called "Campaign Response" that is basically the same thing as a lead - just associated to a contact in SFDC. We have some automations so that if the owner of the Response drops a note on the contact record, the status of the Response automatically updates so we are aware when someone is contacted (or not).

I agree - you want insight into the account as a wholistic entity - not a collection of leads. While you could view the data from with 6s, it's not great and you want sales working within your CRM the majority of the time.

We also found that sales didn't convert leads if they were already contacts in the system (if the system mis-matched for whatever reason). Meaning TONS of data lost (no association to the campaign or any subsequent opportunities).

Hope that helps. Feel free to reach out directly if you want to discuss how we're doing things.

c.wilson · February 20

I love that, thank you for your feedback Jana. This helped a ton.

hasingh233 · February 21

We recently made the switch and our viewpoint was exactly the same in regards to contacts being the prospect database.

The only rationale to keep an active leads database is if you have a lead lifecycle and you are following lead lifecycle stages to track lead progression and conversion by sales team.

I would agree that you keep pushing for an automated lead to contact process especially if the teams are aligned around an ABX strategy.

Kevin Ascher · February 21

+1 to everything said so far.

-Regarding Pardot (Account Engagement), you can change the default behavior to create new Contacts instead of Leads in Salesforce by creating a support case. https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000384306&language=en_US&type=1

-How are those Leads getting converted and matched to the correct Account?

-Leads still serve a purpose within Sales Cloud for features such as Einstein Lead Scoring and the brand new SDR Agent, which currently only prospects to leads.

-Seems like your company values analytics and visibility. You might find this no-cost AppExchange product worthwhile. https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=d88043db-81da-4f31-863c-73646bea2699

mfoley · February 21

With an account based approach, keep your current set-up. I've done it both ways and with ABM it's so much easier to have the contacts with Accounts - both for Sales and for reporting purposes.

c.wilson · February 26

Thank you all, this is exactly what I needed.

Lead to Contact Process - Need Outside Perspective

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