Create new leads into SalesForce even if contact exists

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

Hello everyone,

I’m contacting you today because I have a problem that the HubSpot support can’t resolve.

We would like to create leads in Salesforce automatically when a person fills one of our forms.

The problem here is that some of these people are already created as contacts in the database.

We’re trying to avoid creating duplicates, but just launch our sales process for these contacts without having to do it manually.

P S: Our Salesforce organisation is very customized for our business processes.

2

Hi, @Kelvine. You’re describing a use case that’s not very compatible with the connector. As email ends up being the unique identifier between the HubSpot contact and the Salesforce lead or contact, any subsequent activity on a HubSpot contact will continue writing to whatever Salesforce record it’s syncing to.

The only way to solve for this is with automation in Salesforce, either declarative or code. You’ll want it to fire on a task create, look for duplicate tasks on the lead or contact, then create a new lead when that happens. (If you attempt this, leave the default email field blank on the duplicate record. Otherwise, all you’ll do is change the association to the duplicate lead.)

Unfortunately, this isn’t a quick setup, but it could be done. Apex is likely more robust than Flow amd Process Builder.

3

Hi there,

This is a common challenge when working with customized Salesforce setups, especially when you’re trying to avoid duplicates but still want to automate your lead flow.

By default, Salesforce prevents duplicate leads or contacts, so if someone already exists as a contact, the system won’t create a new lead. However, that shouldn’t stop your sales process from moving forward. There are a few ways to handle this:

1. Customize Salesforce Logic:
If your Salesforce org is already customized, consider building a Flow or Apex trigger that:

  • Detects if a contact already exists based on the email or another identifier.

  • Instead of blocking the lead, create a task, opportunity, or custom object to trigger the next step in your sales process.

  • Optionally logs the new interaction on the existing contact’s timeline.

    2. Use HubSpot to Trigger Sales Activities Instead of New Leads:
    Rather than creating a new lead, use HubSpot workflows to:

  • Create a task or opportunity in Salesforce linked to the existing contact.

  • Alert your sales team when someone fills a form, even if they’re already in the system.
    3. Third-Party Tools (if custom logic is too complex):

If you’d prefer not to build this yourself, there are lead management tools that specialize in these situations.

One tool worth exploring is LeadAngel, which specializes in intelligent lead routing and lead/contact deduplication. Based on your custom business rules, it can detect existing contacts and still trigger sales workflows or create a lead as needed. This might save you from having to build complex automation internally.