Distinguish Contacts from Leads

[#1]

Hello,

Unlike HubSpot in Salesfroce the Lead and the Contact objects are clearly distinguished as Lead is a separate object from Contact.

Upon integrating my Salesforce with HubSpot I'll need to be able to import my Lead records as well as my Contact records from Salesforce into HubSpot.

My Marketing team uses both the Leads and the Contacts and should be able to create Leads and Contacts for new records that come into HubSpot.

Having  a radio button and selecting only Leads or only Contacts is simply not an option because when the new records are created in Salesforce they can only be Leads or only be Contacts.

I need to allow my users to be able to create both Leads and Contacts in HubSpot

At the moment there is no such option in HubSpot. 

Please advise a feasible solution to such issue.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi, @devlem. You'll need to pick one of these and stick with it. This is not a setting that is able to be configured conditionally. 

When HubSpot syncs a record to Salesforce for the first time, it checks among contacts first, then leads, for an exact email match. If none exists, it will create a new record in Salesforce. 

The problem is that leads and contacts are completely different in Salesforce. The former is intended to be either converted into a contact (which gets associated with an account), or the lead should be discarded. 

The issue with creating contacts is that it creates private contacts (which I talk about here) in Salesforce. These kinds of contacts the connector creates are without accounts. When these kinds of contacts exist in Salesforce, only the user who created them, and users with View All permissions on contacts have the ability to see them.

Even if you assigned a placeholder Salesforce account to these contacts, you'd still need logic or a user reassigning them in Salesforce. Having the connector create contacts by default is only viable if you have development resources that can write code in Salesforce which does the contact-account associating for you. 

In a practical sense, an overwhelming majority of integrated customers have the connector create leads by default. Then, it's a matter of identifying and converting the leads which should be contacts as efficiently as possible.

[#3]

Can you please share how to create the checkbox that marks a contact as a "lead"?

[#4]

@bpotter, that setting is found from the General tab in the connector settings screen in-app in your portal.

The setting doesn't mark a contact as a Salesforce lead; it will create leads (or contacts) by default, on the first sync, when no match on email exists among Salesforce leads or contacts. The contacts setting is not recommended. unless you have developer resources which can get around the private contact visibility issue. 

[#5]

I am also looking to distinguish Salesforce Leads from Salesforce Contacts.

I am migrating from Pardot to Hubspot, and in Pardot I had the option to select Prospect SF Type is Lead or Prospect SF Type is Contact as part of my selection logic.

I don't seem to have the same option in Hubspot, but I am experimenting with Salesforce Contact ID is known as a filter. I am assuming this will just add Salesforce Contacts (and not Leads) to my list? Any advice on this would be gratefully received.

[#6]

If you're talking about list segmentation, you can use the Lead ID and Contact ID filters. However, if a lead is converted, both the Lead ID and Contact ID properties on the HubSpot contact contain values.

So while you can use Contact ID is known to determine who in HubSpot is syncing with a HubSpot contact, you'd want to use Lead ID is known AND Contact ID is unknown, if you wanted to find a list of Salesforce leads in your portal. 

[#7]

Thank you. That's very helpful. I'll amend my lists.

[#8]

There are other alternate approaches you can use, all of which would solve the same way. If you've enabled account sync, you could use Lead ID is known and Salesforce account ID not known, and that'd work.

Mapping the IsConverted field can also help remove this ambiguity, too. Lead ID is known and IsConverted = True or False is a filter you could use which would segment out leads from leads converted into contacts. (If you create a lot of contacts without ever having created them as leads, though, this may not hold up.)

[#9]

Thanks again. All makes sense. I appreciate your wisdom!

[#10]

This may or may not help, but what I did was create a boolean formula in SalesForce called "Is a lead" and "Is a contact" and added that field to the respective object.

That way I could create lists in Hubspot that distinguishes the two.

[#11]

hi...what if I want everything Huspot sends to SFDC to be a lead record?  Is that possible?  I want my team to do the conversion to a contact.

[#12]

You'll still be able to do that. HubSpot won't autocomvert leads. Once the lead is converted manually by your team, HubSpot will write to the converted contact.