HubSpot & Salesforce Sync: how to manage the "always create a Lead" process?
SOLVE
Hi everyone,
Many of our clients in the B2B industry have process that requires the creation of a new lead in their CRM, regardless it's a new potential customers or an exiting customer.
In Salesforce, they’re able to manage this kind of situation, but HubSpot’s integration presents a challenge as a record can't have the same email address.
I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue and how you’ve navigated it?
Have you found any workarounds to handle leads and contacts with the same email?
Are there any best practices or workflows for managing potential and existing customers separately within HubSpot?
Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to hearing how others have solved this in their B2B setups!
HubSpot & Salesforce Sync: how to manage the "always create a Lead" process?
SOLVE
It's probably not what you want to hear, but creating duplicates in Salesforce is not a best practice. Best practice would be that leads come into Salesforce once into the Lead object. At that point the leads are either converted into Qualified Accounts/Contacts and move into those respective objects, or they eventually get cleaned from that object and removed from your database.
In your situation today, if a Lead converts and comes in again, you are creating a workflow whereby the Lead would need to be manually reviewed or requalified to buy again. In a best practice, if a Lead requalifies again and is already assigned to a territory/owner, then the Lead should merge into the Account/Contact (behind the scenes) and the notification should go directly to the Account Owner without going through the lead object. By removing the manual process you eliminate the possibility that Leads are not merged to the proper Account/Contact thus creating an operations mess down the road with the potential that an account could be worked by 2 owners at the same time which presents a problem for the customer experience journey.
I've personally been through many of these in my career especially in more recent memory with the evolution of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) into B2B workflows which has only helped reduce the time to follow up for the lead, and also greatly improved the customer experience for the client/prospect. At the end of the day, where the response is handled in terms of Salesforce object becomes irrelevant so long as the process still accomplishes the same in making sure notifications are sent to the right rep/team whether that be via SF notifications, email, or in Slack/Teams and that the lead/customer gets followed up with in a seamless experience that is transparent to them and makes sense at the end of the day (ie: a customer shouldn't be contacted by a new business development team before going back to their account manager).
HubSpot & Salesforce Sync: how to manage the "always create a Lead" process?
SOLVE
It's probably not what you want to hear, but creating duplicates in Salesforce is not a best practice. Best practice would be that leads come into Salesforce once into the Lead object. At that point the leads are either converted into Qualified Accounts/Contacts and move into those respective objects, or they eventually get cleaned from that object and removed from your database.
In your situation today, if a Lead converts and comes in again, you are creating a workflow whereby the Lead would need to be manually reviewed or requalified to buy again. In a best practice, if a Lead requalifies again and is already assigned to a territory/owner, then the Lead should merge into the Account/Contact (behind the scenes) and the notification should go directly to the Account Owner without going through the lead object. By removing the manual process you eliminate the possibility that Leads are not merged to the proper Account/Contact thus creating an operations mess down the road with the potential that an account could be worked by 2 owners at the same time which presents a problem for the customer experience journey.
I've personally been through many of these in my career especially in more recent memory with the evolution of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) into B2B workflows which has only helped reduce the time to follow up for the lead, and also greatly improved the customer experience for the client/prospect. At the end of the day, where the response is handled in terms of Salesforce object becomes irrelevant so long as the process still accomplishes the same in making sure notifications are sent to the right rep/team whether that be via SF notifications, email, or in Slack/Teams and that the lead/customer gets followed up with in a seamless experience that is transparent to them and makes sense at the end of the day (ie: a customer shouldn't be contacted by a new business development team before going back to their account manager).
