HubSpot contacts syncing to Salesforce contacts, not leads

[cpburke]

I inherited a horribly mismanaged Salesforce platform with a ton of duplicate data. In many cases, leads are also saved as contacts with the same email. 

When I import leads into HubSpot that should sync with those in Salesforce, there are instances when the HubSpot contact automatically syncs to the Salesforce contact, rather than the Salesforce lead. Is it possible to specify for HubSpot to prefer the SF lead over the contact? Also, if you have any tips for finding and removing duplicate contacts/leads in Salesforce, please share, I would really appreciate it. 

[Rafael_K]

Hello Frank, 

We have the following issue: 

our team sends out emails to customers. this email is a secondary email from the customer which is not logged in HS/SF. It creates a contact in HS and creates a lead in Salesforce. 

In our HS service, customers that contact us, with an email that is not in our system, create a new contact in HS and it creates a lead in SF. 

Sometimes it gets more complex. We send an email out, and there is someone in cc (or 2 or 3), and all cc get logged as contacts, hence creating a lead in SF. 

Our Salesforce is setup that a lead when converted creates a contact/account/opportunity. 

Appreciate if you could help us find a workaround. 

Thank you in advance, 

Rafael Kiel 

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

Hey @cpburke, sounds like three distinctly separate yet related issues.

1-- Salesforce is permitting users to create leads when a contact with the same email address already exists (&/or vise versa).
This behavior isn't technically errorneous, but probably introduces a process gap that will need to be addressed before any following work begins.
- see BEST PRACTICES: Leads or Contacts - Which is Right for my Organization?

2-- Review HubSpot-Salesforce Connector setting, 'Creating Records in Salesforce: Default Object'
Set this appropriately AFTER the organization agrees on the use of Salesforce Leads vs Contacts (or both) in step #1 above. (recommend Leads if organization uses Salesforce Leads)

3-- Existing duplicate Salesforce leads/contacts need to be merged to clean up those data.

This should be done AFTER the organization agrees on the use of Salesforce Leads vs Contacts (or both) in step #1 above. (important)

- see Merge Duplicate Leads in Salesforce Classic

- see Can you merge a lead with a contact? (9 year old question -- still outstanding)

Note: HubSpot will only sync with the PRIMARY Salesforce record resulting from any Salesforce merges.

To your question ...
>>"Is it possible to specify for HubSpot to [always] prefer the SF lead over the contact?"

Don't think so. And, you probably wouldn't want to depending on the decision resulting from step #1 above. Typically, if a Contact exists in Salesforce it was created as a result of being converted from a Salesforce Lead. In either case, the HubSpot-Salesforce Connector will prefer the most recently updated Salesforce data (by default) -- i.e., Salesforce Lead or Salesforce Contact -- whichever is more recent.

@bradmin may also have corrections / additions to some / all of the above, and insight into deduping Salesforce.

[cpburke]

Thank you, this is helpful.