Hi everyone,
I noticed that Pardot is not creating a lead in Salesforce if the same prospect already exists as a Contact. For instance, if somebody submitted a form a few years ago, and we convert them to contact, and if the same prospect fills the same form again, Pardot is not creating a lead in Salesforce because it already exists as a Contact.
This is an issue because we are missing prospects that express interest in our products.
I contacted Salesforce Support regarding the issue, they stated that it's expected functionality. However, my previous org created leads, even if the contact already exists.
Do you have any suggestions on how to resolve this issue? Or could you tell me what might be causing this problem?
Thank you!
I hear you. Back in the day, I believe this was controlled by the Salesforce-Pardot connector. Where you could tell it to "match" based on Email, or Pardot ID. And that was the workaround. That being said, I'm not sure that would work anymore. I believe that is no longer a valid option. (Or at least, I haven't seen/done it in a while!)
My recommendation would be to NOT create a new prospect if you don't have to.
The main issue I want you to avoid is... If a rep sees a new prospect created and it's treated as a "new person", your rep might reach out and not be aware of all the history related to the existing contact record. What if that prospect is a 10-year contact with a renewal coming up and open support issue? That rep wouldn't see any of the context before reaching out.
It's not like once you're a contact, you won't continue to buy. They can be up-sold or cross-sold to. So having processes in place that ALSO sell to contacts and are not just focused on "prospects" can be helpful!
A few suggestions within Account Engagement you can:
- Create a task - You can create a task on the existing contact, letting the rep know to reach out.
- Notify User - You can simply send a notification, and skip the "Task"
- Update a field - You can do a LOT here. But the pattern is the same. Update a field -> that would trigger an automation rule to fire -> That does whatever you want. If you wanted to the automation rule could create a new prospect (or really any combination of records).
So you can use existing fields or create your own "Account Engagement" custom fields, just trigger flows... that would do what you want. (This appears to be the approach suggested in the link above, from Matt.)
