The following is a Salesforce lead conversion best practices review geared for those individuals who may be in the dark over how this CRM application works on this score.
Salesforce Lead Conversion – Best Practices
Lead Generation and How to Merge Leads in Salesforce For all Businesses
To begin with, as virtually anyone would readily know, leads are undoubtedly the lifeblood of all business organizations. Which makes their effectual conversion all the more necessary in ensuring that these can get to the next level in terms of revenue generation. To this end, business establishments need to work out a systematic and well structured lead management approach to increase the number of leads they generate and also effortlessly converting them into sales.
Salesforce CRM Offers Plenty of Effective Tools to Better Manage Leads
Discover how to merge leads in salesforce to provide various functions to facilitate such activities, and below are some of the most notable best practices on how to effectively make use of them.
How does Salesforce Handle Lead Generation and Conversion?
For starters, it is extremely crucial to understand that when you convert leads in Salesforce , the system automatically creates new clients, contacts as well as opportunity records. It then assigns campaign team members to newer contacts and the created leads are stored as read only records.
Always update the records for newly created leads with similar names as existing records
If preexisting contacts or accounts share similar names as those that have been specified in the newly created leads it is your job to update them. Which in extension triggers the system to add the data of those particular leads to empty fields. While also restricting it from overwriting the preexisting contacts and accounts information.
Take the necessary time to assign lead owners to both open and closed leads
On the other hand, all open and closed lead generation and management activities are usually attached to their corresponding accounts and opportunities records. This definitely gives you the golden chance to assign lead owners to them and also put in place appropriate follow up tasks primarily based on their lead score threshold.
Custom leads fields are processed in different methods than standard ones
When assigning new lead owners you should know that you can only assign those leads that are still open. However, if your firm happens to make use of custom fields, lead owners can insert the relevant data on their corresponding custom accounts, contacts and even opportunity fields It is nevertheless, critical to take note of the fact that is impossible for them to view converted leads, which are only included in lead reports. Find out how to merge leads in salesforce and normally updates the “last modified date” and “last modified by” fields on all converted leads when their respective picklist values are altered.
Always put in place appropriate measures to effectively prevent duplicate leads data in the system
When it comes to duplicate data it is always highly advisable to make your system administrator to beforehand set up Apex lead as well as duplicate data management . Both of which can go a long way in assisting you in effectually manage and prevent duplicate leads records. While also putting you in a good position to deal with erratic lead conversion results that are attributable to duplicate records. Both of them can effortlessly permit you to determine whether you should continue with converting any leads or you should first sort out the duplicates.
Effectual handling of persons and business lead accounts
If your business establishment makes use of persons accounts you will automatically be in a position to convert leads into either persons or business records. As a rule of thumb, the system automatically converts those leads that feature a blank company field into new persons accounts. And the default persons account records type of your profile is then applied to the new persons account . Take note that you can only create lead utilizing blank company fields through the Force.com API.
How should you differentiate persons accounts from business accounts and why is it important to do so? As a best practice in such scenarios it is highly recommended to utilize differentiated lead record types as well as page layouts to easily distinguish those leads you wish to convert to persons accounts. From those that you may want to convert into business accounts.
Mapping of standard and custom leads fields
The Salesforce system also automatically maps standard lead fields to standard contacts, opportunity and also accounts. On the flipside should you utilize custom leads fields it is always an excellent idea to enlist the assistance of your system administrator. Who will be in a position to clearly specify the exact criteria that they will be mapped to custom accounts and opportunity fields. Relevant information is available on salesforce merge accounts page. Make sure you read it to gain better results.
Workflow associated leads
You should also realize that you cannot in any way convert those leads that are related with an active approval process. Or for that matter those that may have pending workflow actions . Also converting a persons account does not in any way trigger workflow rules. Finally, workflow tasks that have been assigned to other users apart from their designated lead owner or lead converter cannot be altered.
Effective territory management
When it comes to territory management , new leads accounts are analyzed by the predetermined account assignment rules, and you can be in a position to assign them to more than a single territory. If these rules assign them to only one territory then the associated opportunity will also be assigned to that given territory. On the other hand, if the rules happen to assign an account to several territories then the opportunity will not be assigned to any of them.
Apex triggers
During the conversion process, Apex triggers are only activated and universal custom fields as well as validation rules enforced when the validation and triggers functionality are enabled in your organization.Read related triggers information on triggers in salesforce tutorial page.
Conclusion
By following these best practices tips, you can empower your sales and marketing teams to effectively handle all your firms leads management duties as well as implement better lead generation strategies. Which will definitely lead to more leads generations and ultimate more conversions to boost your firm’s revenue generation activities. Hope this how to merge leads in salesforce review has been insightful.
Read more about triggers at Salesforce trigger best practices.
