Best practice for syncing to SFDC

[Anonymous]

Hi all-
We're currently using a single campaign to sync users to SFDC, however we're now realizing this brute force approach requires that we create exceptions when we want to exclude certain leads from the sync. As we grow, this campaign's exception list grows, and is becoming difficult to handle.
I'm interested in finding out how others are managing their syncs. My current thinking is that we want syncing to be part of the scoring campaigns we currently use, so that until a lead gets to a certain score, we don't sync. We can then control the syncing on a more granular level and control the flow of leads into SFDC.
If anyone is willing to share their methods or ideas on how best to sync to SFDC, I'd love to hear them and discuss.
Thanks,
Alan

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan,

The method I have seen work well is the following:

Sync all leads between your programs and SFDC, regardless of score. Then, setup your sales teams lead and contact views to sort on lead/contact status and lead score. You can even set it up so that they cannot see leads unless they have met a certain score/status.

Then you use your lead score to trigger an alert once the lead has met a certain threshold, move them over to your marketing qualified status and make sure it appears in Sales' lead screen.

I think this is actually the best and easiest way to accomplish this, and the most out of the box Marketo way to do it as well. Otherwise it will be tough to use Marketo programs and the SFDC campaign sync effectively.

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan,

If you are aiming to keep those leads out of SFDC until they reach a certain score threshold or meet other criteria, then the suggested practice would be to add a rule to the sync that prevent it is the lead score (or whatever crtieria) is not met.

Then, instead of putting syncs in all your socring campaigns, develop a single campaign that syncs the lead to SFDC when the criteria is met.  

Here's an example using a lead score of 50 to qualify someone for sync to SFDC

"New Lead" Campaign

1. Smart List - "Trigger - Lead is Created"
2. Flow Step - If Lead Score is greater than 49 then "Sync to SFDC", default choice is "Do Nothing"

"Warm Lead" Campaign

1. Smart List - "Trigger - Data Value Change" - Lead Score is greater than 49.
2. Flow Step - Data Value Change - Lead Rating is "Warm"
3. Flow Step - Sync Lead to SFDC

Again, this is pretty simplified, but hopefully you get the idea.  If you use "Sync to SFDC" anywhere else in your campaigns, then just be sure to form it like the Flow Step in the "New Lead" campaign, unless, of course, you want all leads that go through that campaign to sync, regardless.

Again, hope this is helpful.

John

[Anonymous]

Agree with Pierce here: the practice of holding back leads from Salesforce is no longer the best option when SFDC Campaigns sync to Programs.  This Campaign-Program sync causes leads to sync to Salesforce that you didn't explicitly sync, so the better approach is to plan for this with workflows to prevent these leads from showing in the queue for a salesperson.

Two other benefits:
1) emails can be signed by the right person in the territory, creating relationships with hundreds of prospects on their behalf
2) salesperson won't create duplicate records when they meet someone who is in Marketo but not in Salesforce

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan,

Why do you want to keep leads out of SFDC out of curiosity?  

Some companies actually do have decent reasons for doing it.  (Some B2C companies have 100's of thousands of records from their lists that serve no purpose in SFDC or we have some companies who have one business unit not using SFDC, but multiple using Marketo).  

Agreed with Steven and Pierce though if its just a matter of you don't want to synch until they hit a certain lead score.  You should definitely synch all Leads to SFDC and just "hide" them from the Sales reps unitl they are ready.  Either putting them in a queue, setting a "Pre-Sales" Lead Status or training the sales team to only follow up with them once they hit a certain threshold will help.

With the amount of ways that someone can automatically synch to SFDC (Program integration, Adding to SFDC Campaign, Creating a Task, etc.) which are almost inadvertent as its not an explicit "Synch to SFDC" flow, it becomes way too laborious to manage.  

Plus there are major benefits you'd be missing out on from a reporting standpoint (i.e. how many leads did we create this month, what was the source/channel, how many members of an SFDC campaign?).  Without having the records in the CRM, your results will be skewed.  Along with all of the reasons Steven mentioned.


IF after all of this you still say....eh...I still need to prevent it.  Easiest way is by actually building a validation rule in SFDC that prevents leads from being entered unless they meet a criteria (for example lead score)....This will actually cause a Synch Error with the CRM every time it tries to create a lead that does not meet this criteria.  *Think if you try to create a Lead without a Last name or any other required field and it gives you an error message when you try and save it.   A custom validation rule would essentially be creating the same circumstance.