Marketo to SFDC integration - Lead Process?

[Adrian_Watkins]

For the purpose of this question the "Leads" I will refer to here are MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads)

As a company we do a lot of lead generation both for new sales and add on sales to existing customers. We use both Marketo and SFDC which are integrated. I am looking for some best practices in terms of passing leads to our sales team. For new sales we have a lead gen team who physically pass the leads via a SFDC process. For add on sales we want this process to be automated. Our biggest problem is tracking the full process as Marketo deals in "leads" which are essentialy contacts and SFDC deals in Accounts. Our existing process involves creating an automated SFDC activity with Marketo that the Sales rep has to follow up on, if they qualify it they then create a SFDC Opportunity and we track the lead via the initial contact/lead that triggered the potential sale. The problem with this process is that we have to rely on the sales rep to actually attach the contact to the opportunity other wise the link, so to speak, is broken between the 2. Many of the accounts have tens of contacts on them, so even though this particular one may have triggered the lead, it might never find its way onto the opportunity unless the rep makes a concerted effort to add it. Ideally I would create a trigger via Marketo that would put a tag onto the opportunity but since Marketo can't edit an opportunity that isn't an option. I have also tried to work with our SFDC admin to try and see if I could use marketo to trigger a SFDC workflow that would do what I want but he doesn't seem keen on the idea. I also thought that the opportunity could have a check box that asked if it was marketing originated or not and if checked yes it would require the originating lead to be attached by the sales rep while creating the opp, I was told that this to was not possible.

Does anyone have a way to bridge this gap? I'm also open to a completely new lead passing process. My biggest requirement is it has to be simple, robust and automated as much as possible.

Thanks

[Kristen_Malkov1]

This is an age-old problem between Salesforce and Marketo and essentially negates all ability to do campaign reporting for marketing if you're looking for multi-touch attribution.

The best way to handle this (without purchasing a BI tool) would be to turn on implicit attribution for RCA. This will allow you to pull the reports you're looking for...

[Ben_Griffith1]

You can automate a lot of it, but it would require some customization on the SFDC side.

You can:

1. Push Marketo program (i.e. SFDC campaign info) over with tasks Marketo creates.  This is harder than it should be, but possible.

2. Add a convert button to tasks in SFDC.  When this is used, pull over the contact (auto convert lead if task is on lead) as a contact role on the opp.

3. Add validation via a trigger on the opp requiring a contact role before allowing the opp to progress past a certain stage in the case when leads are converted directly or opps are created directly or from contacts or accounts.

The easiest first step, without getting into a lot of sfdc work would be to require contact roles in sfdc.