Merge Lead and Contact, but do not convert

[Soledad_Angel]

Hi all,

As per Marketo:

• When merging Leads and Contacts together, all Leads are converted to Contacts prior to merging per normal Salesforce rules.

Is there a way to merge two people in Marketo, but keeping the Lead, instead of Contact? In many instances, the contact in SFDC does no longer exist, but the record remains in Marketo, hence when I merge the two people, understands that needs to convert the lead into a contact. Is there any way to avoid the behavior?

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Soledad,

I do not think this is possible for the moment, until Marketo enables to totally unsync the contact. The default behaviour is that a sync in Marketo should also be a sync in SFDC. This is because the system maintains data consistency, as much as it can. Ad in SFDC, it's impossible to merge a contact into a lead, only to merge a lead into a contact.

It might be possible using sync filters, but it would take some testing to be sure, and I am not very confident it could work.

-Greg

[Soledad_Angel]

Makes sense... Not exactly what I need, but makes sense. I guess I will need to remove the contact, instead of merging, but it is a shame that some info may just be lost completely. Our contact is a duplicate and just the lead should remain, so I do not see a work around.

Thanks, Gregoire!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

What is the rationale behind keeping a lead instead of a contact ?

-Greg

[Soledad_Angel]

The contact is a duplicate, wrong process used. Instead of creating the lead, someone created a contact. Hence, we want to keep the right record (lead), but move any potential info from the contact.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

The expected end of life of a lead in SFDC is a contact.

Since the contact is created, even if the process was wrong, I would do what's needed to correct the contact and keep it, then convert the lead to merge it into the contact...

-Greg