Person Accounts

[Anonymous]

Hello!  My company uses "person accounts" in Salesforce.  Does anyone know of a way to have a "lead" created in Marketo sync to Salesforce as a Person Account?

[Josh_Hill13]

there may be a thread about this. do a search!

[Anonymous]

Josh, I have spent hours searching for a solution both on the Marketo community and in Salesforce.  As you might know, "Person" accounts are not commonly used by Salesforce users so it's not an issue likely to be covered in depth on either platforms.

[Casey_Grimes · Accepted solution]

Hi Christina!

I definitely feel your pain when it comes to Person Accounts and Marketo. It's important to remember that just like with traditional B2B Salesforce setups, Marketo cannot create or write into the Account object. In fact, if you have any custom fields that are Account-only, you need to make sure they're actually made at the Contact level (which will carry over to your Person Account.)

Now, as to your actual question: if you're looking to have a Marketo-synced record convert into a Person Account, your best bet would be to set up a small Apex trigger inside SFDC that converts the Lead when it enters Salesforce (upon whatever criteria you have, even if that's just "was created.") You can actually use the same conversion that you would do when converting a Lead to a Contact; if the company field is blank, it will create a Person Account.

[Anonymous]

This is great Courtney, thank you!  The information you provided is incredibly helpful and I appreciate you taking the time to post a positive and informed response!!