Fairly new to Marketo here. I would like to set up our Lifecycle Management in the following way: if inside sales qualifies a lead in SFDC, they convert that lead into a contact/account, which will trigger the lead to move up to sales qualified. I think this is fairly standard and I understand how to set this up in Marketo.
The thing I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around is what to do if a lead needs to be recycled after it has been converted to a contact. SFDC doesn't allow for backward conversion (at least not without losing all of the activities and history). It seems like we could end up with a reporting nightmare if we have some leads as leads and some as contacts, even though they're supposed to be at the same stage. I know Marketo treats both in the same way, but it seems messy to me.
Also, once a lead is converted to a contact, you seem to lose the standard SFDC lead status field. That also seems messy from a recycling standpoint.
Part of me wants to just forget SFDC leads altogether and convert everything immediately, but that seems to present its own set of challenges.
Can anyone share some ideas about how you're managing this at your organization? Thank you!
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