SFDC Integration - what do you do with leads associated with a current customer?

[Lindsay_Zanga]

My company is trying to clean up our lead process and one area we are stuck on is if a net new lead from a tradeshow comes into the system but they are linked to an account that is a current customer should we keep them as a lead with the status "current customer" or should these be converted to contacts.   This person had no influence on the closed won opportunity but we now have many leads that are in fact customers of ours but rest as a lead.  What have other people done in this scenario? My main concern is to make sure these people are not getting prospect emails, newsletters etc. as they are in fact clients.

[Anonymous]

What is your de-dupe criteria? Ideally, eitherMarketo or your CRM system should be able to de-dupe the record and update the existing record with new campaign or task information received from the marketing tactic.

Avnita

[Lindsay_Zanga]

It is not that they are dups... they are net new leads (from a fishbowl) from a conference - so they sync to SFDC as leads that are assocaited with a customer account company.  I have been just making the "lead status" of them "current customer" but I am wondering if any person that is associated with a customer account that we have had contact with (even post sale) should they be converted to contacts or should they be keep them as leads since they did not assist in the actual sales process. 

[Anonymous]

If the account/customer name matches with the lead company name ideally the lead should be converted to a contact as that's the best way to manage contacts within a customer account. In order to accomplish that, you would have to work with your SFDC team to set up a mechanism to either convert these leads at the point of entry if there is a company/account match or you can do it after the fact, by providing a list of these leads and their matching account IDs and the SFDC team can do a batch update.