How do I hide leads from sales until they're qualified in SFDC without assigning to a separate queue or user?

[Anonymous]

We are syncing our Marketo and SFDC database this weekend, and was told that the leads need to be assigned to the correct sales rep at the very beginning. We have lead assignment rules based on territories, but we don't want to crowd the reps' queue with early stage leads. 

Previously, when they were qualified in Marketo, they were then synced to SFDC with an alert sent to the sales staff. If our databases are synced, how do we create a similar scenario where the lead is qualified, lead owner is pinged, and then the lead is then visible to begin the sales process?

Our SFDC Admin has stated that she can only hide the leads when they are assigned to a separate user, one that is not a sales rep, and then the only way to trigger a new lead assignment is to engage an SFDC developer to build that flow step in SFDC.

Anyone have a similar experience?

[Anonymous]

Jessie,

The way I would recommend doing this is through views in Salesforce. What you can do is configure your Sales team's views so that they only see leads within a certain status.

In my instance for example, our sales team only sees leads past the Marketing Qualified stage. In that view, you can also add useful things like lead score, so it can help your sales team understand what leads are hottest.

In terms of notifying your Sales team when a lead becomes Marketing Qualified (or whatever stage you guys have identified as the one that Sales should be following up) is in the Marketing Qualified marketing activity in Marketo, add a flow item 'Send Alert', and in the subject line notify them that it is a Marketing Qualified Lead.

Hope that helps.

[Grant_Grigoria1]

I agree with Pierce that the best way to do this would be to have different stages of the leads, and then trigger a notification to follow up with a specific lead only when it reaches a "qualified" stage.

So while the sales rep would technically have access to the lead, the Stage should tip them off as to the urgency/relative temp of the lead.

If you insist that for whatever reason sales shouldn't have ANY access or visibility to these early stage leads, you could assign them to someone else in your org - like the SFDC admin to start - and then whenever the lead becomes qualified you can reassign based on territory assignment rules dynamically - ie using a trigger vs batch sync.

Make sense?

[Anonymous]

Our lead lifecycle program handles the different lead statuses. We've already identified which stage is appropriate and what it takes to get there. Unfortunately through some digging of my own and after talking with my admin and a Marketo consultant, the only way this would be possible if we disable custom views in SFDC for each user. Currently, we have a allowed custom views with hundreds of saved reports affected by it, and are unable to make the change.

This is a classic example of sales and marketing dissonance within our organization. 

Thanks for your feedback! Would love to implement this change, but perhaps in my next Marketo life!

Cheers,

JK

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys for this discussion here. Would you be willing to share your "lead statuses" in SFDC? I am getting ready to update them at my current (new) company.