Lead Duplicate Management Best Practices

Purpose

In this article you will learn how deals are synced to Salesforce to create Lead records vs Leads created in Salesforce that sync to Allbound for partner rep visibility and tracking. It also explains how partner leads can seem like duplicates when multiple partners are working with the same prospect.

Can Allbound Merge Deals With Existing Leads In Salesforce?

Answer: No. Allbound cannot query your Salesforce database for an existing lead record based email address, company name, etc. and inject or merge an Allbound deal record with an existing lead in Salesforce.

Allbound is submitting a new record when a deal is registered by a partner in Allbound, and syncs the deal record as a new lead in Salesforce. The integration cannot "match" existing leads and add an Allbound ID to the existing records. This is to maintain data integrity for real world scenarios when multiple partner channels (or your sales team) are working the same deal/lead.

There should be very limited incidents where a true duplicate is registered in Allbound by a partner sales rep when the same lead from the same source exists already in Salesforce. A real-world example of a non-duplicate/duplicate lead would be if someone from the vendor’s team created a Lead in Salesforce for a prospect that was, at the time, not associated with any of your partners. Later, one of the partners was able to capture the interest of the same prospect company (perhaps even the same prospect contact) and registers a new deal for them in Allbound. They would be completely unaware that a lead for this prospect already exists in Salesforce, thus a "duplicate" lead is synced with the integration. 

Example Scenario 1; A Record Already Exists In Salesforce

1. In Salesforce, Jane Doe - email address [e-mail] exists as a contact record or even a lead. Her contact was created a few years ago from an old campaign, previous dealings, etc. 
2. In Allbound, a partner registers a new deal today with prospect first name, last name, and email as Jane Doe - [e-mail].
3. The Allbound integration syncs the new lead with the same email address as the existing contact or lead record. All leads that sync from Allbound to Salesforce will contain an Allbound ID. 
4. In Salesforce, the existing record for Jane Doe has no Allbound ID and has nothing to do with the new lead that was just synced over from the partner's deal. The contact or lead for Jane Doe - email address [e-mail] was created in 2017. The new lead has a created date of  July 2023, and is associated with a partner rep. 
5. In Salesforce, I accept the lead and convert it to an opportunity. During the conversion, I see that there is an existing contact record match. The old contact or lead record from 2017 is in a "recycled" or "cold" status, which indicates that even though it may appear as a "duplicate" it is in fact an old, cold lead that never made it to an opportunity.
6. If the record in Salesforce was a contact instead of a lead, I can use that existing contact record for Jane Doe when I convert to an opportunity instead of creating a new contact record with the same information. (Recommended article to reference for opportunity conversion with your Allbound Integration: How Leads Convert to Opportunities and Sync Back To Allbound)
7. The opportunity is then worked until closed, and the partner gets credit for the sale. 

In conclusion, Allbound is not creating duplicates. In many scenarios, one contact can have or be associated with multiple deals. 

Salesforce Duplication Rules and Best Practices

If you have deduplication rules in place in Salesforce, the Allbound deal that is a potential duplicate gets rejected from syncing to Salesforce and generating a lead record. If you have Allbound exclusions in place, allowing leads containing an Allbound ID to generate regardless of potential duplicates (Best Practice and is Highly Recommended to allow Allbound leads to bypass deduplication rules - About Salesforce Duplication Rules And Allbound Integration Best Practices to learn more about dedupe rules and exclusions. 

Example Scenario 2; Multiple Partners Submit Leads With The Same Contact Info

1. Partner A (let's say the partner company is Apple) registers a new deal in Allbound for John Doe [e-mail] and it syncs to Salesforce as a new lead.
2. In the same week, month, or quarter Partner B (let's say the partner company is Best Buy) registers a new deal in Allbound for John Doe [e-mail] and it syncs to Salesforce as a new lead, even though for John Doe [e-mail] is already an existing lead in Salesforce. 
3. The existing John Doe lead is associated with Partner A from Apple and is tagged with an Allbound ID of 3157.
4. The new John Doe lead is associated with Partner B from Best Buy and is tagged with an Allbound ID of 4651. 
5. Partner B has no idea that partner A is working with John Doe. Their dealings are separate. 
6. Converting these leads to opportunities depends on your channel sales process on the Salesforce side. Although these leads may appear as duplicates, they were registered separately from different partners. It is up to your team to determine the proper path for the lead to progress on the Salesforce side. 
7. Once determined by your team which partner will get credit for the deal, one of the lead records for John Doe gets disqualified or rejected. The other lead gets converted to an opportunity. Let's say you chose the John Doe lead from Apple, because they have a better price list and more options.
8. The opportunity is then worked until closed, and Partner A from Apple gets credit for the sale.

In conclusion, Allbound is not creating duplicates. Partners from separate partner companies cannot see deals registered by other partners in Allbound, and partners do not have access to the data in your Salesforce. These are real-world scenarios where duplicates may occur. 

Example Scenario 3; A Channel Manager Creates a Lead on Behalf of a Partner

A vendor user in Salesforce create a lead and associates it with a partner account. The Channel Partner Manager informs the partner of the lead and wants to track it in Allbound as well, and so they create a deal in Allbound for a partner rep/Allbound user to have visibility on the prospect. The deal is disconnected from the lead record in Salesforce as they are two separate records created individually of each other on each platform, and therefore a duplicate record is created (or rejected from the sync due to deduplication rules in SFDC on the lead object). 

Considerable Solution For Streamlining:

A potential solution to avoid duplicate leads for real-world scenarios such as the one above, where a lead can sync from Salesforce to Allbound for the partner to work on the Allbound side (or simply for tracking/visibility purposes). This is called Lead Distribution. In this type of workflow, the lead is created by the Vendor’s team in Salesforce and is assigned to a partner company. We can build a connection in Allbound to grab hold of lead records that are associated or assigned to partner companies or even partner contacts, and sync them to the Allbound Pipeline giving the partner visibility on the lead record, rather than registering a potential duplicate deal.