Among Salesforce’s more complicated functionality is the classification of contact records. Lead conversion in Salesforce refers to a specific functionality that involves a permanent change to a record that can have wide reaching implications—good, bad, and ugly.
What’s more, Salesforce lead conversion is a rigid process that, although complex, doesn’t vary much from organization to organization. This can be a pro and a con. A pro, because once you learn it, you’re pretty much golden. A con, because it doesn’t account for the differences among various customer journeys—especially those that are non-linear.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before we look at alternatives to lead conversion in Salesforce, let’s first walk through exactly how it works and how to use it.
Key takeaways
- Although seemingly complex on the surface, lead conversion in Salesforce follows the same process across use cases—you learn it once and you’re good to go
- A comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to use Salesforce’s lead conversion functionality along with best practices to avoid unintended consequences
- Why Salesforce lead conversion isn’t set up to accommodate modern customer journeys
- Alternatives to Salesforce lead conversion: their features, benefits, and pricing
An overview of lead conversion in Salesforce
Lead conversion in Salesforce is the process of taking a Lead and converting it into a Contact. The terminology around Salesforce records can be a bit confusing—and is different from other CRMs—so let’s walk through exactly what this means.
A Lead in Salesforce describes a record of a potential customer who hasn’t yet been qualified. A Contact is a potential customer who’s been qualified and converted from a Lead. Contacts can be associated with Accounts (i.e. companies) and Opportunities (i.e. deals).
Lead conversion can be a bit confusing, especially for new Salesforce users. On the surface, a converted Lead seems to “disappear” from the system altogether. This is often because different users have different permissions, and some can see Leads only, while others can see Leads and Contacts. Edit permissions may also vary, so it’s possible to convert a Lead then be unable to edit it from a particular user account.
What’s more, Lead conversion is a one-time process. You can’t revert the record back to a Lead status after the fact. This rigid approach has remained unchanged since 2017, when customer journeys were assumed to be more linear. In a modern B2B context, that’s no longer the case.
Key components of Lead conversion in Salesforce
Before we get into the process of Salesforce lead conversion, let’s quickly break down the various components involved in the process.
Leads
In Salesforce, a Lead is a person that’s interested in your products or services but either hasn’t been qualified or doesn’t have a purchase history (Learn more about Salesforce lead scoring).
Salesforce will automatically classify new records as Leads. This is true whether the record has been manually created, imported via batch upload, or added via API integration with your marketing automation platforms.
Contacts
Contacts are records that are associated with Accounts, Opportunities, or Cases. Typically, these involve people who are in an active buying process or have a previous purchase history. Once a Lead starts to seriously engage with your company, it’s important to convert them to a Contact so you can manage the complex relationships involved in modern B2B deals.
Accounts
For B2B companies, Accounts are the companies with whom you’re actively marketing or who you’d like to do business with in the future. Accounts help you organize the various Contacts associated with a company, as well as Opportunities and ongoing deals.
Opportunities
An Opportunity in Salesforce describes a potential sales deal that’s currently in progress. Opportunities are associated with Accounts and Contacts, and are crucial for forecasting pipeline growth and tracking individual deal progress.
Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning Experience
It’s worth noting here that while the Lead conversion process is fairly consistent throughout Salesforce, there are some slight variations depending on whether you’re using Salesforce Classic or Lightning Experience.
We won’t go into a detailed comparison of the two options here. Suffice it to say that Salesforce stopped rolling out feature updates to Salesforce Classic in 2023, putting their full weight behind Lightning Experience. As such, Lightning is a bit more advanced than Classic, and will become increasingly so going forward.
What is the Lead conversion process in Salesforce?
So how exactly do you convert a Lead into a Contact in Salesforce? Although the process can be a bit obscure, it’s fairly straightforward once you break it down.
What happens when you convert a Lead into a Contact in Salesforce?
Regardless of whether you’re using Lightning Experience or Salesforce Classic, you should expect the following activities to happen when converting a Lead into a Contact:
- Salesforce automatically creates a new Account for a converted Lead unless you connect it with an existing Account
- You can convert a Lead to an existing Contact or Opportunity, but only if both records are connected to the same Account
- Lead conversion is a permanent process and can’t be reversed—only users with View and Edit Converted Leads permissions enabled can see them
- Attached files or notes become attached to the Contact, Account, and Opportunity records
How to associate a converted Lead to an existing Contact
One of the challenges facing Salesforce users is the inability to handle non-linear B2B buying journeys. If a converted Lead re-engages with top-of-funnel content and channels, the result is a new Lead that duplicates an existing Contact.
Whether this Lead has lapsed and is re-engaging with your brand, or whether they’re actively engaged in a sales process, you’ll want to dedupe that record. To do that, however, you must first convert the new Lead into a Contact. Then, you can associate with an existing Contact (Classic) or merge with the other Contact (Lightning).
The process has two requirements:
- You must either create a new Account or choose an existing Account
- An existing Contact must exist to be deduped against
Not all users will have access to both requirements. In that case, the user won’t see the option to attach a Lead to an existing Contact.
Salesforce Lead conversion process (Salesforce Classic)
Here’s how the Lead conversion process works in Salesforce Classic:
- Select the Lead tab
- Open the Lead record
- Select “Convert”
- In the Account, Contact, and Opportunity fields, Name field, either select Create New or Attach to Existing
- Complete all other required fields
- Select “Convert”
In Salesforce Classic, you can’t merge a converted Lead with other converted Leads. So if you want to dedupe your records, this needs to happen before conversion.
Salesforce Lead conversion process (Lightning Experience)
Here’s how the Lead conversion process works in Lightning Experience:
- Navigate to the Lead record
- Select “Convert”
- Choose to either create new Contact or convert to existing if a duplicate exists (Optional: update the Lead Source for the existing Contact)
- Attach either to a new Account or Opportunity or existing
- Choose a record owner
- Choose the converted status
- Select “Convert”
Unlike in Salesforce Classic, you can merge converted Leads with other converted Leads in Lightning Experience.
Key considerations when converting a Lead to a Contact in Salesforce
Regardless of which Salesforce edition you currently use, here are some key considerations to keep in mind:
- Opportunity is a required field. If you don’t want to convert the Lead into an Opportunity, check “Don’t create an opportunity upon conversion.”
- The placement of the Convert button depends on the page layout of the object—this needs to be placed before Convert is an option for you
- You can only convert a Lead into an existing Opportunity if the account is available when choosing an existing Account
Limitations of Lead conversion in Salesforce
It’s been close to seven years since Salesforce made any significant changes to their Lead conversion process. In that time, the world of lead gen has changed, requiring new approaches to accommodate changing buyer demands. What’s more, the existing process is already rigid and difficult to customize for unique use cases.
Right now, let’s take a look at some of the limits of Lead conversion in Salesforce and some tips on how to overcome them.
Required object preparation
Importing a new object into Salesforce is far from simple. In fact, without adequate preparation of your object data, you could end up having trouble in the Lead conversion process. Here are some problems that can arise without proper management:
- No email addresses. The best and fastest way to dedupe objects in Salesforce is through email addresses. If you don’t require email addresses for all Salesforce records, it becomes harder to dedupe upon Lead conversion. You can fix this by making the Convert button conditional upon an email address being present in the record.
- No lead sources. It’s hard to track the ROI of particular marketing channels—let alone determine whether marketing- or sales-sourced leads convert at higher rates. Unfortunately, this field often goes unfilled during Lead creation. By making the Convert button conditional upon Lead Source being filled, you can avoid this problem.
The problem with using back-end conditional logic is that often the reason for the Convert button being hidden is unclear. Chances are, your internal Salesforce manager will constantly have to spend their time servicing questions from your sales team.
A better approach is to use automated forms and enrichment to pull in this data in real time at the point of conversion. That way, contact records are fully populated from the start.
Manual field mapping
One area where many Salesforce admins spend too much time is field mapping. When you have lots of custom fields in a Lead, mapping those to Contacts, Opportunities, or Accounts can be a pain in the neck to set up. And it has to be done manually.
If you’re using any kind of enrichment data at the point of capturing and creating a Lead in Salesforce, the conversion process carries the risk of that data being lost or inaccessible. While most data carries over to the new record, it may not be as useful or accessible.
No built-in lead scoring
For B2B revenue organizations that are serious about scaling up their inbound (and, frankly, outbound operations) a built in lead scoring and automated lead qualification is the trigger that is used to prompt a conversion from Lead to Contact, Account, or Opportunity.
Unless you have the Einstein AI add-on (which is not included in standard Salesforce plans), there’s no way to seamlessly enrich, score, qualify, and convert a Lead to a Contact. The scoring and qualification process either happens through API integrations, or manually.
This setup will seriously slow down your speed to lead and, by extension, depress your booking and closed-won rates.
Limited automation capabilities
Salesforce is a CRM first and foremost, not a marketing or sales automation platform. And it shows. The platform has very few native automation and orchestration capabilities—most of these come through its acquisition of MuleSoft back in 2018.
Here’s a full list of Salesforce’s automation capabilities.
What’s more, the few automation capabilities Salesforce does have are fairly rigid and difficult to customize for unique business cases. If your goal is to go beyond just converting leads, but instantly enrich leads, schedule meetings, set up nurture workflows, and drive pipeline opportunities, you’ll need a more robust solution.
Permissions control
This is actually both a limitation and a benefit, depending on how you use it. It makes sense to limit who has control over Lead conversion, otherwise you could end up with a big mess in your database. But this can also result in undue stress, as someone could convert a Lead then panic that it’s “disappeared,” when in reality they simply don’t have permission to view it.
5 alternatives to lead conversion in Salesforce
Speed is a key ingredient in qualifying and converting leads. If your processes sag, you reduce the chances of getting a booked meeting and give competitors a chance to make a first impression. Salesforce lead conversion is complex and far from intuitive, which can significantly slow you down.
What’s more, automating lead conversion in Salesforce requires extensive developer resources and requires multiple stages of data transformation, translation, and transfer. Not only can this slow your workflows, but it could also lead to errors and lost data that lead to revenue leakage.
If you’re looking for a solution that is faster, more efficient, and more integrated than Salesforce, here are five alternatives to consider.
1. Default
If you want a platform that captures, enriches, qualifies, converts, routes, schedules, and nurtures leads in minutes, there’s only one solution: Default. Default handles the inbound flow start-to-finish, integrating with Salesforce CRM where necessary.
When it comes to lead conversion, Default captures, enriches, scores, and qualifies the lead. Then, we send a simple command to Salesforce that automatically converts the Lead into a Contact. Default also features built-in lead-to-account matching to ensure that the new Contact is associated with the correct company.
Once that conversion process is complete, Default will automatically route and schedule the lead to the designated account owner or via round robin rules. The entire process is seamless and happens in minutes.
Additionally, Default has an AI lead scoring system, and another common advantage that both Default and HubSpot have is access to Clearbit’s database. Clearbit’s database includes over 100+ attributes per contact, and their AI-powered change detection automatically updates records in real time.
If you’re tired of the slow, clunky approach to lead conversion in Salesforce, see how Default can help you get the most out of the CRM here.
2. HubSpot
While HubSpot has one of the most robust CRMs on the market, at its core it’s a marketing and sales automation platform. Which means that the ability to qualify, convert, and follow up with leads is cleaner and more flexible than Salesforce.
HubSpot’s primary advantage is the built-in lead scoring and automated qualification tools that Salesforce lacks. The process isn’t entirely seamless, however, as HubSpot distinguishes between Marketing Contacts and Sales Contacts, and you have to convert a contact record to the former to deploy those workflows (this feature is only available with the Professional and Enterprise plans).
Depending on the size of your contact database, HubSpot may also be more attractively priced than Salesforce. It’s hard to do a one-to-one comparison, however, as both pricing models are highly customizable to a buyer’s specific needs.
Read our comprehensive Default vs. HubSpot comparison here.
3. Apollo.io
One of Salesforce CRM’s biggest weaknesses is that it has no built-in enrichment capabilities. This can seriously hurt your ability to accurately qualify and convert leads.
Enter Apollo.io. Their extensive contact and company database—with hundreds of millions of records—enables fast inbound and outbound lead enrichment. Whether you’re setting up automated webhooks to port data into your Salesforce records, or providing sales intelligence for SDRs to manually qualify their outbound leads, Apollo.io gives you the information you need to make sure when you convert one of your Salesforce leads, it actually happens.
As far as pricing goes, Apollo.io uses a credit-based pricing system that operates in four tiers. If you want full, advanced API capabilities, you’ll need their Organization tier ($149 per user per month).
Read our comprehensive Default vs. Apollo.io comparison here.
4. LeanData
One of the challenges with Salesforce CRM lead conversion is its permanent nature: it doesn’t align with modern, complex, non-linear buying habits. Using Salesforce as a sales management or enablement platform, then, can be tricky.
A common alternative is LeanData, a comprehensive sales management and orchestration platform built for the RevOps use case. The platform is specifically designed to handle complex buying groups, with automated assignment that is more robust than Salesforce’s lead-to-account matching capabilities.
A plus for Salesforce users is that LeanData is built to complement Salesforce’s functionality. However, there’s no built-in lead enrichment, qualification, and their workflows are more limited than Default’s.
Read our comprehensive Default vs. LeanData comparison here.
5. Outreach
Lead conversion in Salesforce—or any other CRM, for that matter—is only Step One. Once a lead converts, you need the tools in place to automate follow-up and ongoing pipeline management. That’s where Outreach comes in.
Outreach offers a comprehensive suite of sales execution tools: sales engagement, deal management, conversation intelligence plans, rep coaching, pipeline management, forecasting and more. Plus, if you use Default to orchestrate both Outreach and Salesforce, the two can work in tandem to match a powerful CRM with powerful RevOps capabilities.
Lead conversion in Salesforce FAQs
Can you automatically convert leads in Salesforce?
Yes, you can automatically convert leads in Salesforce via Flow, Process Builder, or Apex Batch. Process Builder requires an Apex-invocable method in order to work. For a less technical and complex approach, you can use a third-party orchestration platform to not only automate Salesforce, but all your RevOps software.
How do I check if a Salesforce Lead is converted?
There are multiple ways to check to see if a Lead is converted in Salesforce: a) check the “Converted” field in the contact record, b) filtering lead lists on “Converted” status, and c) creating custom reports filtered based on “Converted” status.
How do I update converted Leads in Salesforce?
To update converted Leads, you must first have “View and Edit Converted Leads” permissions enabled by admin.
How do I revert a Lead conversion in Salesforce?
It is impossible to revert or undo a Lead conversion in Salesforce. You will have to create a new Lead, which then duplicates the record and creates a host of problems. As such, it’s important to exercise great care and have a documented policy in place for converting leads.
Final thoughts on lead conversion in Salesforce
Lead conversion in Salesforce is both complex and tough to automate—both of which are liabilities in modern B2B environments. While you could jerry-rig a patchwork of integrations to augment Salesforce’s gaps, it’s better to choose a more holistic, comprehensive solution.
Default functions as an all-in-one automation solution that handles lead capture, enrichment, qualification, routing, scheduling, and nurture from one location. The platform also orchestrates integrations among your RevOps tech stack, so all your systems—including Salesforce CRM—can function in tandem.
Learn more about how Default helps improve lead management in Salesforce here.
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