The lead conversion process always is a bit stressful. Fields from one object are mapping to another and you want to make sure everything is working correctly and nothing is getting overwritten. Additionally, one of the most valuable fields for sales and marketers starts with the conversion process.
That field? Lead Source.
Understanding where your leads are coming from allows your team to focus their time (and marketing dollars!) on those areas. If you go to a lot of Trade Shows and *think* they’re valuable how would you know without marking the Lead Source as such?
With all that said, here are some brief notes regarding the Lead Source field and the conversion process:
Leads, Contacts, and Opportunities all have a field called Lead Source. This field maps automatically upon lead conversion and is default Salesforce behavior.Accounts have a field called Account Source and that populates with the Lead Source during conversion.Opportunities will inherit a Lead Source one of two ways: If a user creates an opportunity during the conversion process OR if a user later creates an opportunity from that contact’s record. The contact will also be added as a Contact Role to that opportunity.Account Source will not map to a new opportunity if a user creates an opportunity from the account record.Upon merge of duplicates, make sure to preserve the Lead Source data from the oldest record. This is the closest thing you to truth.
⚠️ If your Account Source field is blank and you convert a lead to that account, the account will inherit that lead’s source. This is bad for data attribution. I have created a default Account Source field called “Unknown” which will prevent the lead conversion process from overwriting the source.
This goes against what the Salesforce docs say but I tested it and so did Amnon Kruvi and we had the same experience. Check out this thread for more:
Sorry for being so late – I was finally able to try it and you're right: Account Source WAS mapped to Lead Source despite that article. Let's try a workaround! Does this work for you? pic.twitter.com/QAt8PAAAYf — Amnon Kruvi (@KruvMan) October 5, 2018
Anything I missed or that you wish you knew when you starting managing the lead conversion process in Salesforce? Let me know!