The Sales Handoff: Aligning Leads, Contacts, and Processes with Salesforce Path

 

This session, led by Jennifer Schneider, addresses the pervasive challenge of the marketing-to-sales handoff. It focuses on using Salesforce Path, a native Sales Cloud feature, to align marketing and sales processes, define clear lead/contact statuses, and drive visibility and adoption across departments.

Key Takeaways

 

• The Problem is Alignment: The main point of contention is a lack of alignment on lead statuses, handoff criteria, and ownership at each stage.

• Path is the Solution: Salesforce Path is a free, native feature (often only used on Opportunities) that can be configured on Leads and Contacts to provide clear instructions, required fields, and guidance for every status.

• Marketer’s Role is Foundational: Marketers control the first touch and re-engagement and must be involved in configuring the path, ensuring their forms and automations support the required fields for each status.

• Net New vs. Existing: The process and statuses for net new leads should closely mimic those for existing contacts to ensure consistency and quick adoption.

Defining Standard Lead and Contact Statuses

 

Standardized statuses ensure both Sales and Marketing understand what actions are required at each stage. The presenter advocates for similar statuses across both Leads and Contacts.

Standard Statuses (Examples)

 

• Net New Marketing Queue Nurture: Initial stage for net new leads, often with minimal data (Name, Email). Assigned to a Marketing Queue for reporting and nurture.

• MQL Sales Working / MQC Sales Working: The formal handoff status. Enough information has been gathered to be assigned to Sales for outreach and qualification cadences.

• SQC / SQL Opportunity on Conversion: Status selected when an Opportunity is established. Used for suppression lists or specific nurture programs for active deals.

• Converted: Used when a Lead is converted to a Contact, but no Opportunity is present (e.g., for ABM tracking or associating to a top account).

• Reengaged: Status for old Leads/Contacts who have been chilling in the database but have recently re-engaged with digital content.

• Marketing Nurture: Status selected by Sales to hand the contact back to Marketing to stay “top of mind” until the prospect is ready.

Configuring the Process with Salesforce Path

 

Salesforce Path is used to visually reinforce the defined business process on the Lead and Contact objects.

What Path Does

 

• Visual Guidance: Displays the current status and the next steps right on the record.

• Required Fields: Highlights Key Fields that must be completed before a record can move to the next status (e.g., Industry, Product of Interest, Pardot Score).

• Automating Handoff: Helps determine and automate when the official handoff occurs (e.g., MQL status is met).

Marketer’s Handoff Responsibility

 

Marketers must ensure their assets are built to populate the Key Fields Sales needs to move the record down the path:

• Forms (Progressive Profiling): Use progressive profiling to gather required fields over multiple interactions, ensuring the path fields are filled incrementally.

• Completion Actions: Use completion actions on forms, landing pages, and files to fill in custom fields based on engagement and inferred interest.

• Automation Rules: Use automation rules and dynamic lists to change the status (e.g., moving a lead from “Marketing Queue Nurture” to “MQL Sales Working”) when all required field criteria are met.

• Conversational Marketing (Chatbots): Connect chatbots (e.g., Qualified, Drift) directly to Salesforce fields. The chatbot experience should be designed to ask the questions that fill the required fields for the next status.

Status Automation Notes

 

• Sales Reminders: Automations are necessary because salespeople often forget to update status.

• Status Change Triggers: Use triggers like Opportunity Creation to automatically update a Contact’s status to SQC/SQC to ensure it’s suppressed from general marketing.

• Demotion: Automations can be created to demote a status (e.g., MQL reverts to Reengaged) if no activity has occurred in a defined period (e.g., 45 days).

• Apex vs. Declarative: While Apex is powerful, declarative tools (Flow, Process Builder, Path) are preferred for status changes because they are more scalable, easier to change when business processes pivot, and require less specialized maintenance than custom code.

Final Strategy Points

 

• Non-Lead Users: If your organization does not use the Lead object, focus entirely on developing and utilizing the Contact Status picklist. Path can still be utilized, but the process may be longer.

• Don’t Delete: Never delete records with bounced emails or old data. Instead, use filters and segmentation (like hard bounce or do not call fields) to exclude them from communication and reporting. Deleting causes long-term data loss and process issues.

• The Big Win: The core benefit of implementing Path is the visible uniting of teams and the clear documentation of what information (the 15-20 key fields) the entire organization must focus on capturing to drive the sales process.