The Backstory: Your team has been working leads in Salesforce, and many are already involved in active opportunities with account executives. These leads should be converted into contacts and added as contact roles, but doing that manually at scale is impractical. Instead of relying on reps to identify and convert each lead, Automated Lead Conversion uses Backstory activity data to detect and convert them automatically. This keeps contact records current and opportunities accurately staffed without extra work for your team.
Automated Lead Conversion uses your team's email and meeting activity to identify Salesforce leads who are already involved in an account or opportunity and converts them into contacts, and where applicable, adds them as Opportunity Contact Roles. This feature is a companion to Automatic Contact Creation, which creates brand new contacts when no matching lead or contact exists. Automated Lead Conversion handles the case where a lead does exist, by converting it rather than creating a duplicate contact.
What This Article Covers
When Backstory converts a lead and how it differs from contact creation
Requesting Automated Lead Conversion for your organization
Frequently asked questions
When Backstory Converts a Lead
Backstory evaluates leads for conversion every time it processes a captured email or meeting. When Automated Lead Conversion is enabled, you do not need to take action on individual leads. The conversion runs automatically once the feature is enabled for your organization.
A lead is converted when all of the following are true:
An external participant on the activity matches an existing lead in Salesforce by email address.
At least one other external participant on the same activity is already a contact on the matched account.
No existing contact with the same email address already exists in Salesforce.
When these conditions are met, Backstory converts the lead into a contact on the matched account using Salesforce's standard lead conversion. If the activity is also matched to an open opportunity, the new contact is added as an Opportunity Contact Role on that opportunity.
Shared behavior with Automatic Contact Creation, including sync timing, ownership defaults, and field population, applies to converted leads as well. Refer to that article for those details.
Request Automated Lead Conversion
Automated Lead Conversion is not enabled by default. The feature is turned on by Backstory's Technical Success team based on a request from your organization.
Prerequisites: Automatic Contact Creation must be configured for your Configuration Profile before Automated Lead Conversion can take effect.
Confirm with your Customer Success Manager that Automated Lead Conversion is a fit for your sales motion.
Submit a support request to your Customer Success Manager or support@backstory.ai to enable the feature for your organization.
Provide the Backstory team with the Salesforce organization ID or company name that should have the feature turned on.
Wait for the Technical Success team to confirm the feature has been activated.
Monitor your Salesforce instance for newly converted contacts and Opportunity Contact Roles.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is this different from Automatic Contact Creation?
Automatic Contact Creation creates a brand new contact when no matching lead or contact exists. Automated Lead Conversion handles the opposite case, where a matching lead does exist, by converting that lead into a contact instead of creating a duplicate.
Will Backstory convert a lead if a contact with the same email already exists?
No. If a contact with the matching email already exists in Salesforce, Backstory does not convert the lead. The activity is matched to the existing contact instead.
Does the converted lead also become an Opportunity Contact Role?
Yes, when the activity is matched to an open opportunity on the same account. Lead-to-Contact conversion and Lead-to-Opportunity Contact Role conversion are controlled by the same setting and are either both on or both off.
What if the matched account has no other contacts yet?
Backstory will not convert the lead. The feature requires at least one other external participant on the activity to already be a contact on the matched account, which prevents conversions on accounts where no relationship has been established.
Can I disable Automated Lead Conversion after it has been turned on?
Yes. Contact your Customer Success Manager or support@backstory.ai, and the Technical Success team will disable the feature for your organization.
Need Help?
Contact your Customer Success Manager or support@backstory.ai.