CRM Mirroring: Recognize Salesforce Merges and Deletions

Reps working quickly through their daily tasks are liable to create duplicate records. Sometimes it's easier to create a new record rather than search for a record that may or may not exist. Salesforce created the Merge & Delete process to correct this behavior.

The Salesforce Merge & Delete Process consolidates these records to make sure all of the appropriate information is in one place. When you go through the process in Salesforce, you choose a master record and a losing record(s). Then you elect what information will remain on the Master Record. 

Since SalesLoft Person records match up to single Lead or Contact in Salesforce, these merges can cause a disruption in the data. To keep information consistent, SalesLoft created an admin-enabled feature to recognize Salesforce Merges that occur and align SalesLoft Person Records with the customer's Salesforce Lead and Contact Records automatically. 

In this article, we will go over how SalesLoft interacts with Salesforce merge and deletes, including: 

• Enable Merge Recognition
• Recognize CRM Deletions
• Merge Behavior in Salesforce
• Salesforce Merge to 1 SalesLoft Person Record
• Salesforce Merge Associated to Multiple SalesLoft Person Records

Enable Merge Recognition 

In order to turn on Merge Recognition, a team admin will need to enable the feature from the CRM settings. Once the Recognize Merge Setting is enabled, your SalesLoft Instance will begin to recognize Lead and Contact Merges that occur in your connected Salesforce Instance.

Follow these steps to enable merge:

1. Go to Team Settings.
2. Navigate to the CRM Sync tab on the left hand side.
3. From the CRM Settings, scroll to Recognize CRM Merges. Turn the toggle to enable the setting. When the toggle is blue the setting is on. 

Recognize CRM Deletions

If you have records in Salesforce that are no longer relevant, you may want to delete them rather than merge them into another record. When a Salesforce record is deleted, what happens to the linked SalesLoft record?

The recognize CRM Deletions feature automatically identifies any Salesforce Deletions that occur and whether they are aligned to a SalesLoft Person, Account and Opportunity Records. Now, what happens with the linked SalesLoft record will be determined by the Recognizing CRM Deletions Setting. There are two options: 

• Enabled (toggle on): When Salesforce record is deleted and Recognizing CRM Deletions Setting is Enabled, the corresponding SalesLoft record is deleted.
• Disabled (toggled off): When Salesforce record is deleted and Recognizing CRM Deletions Setting is Disabled, unlink the deleted Salesforce record from the corresponding SalesLoft record.

Things to Note:

• CRM Sync must be enabled to use this feature.
• Recognizing Salesforce Deletes will be on by default for any customers that have not previously enabled CRM Sync before. This means it will be enabled for all new customers that enable CRM Sync OR any current customers that haven't enabled CRM Sync yet but will in the future.
• If you are an existing SalesLoft customer, you will have to manually enable the feature.

To edit the Recognize CRM Deletions settings, follow these steps: 

1. Go to Team Settings.
2. Navigate to the CRM Sync tab on the left hand side.
3. From the CRM Settings, scroll to Recognize CRM Merges. Turn the toggle to enable the setting. When the toggle is blue the setting is on. A notification will appear at the top of the page to inform you of the setting status.

Merge Behavior in Salesforce

Merges can happen in Salesforce in one of two ways: 

• Manual merge action for
  • Leads
  • Contacts
• Automated merging through third party applications. 

Speak with your team's Salesforce admin for more information on setting up merge behavior within Salesforce. 

Once the merge occurs in Salesforce, there are two scenarios to be accounted for in SalesLoft:

• Salesforce Merge to 1 SalesLoft Person Record
• Salesforce Merge Associated to Multiple SalesLoft Person Records

Salesforce Merge to 1 SalesLoft Person Record

The first possible scenario for Salesforce merges occurs when you merged multiple records in Salesforce but there is only one SalesLoft Person Record associated with the Salesforce Contacts or Leads you merged.

The result of this merge scenario keeps all of your Active Cadences work history (Emails, Calls, Cadence History) intact on your SalesLoft Person record.

The only change that occurs is the CRM ID gets updated to the CRM ID of the Salesforce Master Record that you selected when merging the records in Salesforce and any information you selected to move to that Master Record while in Salesforce.

Things to Note: If there are discrepancies between the data on the winning Salesforce record and your SalesLoft record, the data will be reconciled according the field's designated field configuration merge behavior. 

Salesforce Merge Associated to Multiple SalesLoft Person Records

The second possible merge scenario occurs when you merge multiple records in Salesforce and you have multiple SalesLoft Person Records associated with the SFDC Contacts or Leads you merged. This merge will result in a master record and one or more "losing" records.

Impact on the Master SalesLoft Record:

• The SalesLoft Person Record that was linked to your selected Salesforce Master Record will be the SalesLoft Record that takes precedence.
• Any Cadences that were associated with the Master SalesLoft Record will remain on all active Cadences and work history will stay intact.

The Losing SalesLoft Record(s):

• Any SalesLoft Person Records that are linked to the Losing Salesforce Record(s) in the merge are deleted in SalesLoft.
• If any of these "Losing" SalesLoft Records were in active Cadences, they will also be removed from those Cadences.
• No work history from the Losing Records will be moved to the SalesLoft Master Record, however, the activities will remain in our system and will continue to populate analytics.