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Lead Imports

If you need to have the Salesforce Team import Leads for you from a list (i.e. a spreadsheet/csv), please see below for instructions, policies, etc.

We have provided a template for you as a related attachment toon this document. See "Attachments" section.

What Is Required for a Lead Import?

Salesforce requires a few fields in order to create a Lead.

The bare minimum required fields include:

  • Last Name
    • A valid Last Name is not a "?" or a repeat of the first name (i.e. "John John"). Please - do not contribute create poor data in our Salesforce instance by providing a fake Last Name value.
  • Company
    • The name of the business the Lead is associated with; should be the company's official name
  • Phone
    • A valid phone number with an area code
  • Lead Source
    • MUST be a valid Lead Source value, as this is a picklist field; MUST be spelled exactly as we have our values. You may find our Lead Source values here under the Account/Lead Source Picklist Values section. Inactive values are not valid.
    • If you are unsure what the Lead Source should be for your list, please speak with Marketing and/or Sales Enablement for assistance.
  • Owner
    • First and Last Name of the Salesforce User that should own each Lead

While these are the only fields required, we strongly encourage to provide as much data as possible or as relevant to the type of Leads you are importing.

What File Format Does My List Need To Be?

Accepted file formats include Microsoft Excel (.xlsx), Google Sheets, or .csv

What Can I Do To Get My List Uploaded FAST?

All requests to import Leads will be put in our ticket queue. Every effort by the Salesforce Team will be made to get your list into Salesforce as quickly as possible. Lists with complete, accurate data will be prioritized as they are much faster for our team to import. This means no 'fixes' or changes from the Salesforce Team are necessary.

Lists that lack the necessary data (i.e. required fields as mentioned above) or are poorly constructed (i.e. column names do not match Salesforce field names) cannot be prioritized as quickly as lists that have complete data, due to the extra time it takes our team to clean up your list. Poorly constructed list imports always lead to errors with importing.

Here is an example of a poorly constructed list.

Screen Shot 2023-12-13 at 5.08.45 PM.png

Can you spot what is wrong with this list?

  • Column Names do not match Salesforce Field names exactly
    • "Name" is not a valid field for the Lead. It should be broken out into 2 column for "First Name" and "Last Name"
    • "Telephone" is not the name of the field in Salesforce - it should be "Phone"
  • Picklist Values not valid
    • "?" and "Zoom Info" are not valid picklist values for the Lead Source field. "?" does not exist (and the user should figure out the Lead Source for each Lead they want imported) and "Zoom Info" is not how we spell the picklist value - it should be "Zoominfo"
  • Inaccurate values; expecting others to find the data for you
    • "Me" is not an accurate Owner. By putting "me", you expect the Salesforce Team to edit your list to have your own First and Last Name. You also expect the Salesforce Admin to know who "me" is
    • "John" is only a partial name of a user

Here is an example of a well constructed list.

Screen Shot 2023-12-13 at 5.18.57 PM.png

Here is what is great about this list:

  • Column Names match Salesforce Field names
  • Picklist Values are valid (Lead Source)
  • Cells are left blank for non-required fields where the user doesn't have a value
    • Website
  • Real, complete values
    • Owner has both the First and Last Name of the Salesforce User as you would find them if you searched their user record
    • Values provided for Record Type are real
  • Proper formatting
    • The different formatting in "Phone" is ok - Salesforce accepts multiple formats; though consistent formatting is encouraged to avoid errors where you may not be expecting a rigid format for a particular field
  • Record Type specification