Importing Leads into Salesforce

EcoMarket Deliveries has decided to outsource lead generation to a third party. This third party has gathered data on thousands of retirement centers across the U.S. and delivered it as a spreadsheet. Now, our task is to import this data into Salesforce effectively, ensuring all relevant information is properly mapped.

Preparing Your Data

If Salesforce encounters data it's not expecting, it will FAIL the import for the affected leads. That's why you should prepare data before you begin a bulk-import. For instance:

• Free-form fields: some fields (like phone number) don't have any restrictions by default. You can enter any character, even if it's not a number. This sometimes allows for the input of extensions or additional call instructions. When a field is free-form, Salesforce will always import the data with no failures. Prepwork is dictated by the individual company or client;
• Financial fields: these fields (like 'annual revenue') can only accept numerical data. Dollar signs, commas, or any other symbols or other information will cause a failure. "1000000" will work but "$1,000,000" will cause your input to fail;
• Drop-down fields: these forms are heavily restricted. If your spreadsheet specifies a value that isn't in the list, the import will fail. If your spreadsheet lists “Elder Care” as an industry, but Salesforce doesn't have that as a pre-set category, it will not be imported.

Your job is to either conform the spreadsheet to meet what Salesforce is expecting or adapt Salesforce to accommodate the spreadsheet's data.

In this chapter we're focusing on #1, confirming the spreadsheet. In the next video we'll look at adding new fields and adjusting categories.

Importing the Spreadsheet into Salesforce

Once your data is prepped, you can import into Salesforce.

1. Open Salesforce, navigate to the Sales tab, click Leads, and select Import;
2. Choose Import from File and upload the spreadsheet;
3. Salesforce will recognize the fields automatically;
4. If you see any warnings, you may have to help Salesforce to recognize the field labels manually.

Addressing Field Mismatches

Salesforce may display warnings if certain fields don't match precisely. For example:

• Street Address: salesforce uses "Street" instead of "Street Address." Select Street from the dropdown to resolve this;
• Zip: similarly, Salesforce expects "Zip/Postal Code," not simply "Zip." Make the necessary adjustment.

If there are fields Salesforce doesn't recognize, such as a Date Appointed field (indicating when someone joined their organization), you can choose to skip these during import if they aren't critical for immediate use. We'll look at importing those in the next chapter.

Verifying Imported Leads

Once the import completes, check the Leads page. Change your view to All Open Leads to ensure all leads are visible. When done correctly, your leads will appear without errors.

Helpful Resources for prepping your data:

Format the 'Date' and 'Date Time' data in a CSV file For Salesforce Data Loader;

Prepare a CSV File for an Import or Update in Salesforce;

Data Types Supported by Data Loader.