Working it
The fastest way to make a CRM useless is to import into it.
Not because the data is bad. Because the same company arrives written four different ways, none of them matching what is already there, and within a quarter the account list has three of everything and nobody trusts any of it.
Comparing properly is unglamorous and it is the whole job.
Comparing
Both sides reduced the same way, then matched.
A web address is stripped of its scheme, its leading prefix, its path and its port — on the incoming side and on your own records, in the query itself. So a full link with a path and a bare domain are recognised as the same company.
Open leads are matched only in the states that still mean something. Something you disqualified last year does not block a fresh approach — which is the difference between a guard and an obstacle.
- https://www.acme.io/careersacme.ioAlready an account
- Smokeco.co.uksmokeco.co.ukAlready a lead
- vestrafreight.nl—New
- The result is a link, not a refusal —
A row for a company you already hold renders as "already an account" with a way to open it, rather than a button that would make a second one.
- Converting one by hand is refused with the record attached —
Carrying what already exists, and telling you to open that instead.
- Converting twice returns the same thing —
Rather than erroring at somebody who clicked twice.
- A re-run replaces rather than duplicates —
Guaranteed at the database, so scoring the same company again updates it.
The rule worth the page
It will not automatically create a lead nobody can contact.
Enforced in two places, sharing one test: at least one live contact at that company with an email, a phone number or a profile link.
The comment records the failure that produced it, and it is worth reading as written: every company above the threshold became a lead with a placeholder name and every reachable field empty — a lead the rep could not open, could not call and could not email. A row like that is a research task, not a lead.
The weaker rule it replaced counted addresses, and was blind to somebody reachable only by phone or only by profile.
- Automatic creation also needs somebody to attribute it to —
If the person who launched the run has since gone, everything goes to review rather than being created with nobody's name on it.
- And it is capped per run —
Beyond the cap, the rest goes to review. A single run cannot flood a pipeline.
- Anything unexpected goes to review, not through —
The failure direction is always toward a person looking at it.
›Does promoting from the queue check for duplicates too?
The duplicate check described here guards the automatic path. When you promote from the queue deliberately, check the account list first if you are unsure — that is the honest answer rather than an assurance.
›What if a company is found before its contacts are?
That is precisely the case the rule exists for. It waits rather than creating something empty.
›Do auto-created leads go through the normal lead process?
Not entirely — they are created directly, so routing rules and lead scoring do not run on them, and the owner is whoever launched the run. Worth knowing if your lead process depends on those.