Connecting the Dots between Pardot & Salesforce

So one of the large challenges that organizations have between the Sales and Marketing department is bridging the gap between the Sales and Marketing team. For those using Salesforce and Pardot, is ensuring that each department’s users are doing their part so that the other department gets what they need for reporting. Case in point: making sure that marketing can track down which efforts from their side are having the greatest ROI.

For organizations using both Salesforce and Pardot, that can be a bit difficult to gauge. Pardot is a database with a foundation on individuals (or Prospects), while Salesforce has a foundation based on Companies (or Accounts), which is what the Opportunities are tied to. To be able to report in Pardot, we need to tie everything in a Salesforce Opportunity to the Contacts that are associated with that record, with a functionality called Contact Roles.

Not surprising, this is one of the least used functionalities within Salesforce. In great part because it takes a few more clicks, and every extra click is another 10 barriers to user adoption with Sales, but also partly because executives and champions often fail to be able to properly express the benefit of using Contact Roles to their users. And even if they do, left to their own device, users may consistently forget to update it (even if unintentionally) because it’s not a required step during the sales process in an Opportunity.

Enter a Contact Role Solution

So if Contact Roles will make a significant difference in reporting, we’ve created an Unmanaged Package solution that can assist you with your needs. The package can be summarized in a few simple components:

• A custom field for the Opportunity that houses the number of Contact Roles associated
• A before save Flow that checks the count of Contact Roles associated with the Opportunity at every Opportunity Edit
• A validation Rule (that you can edit) that requires a Contact Role once the Opportunity Probability surpasses a certain point. The default value is 10% probability.

The goal: Asking for too much information up front can hurt adoption and having users enter Opportunities in the system when they should be. But as Contact Roles are needed, the goal of the solution is to require at least one contact associated before the Opportunities reaches a certain stage (for you to define). This validation rule will instruct users to also add a Contact Role before moving forward, helping you ensure that the database stays clean and that Pardot reports get the information they need from the Opportunities.

Installation

Use this URL to install the package into any organization:

Production: https://login.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04t7j000000LTYe

Sandbox: https://test.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04t7j000000LTYe

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us through freelance@ohanaly.com

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