This session, led by Eric Mall and hosted by Kate Godley, focused on best practices for managing opportunities in Salesforce, with an emphasis on the integration between Salesforce and Pardot.
Eric shared real-world stories highlighting common mistakes, such as misusing opportunities as placeholders or duplicating them, and discussed the critical role of contact roles in accurate reporting and marketing alignment.
Key takeaways included when to create, update, or close opportunities, and strategies to improve adoption of contact roles within organizations.
The discussion included high engagement from attendees, a summary of a recent poll, live Q&A, and the introduction of a free unmanaged Salesforce package to encourage best practices.
Action Items
(Unspecified) – All attendees: Fill out the provided survey for feedback and poll participation.
(Unspecified) – Interested attendees: Access and consider installing the offered unmanaged Salesforce package to improve contact role tracking.
Opportunities in Salesforce: Common Pitfalls and Best Practices
Many organizations misuse opportunities in Salesforce by creating them as placeholders for potential clients that have not expressed actual interest, leading to inflated pipelines and inaccurate sales cycle reporting.
Duplicating opportunities to reflect multiple options for a single prospect distorts pipeline visibility; best practice is to use one opportunity per actual sales process and leverage quotes for variations.
Opportunities should be closed as soon as the sale is completed (contract signed) or definitively closed-lost, rather than being kept open for upselling or future business, to maintain accurate data on pipeline, opportunity age, and reporting.
Understanding and Leveraging Contact Roles
Accurate opportunity tracking in both Salesforce and Pardot depends on linking contact roles to opportunities, yet many sales teams fail to adopt this practice.
Contact roles are foundational for reliable life cycle reporting in Pardot, enabling marketing and sales teams to align and optimize strategy.
The session introduced an unmanaged package (shared via QR code and blog) that helps enforce contact role usage once opportunities reach a certain stage, making it easier to ensure compliance without being intrusive.
Driving Adoption of Contact Roles
For executives: Position contact roles as essential for understanding true deal progress, sales engagement with decision makers, and enabling accurate marketing ROI reporting.
For sales users: Emphasize the broader team benefit and potential for improved sales success prediction (e.g., using Salesforce Einstein prediction tools) as indirect motivators.
Long-term success depends on having an internal champion—someone owning Salesforce practices and promoting ongoing compliance, rather than relying solely on consultants.
Decisions
Do not create opportunities for accounts with no expressed interest — Supported by poll results (roughly 80% agreement) and real-world case studies presented.
Opportunities should reflect only active sales processes and be closed when won/lost — Maintains reporting accuracy and ensures reliable pipeline metrics.
Contact roles must be linked to opportunities before advancing beyond initial stages — Necessary for accurate lifecycle and attribution reporting.
Open Questions / Follow-Ups
No open questions or unresolved action items were identified within the session content. Attendees are encouraged to review the blog and package documentation for further technical guidance on implementation.