Lead capture

Work with the right context

Keep the source and the business context attached to every prospect. Web forms, imported event lists and manual entries can converge on the same person; review the identity before creating another lead. A useful record explains where the conversation began and who owns the follow-up.

Keep the next action clear

Preserve contact restrictions when correcting duplicates. The person reviewing a proposed merge should be able to inspect the candidate records and understand why the survivor was chosen. Existing interaction evidence stays attributable after the merge.

Coordinate the workflow

Configure lead policy. Define acquisition sources, permitted contact purposes and qualification criteria. Record contact-policy evidence without treating an imported address as consent. Sales Manager defines territory coverage and eligible routing pools; inactive or absent staff cannot receive work.

Capture and deduplicate. Capture stable source identifiers and preserve the acquisition evidence. Proposed duplicate groups stay separate until Sales Manager independently resolves the submitted cluster. A merge preserves source references, restrictions and the stricter contact policy; it cannot move private notes into a wider scope. Freeze candidate membership and CandidateRevision in DuplicateMembers; a changed candidate invalidates the proposed resolution.

Lead capture. A repeated web-form event resolves to the same lead. Reject foreign-workspace references and imports without a stated source.

Duplicate resolution. A reviewed merge retains acquisition and scoring references. Reject self-approved merges or widening note/contact access.

Preserve the context that shapes follow-up

A lead captured from a service inquiry may have a different permitted purpose from one joining a promotional list. Keep the source, stated interest and contact evidence alongside the lead identity. Resolving a duplicate must retain the stricter applicable preference rather than using the merge to reopen a withdrawn channel.

After reconciliation, the sales team should find one understandable lead history: where the prospect came from, which identity survived, who is responsible and what communication is permitted. Scoring and routing can then work from the current record. A duplicate decision does not itself qualify the lead or create an opportunity. Those later actions require their own current evidence and authorized owner, so a clean contact list cannot be mistaken for a qualified pipeline.