Duplicate Checking
Prospect performs duplicate checking to ensure duplicate records are not created in your Salesforce instance. This duplicate checking is performed on all Lead, Contact, and Account records.
Lead Records
First Name and Last Name
Prospect performs a search to see if the first name and last name on the record you’re looking at on LinkedIn matches any of the names on an existing Salesforce Lead record.
This search also takes into account common nicknames for first names.
EXAMPLE
When looking at Katherine Williams on LinkedIn, Prospect will also include Kat Williams and Kathy Williams in it's search.
Company Name
Prospect also utilizes the company name when performing duplicate searches. More specifically, when performing a duplicate search it takes into account a combination of common company name abbreviations and suffixes (ex. LLC, Inc, Corp, .com, GmbH).
EXAMPLE
Assume you’re looking at John Smith who works at Microsoft on LinkedIn and a Lead record for a John Smith at Microsoft, Inc. exists in Salesforce. Prospect will be able to automatically determine that Microsoft and Microsoft, Inc. are actually the same and therefore the record already exists as a Lead in Salesforce since the names match as well.
The Email address is a unique identifier that is used independently to find duplicate records. Prospect will determine a record already exists if we find any existing record in Salesforce with the same email (irrespective of the name and company on that record).
EXAMPLE
Assume you’re looking at John Smith at Microsoft on LinkedIn whose email address is john@microsoft.com and a Lead record for a Mike Smith at Microsoft exists in Salesforce with the email john@microsoft.com. Since the email addresses match Prospect will consider the records to be the same despite the name being different.
Contact Records
When using Contact records Prospect will perform duplicate searches using the same First name + Last name and Email field search techniques mentioned above while also searching Account records.
Prospect will search for common company suffixes and abbreviations on Account record names in your Salesforce instance when performing a duplicate search.
EXAMPLE
If you are looking at a profile under Microsoft on Linkedin, but in Salesforce an Account record with the name Microsoft, Inc. exists Prospect considers them the same.
Prospect will also additionally utilize the Website attribute on the Account object to help find duplicates in situations where the name Account names do not match (even with fuzzy matching).
EXAMPLE
If you are looking at a profile under Microsoft on Linkedin and in Salesforce an Account record with the name MSFT and website microsoft.com exists, Prospect will determine that the MSFT Account in Salesforce is the same as Microsoft on LinkedIn since the website is the same.
Cross Record Checking
Prospect will run a duplicate check based on all fields across all records (on the lead, contact, and account level) so duplicates are not created under different record types.
EXAMPLE
If the Lead already exists under a Contact record on Salesforce, Prospect will still detect the duplicate record.
In the instance that you are okay with creating the record under more than one record, you can go ahead and click the Prospect button.
Instant Prospecting
While instant Prospecting on Sales Navigator, the Prospect Checkmark next to the blue button indicates that the record already exists on Salesforce, even if it originally wasn’t added by Prospect:
The same indicator will appear when the sidebar is expanded for an existing record:
