Introduction

Synchronizing the Account Stages between Apollo and Salesforce allows you to efficiently manage your accounts based on their statuses to keep all records automatically updating the stages between both tools while they move through your team's engagement process.

 

This could help to stop your team from requesting and emailing leads that are already Current Clients and Active Opportunities, for example. Also, having the stages properly mapped and synced with your CRM, allows you to create rule automation to improve your team's process and practices over Salesforce and Apollo.

 

This article contains the following sections:

• Define Your Custom Account Stages
• Map Stages
• Manually Pull Account Stages
• Automatically Create and Map Stages
• Adding/Deleting Stages

 

Define Your Custom Account Stages

Before start setting up your configuration, it is recommended that you take the time to review our article Customize Contact and Account Stages Best Practices, to define the statuses that you use over Salesforce for the different steps of your sales cycle and decide how you want to match them over Apollo.

Map Stages

Once ready, navigate to Settings > Account > Stages, to set the mapping configuration for your Salesforce statuses.

Stage Mapping Method

There are two options to map the stages over Apollo:

• Infer what the stage should be based on the Salesforce opportunities created. This method would allow you to select define the stages based on simple specific events that the opportunities would go through. Once you're done selecting the stages you want to use for each event, click on the Save button, at the right-hand side.

• Map to a custom Salesforce account status field. This is the most common and recommended approach, where you'll be able to choose a field from Salesforce that has the different statuses that you have been using to manage your accounts records through your engagement process.

Salesforce does not have an account status field by default. If you haven't already, you will need to create a Picklist field and define its values. You can create a new Salesforce field here.

 

If needed, enable the option This field will be read-only. It will only be pulled from Salesforce. Changes to Apollo account stage will not be pushed to Salesforce.

 

Once you have selected the field that contains the stages to map, click on the Save button, on the right-hand side.

 

 

Create, Edit and Map Stages

When using the method Map to a custom Salesforce account status field, you'll be able to select the Salesforce Account Status that matches each of the Apollo Account Stages, one-to-one.

 

After selecting all the stages as needed, click on the Save button, at the bottom of the page.

 

Manually Pull Account Stages

If you've connected your Salesforce CRM before mapping your Account Stages, or after making changes to your configuration, you can use the button Pull all Account Stages, to synchronize your statuses between Salesforce and Apollo. 

Automatically Create and Map Stages

Apollo would give you the option to automatically map for you the stages that are not already mapped by the configuration identified over Create, Edit and Map Stages section. Apollo will not overwrite any mappings that were already set before auto-mapping is run.

There are several observations to consider when synchronizing Account Stages:

1. If there's an unmapped stage in Apollo that matches a status in Salesforce, then we will automatically map the two together.
   • However, If a stage in Apollo matches a stage from Salesforce, but that status is already mapped to a different stage, then we will not overwrite the existing mapping.
   • And if Apollo cannot find a match for the unmapped stage over Salesforce, then that stage will remain unmapped.
2. If there's an unmapped stage from Salesforce that does not match any existing stages on Apollo, then we will automatically create a stage that matches it and map the two together.
   • However, if an unmapped stage from Salesforce does match an existing stage, but that stage is already mapped to a different status, then the matching value will remain unmapped. We will not attempt to create a new stage and match the two together, since that would incorrectly create a duplicate for a stage that already exists.

Adding/Deleting Stages

Adding Custom Stages

You can add custom stages to identify specific statuses for your Contacts and Accounts while going over the engagement process of your team and to map stages based on the ones you have over your CRM, to keep all your records synced between the two applications.

Follow these instructions to create custom stages:

1. Over the Create, Edit and Map Stages, click on Add Stage, at the Apollo Account Stage column.
2. Enter a Name for your custom status.
3. Choose a Category to identify the stage.
4. Click on Create Stage to save it.
5. Once added, map the stage with the Salesforce Account Status that corresponds.
6. Click on Save to update the configuration.

 

 

Deleting a Stage

To delete a stage, follow these instructions:

1. Over the Create, Edit and Map Stages, find the stage you would like to delete.
2. Click on the three dots icon next to it and choose Delete.
3. Then, you'll be asked to confirm the deletion and you'll be prompted to choose a different stage to move all existing accounts assigned to it.
4. Click on Delete to confirm.
5. Then, click on Save to update the configuration.

 

 

Related Resources

• Connect and Configure Salesforce
• Customize Contact and Account Stages Best Practices