I’m probably old-school, but I love the Lead object in Salesforce. I just love having a table where all of the lowish quality or yet-to-be-validated people go. Pulling a list from ZoomInfo? Drop it in the Lead object! Got a conference list? Drop it in the Lead object! Sure – if someone fills out your Demo Request form they should be a Contact – but that’s where Lead auto-conversion comes in. Before I espouse on my love of the Lead object, I’ll list the negatives of using Leads:

Cons of Using the Lead Object:

• A person is just a person. If you just use the Contact object and auto-convert everything a person is just a person – this aligns better with systems like Hubspot and Outreach where a person is…. just a person. There’s no more need to say, ‘yeah, but this person is just a Lead! They haven’t been qualified yet.’ All people are just people.
• Duplicates! It’s easy to block duplicates in Salesforce on a single object; blocking across objects is more complicated. Yes, you can have Lead-Contact cross-object duplicate rules but that still creates confusion. ‘Why can’t I add this Contact?’ ‘Because it already exists as a Lead! Please convert the Lead’. Much simpler to just have everyone in as a Contact

Pros of Using the Lead Object:

• It’s out-of-the-box Salesforce. Any decent Salesforce consultant will tell you to lean towards out-of-the-box Salesforce functionality as much as possible. Why? Because there’s less ongoing upkeep and customization required to maintain out-of-the-box functionality.
• Qualification. Most of the Leads are going to be garbage. If you’re only dealing with Contacts you know have a majority of Contacts as garbage. I like the Lead object as a type of ‘qualification’ object – only some fraction of these people are going to make it through to ‘Contacts’.
• Conversion rates. I like it that Salesforce maintains the conversion information from Lead to Contact (and, if an Opportunity is created on conversion maintains it to the Opportunity, too). This way you can track the touchpoints on the Lead, you can track the touchpoint at point of conversion and you can continue tracking on the Contact. I think you get better marketing visibility when using the Lead + Contact objects.
• Built in Salesforce functionality: easily spin-up Lead assignment rules and easily pull reports on Leads with Converted information. Because it’s out-of-the-box functionality features are built right in.

I totally get dropping the Lead object entirely and just using the Contact object. Auto-convert anything that happens to be a Lead to a Contact. Now your reps are only dealing with ‘People’ in Salesforce and you can assign and report on details through the Account (where Contacts have a native relationship, unlike Leads). I also understand that, at some point, you’re re-marketing to Contacts anyway – if you’re Total Addressable Market is small and easily defined, at some point the vast majority of people in that market are going to be Contacts, anyway. But, I’m still a fan of Leads – there’s always going to be that need for high-volume, yet-to-be-qualified people dumped into the top of the funnel and that’s Leads. It’s still Salesforce in-built functionality so you get expansive features and reporting with Leads – you can track touch-points from that high-level person through qualification and closed/won Opportunities. By using the Lead object you can track conversions and touch-points from the more-or-less unknown person, through the qualification to someone where there’s a potential business Opportunity, to them becoming a customer. Leads are hard to beat.