A great customer of ours was working on their Dynamics 365 InsideView Solution with their sales team. During that meeting it was discovered the InsideView only creates an account record in CRM using their list build feature. This is completely opposite of most companies, where a Lead starts the SFA process, and ends with an Account.

We were determined to find a work around, and contacted InsideView support only to learn the capability doesn’t currently exist. We even started looking at plugins and workflow options to handle this behind the scenes, IE upon account creation, create a lead, create contact, turn lead to prospect etc.

But we could do that, but should we? I’m not an advocate of band-aiding a process, and honestly lead creation from a list, makes sales people, well lazy.

So a little playing around found a button to due exactly what we wanted! Create a lead.

1. Choose your filter criteria to build a list.
2. Toggle list to “People” view
3. Select a contact to expand details on the right side.
4. Click “+” button and select second option, “Add as Lead in CRM”
5. Click View Lead to view new lead record.

Special thanks to Abby Torres, CRM Solution Architect/MCT and future MVP!