This article addresses the "Cannot Find Person in CRM" error encountered in Salesloft. This error occurs when Salesloft attempts to log an activity to your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system but cannot find a matching person record. This can prevent activity logging and hinder the seamless integration between Salesloft and your CRM, impacting your team's ability to track and manage interactions effectively.
Symptoms
When this issue occurs, you might experience the following symptoms:
- An error message in Salesloft indicating "Cannot Find Person in CRM" when trying to log an activity.
- Activities failing to sync or log to the corresponding person record in your CRM.
- Person records created in Salesloft not being automatically linked to existing or new records in your CRM.
- Blank values appearing in the "CRM ID" column when exporting Salesloft People.
Common Causes
The primary reason for this error is that a person record exists in Salesloft but does not yet have a corresponding match in your connected CRM. This can happen in several scenarios:
- A person was created directly in Salesloft without a corresponding CRM record.
- CRM Linking settings in Salesloft are not configured to allow matching to CRM records.
- A new Salesloft record was created, and the CRM record has not yet been created or linked.
Step-by-Step Troubleshooting
Step 1: Verify CRM Linking Settings Ensure that your Salesloft instance is configured to link with your CRM.
- Navigate to your Salesloft Team Settings.
- Locate the CRM Linking section.
- Ensure your CRM linking settings are not set to Do Not Link.
- Refer to the "Manage CRM Team Settings" article for detailed instructions on configuring these settings.
Step 2: Identify Unlinked Salesloft People by Exporting your Salesloft People to identify records without a CRM link.
- Go to your People tab in Salesloft.
- Initiate an export of all your Salesloft People.
- Consult the "Export People" article for guidance on this process.
- Pro tip: Add a filter for "CRM Record = Not Linked" before export to narrow down your list.
- Once the export is complete, open the CSV file.
- Locate the column labeled CRM ID.
- Filter the CRM ID column to show only blank values. These are the Salesloft records that are not currently linked to a CRM record.
- Tip: Save this filtered list as a separate file for the next step.
Step 3: Import Unlinked People into Your CRM in bulk.
- Using the filtered CSV file from Step 2, initiate a bulk import of these records into your CRM.
- Follow your CRM's specific import process. Ensure that the email address field in your CSV is mapped correctly to the email address field in your CRM.
- Tip: Importing these records into your CRM will create the necessary matching records for Salesloft to link to.
Step 4: Retry "Cannot Find Person in CRM" Errors (Optional - If you do not pursue this option, Salesloft will organically link to the newly created records as users continue to log activities in Salesloft)
To immediately link the newly created CRM records to the corresponding Salesloft records and resolve the errors:
- Navigate to the area in Salesloft where you see the "Cannot Find Person in CRM" errors (e.g., the Activity Feed or Integrations Health section).
- You can either retry the errors individually or in bulk, if the platform allows.
- Retrying will force Salesloft to attempt to find a matching CRM record again.
- Tip: If you wish to retry all past "Cannot Find Person in CRM" errors, contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) or the Salesloft support team for assistance. Be aware that retrying past activities will update the "created date" of the activity to the date of the retry, while the "due date" will remain the original completion date.
(Video) How to Troubleshoot "Cannot Find Person in CRM" Error
For a visual, step-by-step guide on how to troubleshoot the "Cannot Find Person in CRM" error, check out our Cannot Find Person in CRM video walkthrough.
Alternative Solutions
Alternative 1: Once you've created the record in the CRM, manually Link a Person to CRM If you encounter this error for a single record, you can manually attempt to link it.
- Navigate to the specific Person record in Salesloft.
- Look for a button or option labeled "Link to CRM".
- Click this button and follow the prompts to search for and link to the corresponding record in your CRM.
Alternative 2: Leverage "When a Person is Not Found in My CRM" Automation (Use with Caution) You can create an automation rule in Salesloft with the trigger "When a Person is Not Found in My CRM" to automatically push records to your CRM.
- Navigate to Automation Rules in Salesloft.
- Create a new rule with the specified trigger.
- Define the action to create a new record in your CRM.
Caution: We generally do not recommend this approach as CRMs often have more stringent data requirements than Salesloft. Salesloft allows record creation with minimal information (e.g., email and partial name), which might lead to failed record creation in your CRM due to missing required fields. This risk is lower if the Salesloft record was created manually in-app and you have configured required fields in Salesloft (refer to the "Person Field Configuration" article). Consult with your Salesloft Success team before implementing this automation.
Preventative Measures
To minimize the occurrence of this error in the future, consider the following best practices:
- Import People from your CRM into Salesloft: This ensures that records originate in your CRM and are then synced to Salesloft, reducing the likelihood of Salesloft records existing without a CRM counterpart.
- Restrict Salesloft Import Methods: To enforce importing from your CRM, you can remove the ability for users to import via CSV and manually in Salesloft's General Settings.
- Control Person Creation Permissions: Within Salesloft's Roles and Permissions settings (under People Permissions), you can disable person creation via "lofting" for specific custom roles.
- Disable Person Creation in Third-Party Tools: If you integrate other tools with Salesloft, review their settings to prevent unintended person creation in Salesloft without CRM synchronization.
- Streamline CRM Imports: Explore using Salesloft automation rules to import records from your CRM or leverage scheduled report imports (Salesforce-only) to keep your Salesloft and CRM data aligned.
Additional Resources
