Create a Lead from every demo request
Each demo request becomes a Salesforce Lead with source and company filled in, ready for an SDR to work.
New submission on your "Request a demo" form
Create a Lead in Salesforce with first and last name, company, email, job title and Lead Source
One-directional. A submission triggers the action — nothing is written back into your form.
Demo requests go stale fast. This flow moves them out of the form and into the pipeline the moment they are sent, so the Lead is sitting in the queue with a company name and a source attached rather than waiting for someone to rekey it from an email.
Sales teams running inbound on a marketing site set this up first. It matters most when more than one person works the queue — a Lead with Lead Source set can be routed by assignment rules straight away, and reporting on which channel produced it stops being guesswork.
Setting it up
- 1
Publish the demo request form with Work Email and Company required. Company is mandatory on a Salesforce Lead, and a blank one fails the Zap rather than falling back to a default.
- 2
In Zapier, choose the formformform "New Submission" trigger and select the demo request form specifically, not another published form on the account.
- 3
Add Salesforce as the action and pick Create Lead rather than Create Record — Create Lead exposes the standard Lead fields directly, without hunting through an object picker.
- 4
Map First Name and Last Name to the matching Lead fields. Salesforce refuses a Lead with no last name, so mark that field required on the form too.
- 5
Map Work Email to Lead Email and Company to Company. Email is what your duplicate rules compare, so it should never be optional here.
- 6
Set Lead Source from the "How did you hear about us?" answer, and make the form's options match your Lead Source picklist values word for word.
- 7
Put "What problem are you trying to solve?" into the Lead Description so the SDR opens the record with context instead of a bare name and a company.
- 8
Submit a test demo request, confirm the Lead appears with Source set, then turn the Zap on.
What maps where
Using the Demo Request Form as the starting point. These are its real fields — swap in your own and the mapping works the same way.
| Form field | Salesforce |
|---|---|
| First Name | Lead First Name |
| Last Name | Lead Last Name, which Salesforce requires |
| Work Email | Lead Email — the field duplicate rules compare |
| Company | Lead Company |
| Job Title | Lead Title |
| How did you hear about us? | Lead Source picklist |
Variations worth knowing
Company Size is already a picklist on the form. Map it to a custom Lead field, then let your Salesforce assignment rules send anything above your enterprise threshold to the named-accounts queue. The Zap stays one step; the routing lives in Salesforce where sales ops already maintains it.
Teams that have retired Leads can swap the action for Find Record on Account matched by company name, then Create Contact under whatever it returns, with create-if-missing switched on. The trigger and most of the mapping are unchanged; only the object at the end differs.
If something isn't arriving
Someone submitted without a company name. Make Company required in the form editor so the value can never be blank, then replay the failed tasks from Zapier's history once the form is fixed.
The value arriving from the form does not match a Lead Source picklist entry, and Salesforce discards unrecognised values rather than erroring. Line the form options up with the picklist exactly, or hard-code Lead Source in the action step.
Frequently asked questions
Will the Lead update if the same person submits the form again?
No. Create Lead adds a new record each time. Salesforce duplicate rules can flag or block the second one, and Zapier's Find or Create Lead step will update instead of adding. The submission is stored in formformform either way.
Does anything come back from Salesforce into the form?
No. The connection runs one way. A submission creates the Lead; the status, owner and notes an SDR adds afterwards live only in Salesforce and are never written back to the response, which stays as a record of what was actually submitted.
Can one demo request go to more than one place?
Yes. A single Zap can hold several action steps, so the Lead can be created in Salesforce and the same submission posted to a sales channel or a spreadsheet. Responses are kept in formformform regardless of whether the Zap runs.
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Build the form first
The automation needs somewhere to fire from. Publish a form, connect it once, and every submission from then on runs this flow.
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