A person is entered by a sales rep as a "Contact" in salesforce and sends them a cold email.  the person reads the email and checks out our website for more info and fills out a content download on our website produced by Marketing thus landing them in the lead queue.  Marketing assigns the lead to a sales rep.  The rep then sets a meeting with the contact and moves them to a Converted Lead. The lead is then converted to a contact but...the contact already exists so the contacts are merged.  Is this really a 'Converted Lead' if the contact already existed in salesforce?  Should sales be entering cold contacts as leads and making the source their own names instead of entering them as contacts?

How can marketing show they influenced a contact if the contact is already in the system?