Add a new contact

I need Mia Patel added as a contact so the sales team can start outreach today. Her email is mia.patel@brightleaf.com, phone 415-555-0123, company BrightLeaf Labs, job title Head of Growth, lead source Webinar, owner is Marco Reyes. Add a note: Attended June 10 webinar, asked about integrations. Create the contact and assign Marco as owner; confirm the record appears in the Growth Opportunities view.

Before I add Mia Patel, make the new-contact form approval-friendly: place company and job title at the top, surface lead source and owner next, and flag if email is personal (gmail, yahoo) or corporate. Highlight missing required fields and show any recent duplicate warnings so I can decide whether to merge instead of creating a new record.

I just started adding Mia Patel and the system flagged a possible duplicate with a similar email and company. The person listed previously is owned by Priya and has notes about a demo last month that I didn't see. I'm worried creating another record will split activity and confuse Marco. I can't tell if the existing record is the same person or a colleague with a similar name. What is the likeliest match diagnosis and the clearest next step to keep activity consolidated?

We repeatedly create contacts with slight email or name variations and lose deal history across duplicates. Each month I then spend hours reconciling records and apologizing to sales. Which three habits would stop duplicate creation at source, and what one quick change to the contact intake checklist would prevent this problem on new entries?