There’s so much more to lead routing than just routing leads.
At first, lead routing sounds simple. A prospect submits a demo request and becomes a lead. That lead is distributed to an SDR, who qualifies it and hands it off to an Account Executive. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Except it is never that simple. Never.
80% of your lead assignment process is probably about the same as every other company generating inbound leads. A standard and relatively simple process where an inbound lead is assigned to the next SDR in line, and then passed on to an AE when it's opportunity-ready.
But that other 20% - the part that's unique to your GTM motion, your sales team, and your buyers - is the hard part. That's the part where all the edge cases and complications come in, making lead distribution a lot more complicated than it initially sounds.
When a lead comes in, how do you decide who works it? When do they work it? How does the lead move from sales rep to sales rep? And how have these processes changed this year as sales cycles have slowed down?
Let's talk about everything that goes into lead routing (or lead distribution or lead assignment, however you refer to it on your team). We'll start with who.
How do you decide who works a lead?
When an inbound lead comes in, how do you decide who works it? What about outbound leads? How do you decide which reps work which leads?
You have two high-level options to start: round robin vs pre-set account lists.
With round robin lead assignments to SDRs, you're basically just assigning each new lead to the next rep in line. Leads are always distributed to the rep who's up next. The idea is that over time, the randomness of when new leads come in even out across reps' books, and every rep gets a roughly equal number of good leads.
Except we know that's not really how it works. Some reps get more good leads than others. Some get skipped for one reason or another. Over time, this actually leads to imbalanced books and unequal attainment.
What happens when an SDR is out of the office? Or already on a call? Or just too busy? Your answers to these questions contribute to that special 20% of your lead assignment process we mentioned above.
And how do you set up a reliable round robin distribution in the first place? Unless you've got a very small sales team, you likely automate this process in some way. We'll talk more about how to set up lead routing systems in a bit, but if you're a Salesforce user, you may want to read this post about different ways to implement round robin in Salesforce.
Besides round robin, another option is having predefined account lists - based on territories, segments or named account lists - where new leads are routed to specific reps based on a set of criteria. The idea here is to eliminate the elements of luck and randomness you find in round robin to something more intentional and controlled.
Except we know this rarely works too. Have you ever seen a truly good segment or territory-based system? One that's totally balanced and fair and encompasses every possible prospect? No, because they don't exist. No matter how much time your ops team puts into planning territories, they will never be perfect. In fact, they're rarely even good enough.
Some reps will end up with bad territories that don't have enough workable accounts. Others will end up with territories with more accounts than they can possibly work. And what happens when a rep leaves or new reps join? How do you account for changes in prospects' businesses? How do you keep rep books balanced over time? How often do you reallocate territories?
And this is just part of it. You likely have some reps who handle lead qualification (SDRs or BDRs, for example), and other sales reps who handle demos and closing (AEs). How do you decide which BDRs/SDRs pass which accounts to which AEs? Do you use pods (1 SDR feeds 1-3 AEs) or pools (all SDRs feed all AEs)? Based on what criteria?
You need accurate lead-to-account matching for this to work, as well. If you can't accurately connect a new lead to a related existing account, you may send it to the wrong rep.
When a lead comes in, when do you work it?
Another aspect of lead routing is timing. When do you work a new lead?
What are your SLAs? Do you have established rules that outline how long an SDR has to contact a new lead? Do SDRs have to respond to new leads within a certain time? There is some evidence that following up on interested leads quickly results in higher conversion rates. How do you track and enforce that?
And what's the role of an individual rep's capacity and availability? Again, what if a rep is out or simply too busy to respond right now?
This is where your team's rules of engagement come in, if you have them. And if you have them, there are probably areas you'd like to improve. Codifying all these processes is hard, and another example of where your team's special 20% matters a lot. You have to predict and plan for edge cases, because they will come up. (We've got a great free rules of engagement guide if you want to work on yours.)
When you work a lead may be determined by the prospect. For example, if you offer a direct meeting scheduling option on your website (through your CRM like HubSpot meetings or through a third-party booking tool like Chili Piper or Calendly), a prospect can choose when they talk to a sales rep. That may influence who works the lead, as well as when it's worked.
Have your expectations for timing changed in 2023? Do you expect reps to move leads from stage to stage more quickly right now to make up for longer overall sales cycle times?
Which leads do you work?
Not all leads are created equal. So you likely need to think about how you decide which leads you work in which ways. So now comes the lead qualification and scoring element of lead routing.
How do you qualify leads? Do you auto-enrich them as they come in? Do you use a data enrichment tool like Zoominfo or do you have a person research a new lead to manually qualify them? What criteria do you use? Do you score leads a certain way, and how does that determine how they're assigned? (And this is where we could get into everything that's involved in defining your ICP, so read this post if you want more on ICP.)
Are there certain leads a sales rep shouldn't reach out to at all? How do you decide on those criteria? Are some leads nurtured with marketing cadences while others go straight to a SDR? Do you have the right marketing automation tools and are they connected appropriately to your CRM? Do sales reps have insight into the marketing messaging and cadences (and vice versa)?
Of course, we also need to talk about outbound prospecting and how you balance inbound leads with outbound leads. Do you have hybrid reps who work a combination of inbound and outbound? How do you keep those ratios balanced? Or do you have specialized inbound reps and outbound reps? How do you ensure the right leads go to the right reps?
How do you route and work leads?
There are a number of lead distribution tools that can help manage the lead routing process. You can also set up sales process automations in your CRM to make this simpler. For example, if you use Salesforce as your CRM, you probably already have some processes set up through Salesforce Flow. Salesforce is really powerful and customizable, particularly for lead routing. If you want to dive deeper into that, read this post about Salesforce lead assignment rules.
Or you could go with a more comprehensive software solution, something that doesn't stop with the lead, because as we've seen, lead assignment involves a lot more than the SDR to AE handoff. So here's where we're going to recommend Gradient Works - for lead routing and assignment to dynamic account book management and everything related to which reps own which accounts when.
You could do all these steps manually, as well. Smaller companies may be able to manage this with manual processes and spreadsheets. We don't recommend that because it can get out of control really quickly. Just know that you'll need to move to a more automated process as you grow.
So hopefully I've made it clear how much more is involved in lead routing than simply routing leads. It's often a prospect's first entry point into your GTM engine, and is closely connected with a ton of other sales and marketing processes.
