How to Create a Lead Routing System That Works

As your business grows, your need to assign and follow up with leads efficiently is essential to close more deals. In our “instant gratification” world, that quick contact from sales has transcended beyond a nice to have and is now the norm. That’s where lead routing - the automatic process of assigning leads to your sales team members - comes in. 

With budgets shifting around prioritizing automation over the last year, having a solid lead routing strategy that’s guaranteed to work with your company matters. In this blog post, we'll show you how to build a lead routing system that works for you.

Why do I need lead routing?

With lead generation still a top challenge for marketers, making it easy for prospects to get in contact with a qualified salesperson is the holy grail we should all be searching for. It will also help sales teams respond to more leads faster to maximize your revenue stream. And as we see the rise of ChatGPT and automation, doing more with software is essential to remain competitive. 

Fortunately, most marketing companies today have a CRM – which carries the capability to route leads automatically. 

Tip: If you don’t use lead scoring enabled in your CRM, consider what way you’d like to route your leads – whether by location, specialty, or value and bandwidth of your sales team members. 

How does lead routing help?

Creating an automated workflow that distributes leads to sales team members takes the ongoing organization aspect off of sales – instead letting them focus on revenue-generating tasks.

Here are some of the main ways lead routing can benefit your team:

• Maximizing operational efficiency and resources
• Distributing leads evenly across your team (depending on settings)
• Increasing productivity 
• Virtually eliminating manual, admin-based tasks 
• Decreasing risk for human error

You can also, over time, implement this across your initial onboarding functions, as well, so you create a seamless experience for prospects and new customers. It’s a win-win for everyone involved, easing the burden between teams and fostering collaboration.

3 Best Practices for Effective Lead Routing

1. Know Your Team

Part of providing a great experience, especially in sales, is sharing valuable connections. Assigning your leads based on specialty is a great strategy, especially if you have a business with industry-specific niches and subject matter experts internally.

For someone with healthcare experience, for example, you’d want to route a high-ranking healthcare professional to this person rather than someone else on the team, as they’re best equipped to handle the person’s questions for their specific needs. Seems obvious, but isn’t always the easiest in practice.

2. Define Your Routing Specifications

There are many ways you can determine where to route leads. You can do so by industry as I mentioned earlier, by the value of the lead (if it’s a higher-level person with purchasing power), the urgency (you can add a form field for level of urgency if someone opts in and wants to specify this), and even lead scoring parameters.

For a global business, considering time zones is important for the quickest response as well. There’s no prescriptive way to do this – as every business rates leads and routes them differently. Take time to qualify them and route where appropriate based on data and input from your sales team. And always use ongoing data to tweak your routing strategy so you can make informed decisions. This is, of course, with the end goal in mind to close more deals faster. 

3. Be Agile and Reassign as Needed

Priorities change frequently, so have round robin reassignments implemented in case a salesperson doesn’t reach out to them in time. While it’s important to get the right person in front of a prospect, that first outreach being quick is equally valuable. Starting the conversation by getting more information or answering some of their initial questions goes a long way, even if a switch needs to happen part of the way through. 

Want your sales team to speak the same language to prospects? Read more about creating winning sales battlecards.

Lead Routing Keeps Your Team Efficient

No one wants to feel like they’re being ignored – least of all leads that are looking to make a big purchase. The automation from lead routing helps your team stay agile as you grow and make contact with leads quicker. Optimizing your CRM automation is becoming a major function in both marketing and sales, so integrate this in your yearly and quarterly strategy if you haven’t already.

To learn more about creating a strategic, sustainable strategy for your marketing and sales departments, download your free growth stack guide from us.