Section 6: Lead routing Lead routing: Getting the right leads to the right people in sales Lead routing is one of the last parts of the lead How to route leads: (And once you’ve routed your leads, you need management lifecycle. It’s also very important, Built-in features vs. to kick off the follow-up process, which usually especially as your company, sales team, and runs through entirely different apps. Unless lead count scale. Lead routing is the process point solutions your follow-up apps for outbound are directly of sending the right leads, once you’re done connected to your CRM and can accept a direct with lead uploads, lead enrichment, and have Not having proper lead routing means leads get flow of routed lead data, you’ve got more delays properly organized and segmented them (such assigned in error, or are not re-assigned after and more extra work ahead of you.) as by lead-to-account matching), to the right having lost a previous owner - in both cases, this people on your sales team for follow-up. means missed opportunities for your business. For rapidly-growing firms and enterprises that That means headaches for your operations have thousands (if not millions) of leads to Lead routing tends to be an automated process team as they manually re-assign leads based on manage, manual routing just isn’t feasible. In based on lead assignment rules set by your territory, account size, product line, or your sales the past, this often left marketing and sales operations team. Most commonly, operations organization’s structure. As your company scales operations teams with limited options: teams using CRMs like Salesforce will use and lead volume grows, these delays cost your Salesforce lead assignment rules they set company real revenue by delaying follow-up and • CRM built-in lead assignment features: Your based on a variety of factors, such as account providing a poor sales experience to prospects CRM often acts as a system of record for sales owner, territory designations, or in some cases, who got a duplicate call or email...or none at all. account information, as well as a strategic by random draw. In addition, lead assignment handled manually home base for planning, forecasting budgets, within CRM can eventually become extremely and assigning sales territories. However, built- complex as you scale to larger sales teams in lead routing features tend to be limited, with more members, more territories, and more with simple assignment rules that offer little custom business rules. to no customization. CRMs also tend to have 21