Lead Routing Explained: Examples, Strategies, and Automation

Directing new leads to the right team member is often overlooked. However, this strategy is highly impactful. It can significantly improve your sales performance

And as your business scales, lead routing will get extremely tough due to ever-changing prospect demands, so to effectively distribute your leads, you definitely need advanced automation systems.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the best strategies for routing your leads to the right rep and potentially closing deals!

Sounds good? First, let’s break down what lead routing is.

What is Lead Routing? 

Lead routing is the process of assigning sales leads to the appropriate sales representative or team based on predefined criteria. An effective lead routing system helps businesses improve their response times and increase the chances of closing deals.

You can keep lead routing extremely simple by alphabetizing your sales reps in a CRM and assigning each new lead to the next person in line.

Let’s assume for instance that your reps are Alex, Brian, and Chloe, the first lead is assigned to Alex, the second to Brian, and the third to Chloe, then the cycle starts over, as simple as that! 

But a solid lead routing will take a bit more strategy than that. 

Well-established brands base their lead routing rules on specific factors like geography, product interest, and availability. These factors help optimize their sales efforts. There are more factors to explore, which we will cover in the next section.

Five Examples of Lead Routing 

In sales, one size doesn’t fit all, so the lead routing model you use depends on elements like your target market, team setup, sales goals, and tech stack. 

Let’s get into these factors one by one to help you match the right sales reps with suitable leads.

Lead routing by availability

Availability-based lead routing is as simple as it gets: leads are assigned to the first available rep in the queue. That’s it.

Consider using a CRM or software that centralizes all your sales information. This ensures the entire team stays aligned. When a new lead enters the system, the routing software automatically notifies the available sales rep.

But it’s easier said than done. First, ensure your lead routing software integrates with calendar apps and Salesforce Business Hours. This helps assess team availability in real-time and notifies reps who are ready to follow up.

While this method speeds up the lead routing process, it doesn’t always direct leads to the most appropriate reps. So, keep that in mind when using it.

Lead routing by geography

This example consists of directing leads to sales representatives based on their geographic location; in other words, reps will be in charge of leads within their specific territory.

Let’s use an example to illustrate this. If a multinational company operates across multiple regions, it can route leads based on geography. Leads from the US would go to the North American rep, while Brazilian leads would be sent to the South American rep.

Similarly, leads from the UAE would be routed to the MENA rep.

We could provide more examples, but you get the idea.

A geographic routing system helps you build strong relationships with your leads, and it’s not hard to see why! When your leads are directed to a rep with a deep understanding of the local market, they receive a personalized service and naturally feel a stronger connection to your brand. 

Lead routing by account 

Let’s say you have a lead from a firm you’ve done business with before, and their record is already in your customer relationship management (CRM) system. It makes sense to direct this lead to the dedicated rep for that account since they have the most data to work with. This approach eliminates the headaches of choosing the right sales rep.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows with account-based routing, as it can create imbalances where some reps end up with significantly more leads than others.

Lead routing by industry

This lead routing strategy is exactly what it sounds like assigning leads interested in a specific product to sales reps with the right expertise and industry knowledge.

For instance, if one of your sales reps has a background in the gaming industry and a new lead is looking for the latest PS5 console, you’d naturally assign that lead to the gaming rep since he already speaks the language and can offer real solutions. The payoff? You’ll have a much better chance of converting that lead!

And just a friendly little tip: if certain products are in higher demand, make sure to have your sales team manager distributing leads among other reps, especially when the expert has too much on their plate.

Lead routing by source 

Source-based routing assigns leads to a sales rep based on the channel that generated them, like email campaigns or webinars. The goal is to provide personalized service, as reps understand the context behind the lead’s origin. This method enhances the relevance of interactions.

Let’s assume you’re running an email marketing campaign, a Google Ads campaign, and hosting online workshops. You have three different sources for leads, and in an ideal world, each lead should go to the rep responsible for that specific source.

This lead distribution method isn’t set in stone, but make sure that the assigned rep knows at least the source that generated the lead.

Top Strategies to Make the Most out of Lead Routing

Now it’s time for some hands-on work! 

Maximizing your lead routing efforts comes down to certain practices. So, let’s explore together our top picks for the best strategies that can help optimize your lead routing process and give your sales pipeline a serious boost.

Implement a solid lead routing process

You can’t afford to run a lead routing strategy in the dark without setting the proper lead distribution criteria. 

To select the right criteria for your lead routing strategy, you’ll need to invest time and dig deep with your data collection efforts—and we mean very deep. But it’s totally worth it! Providing your sales team with solid data sources will pay off once your lead routing is up and running.

Here are some of the questions you have to answer in order to define your lead routing criteria: 

• What type of form questions do you ask for from new leads?
• Are your sales teams focused on specific products, industries, or locations?
• What are the primary sources of the leads you generate? 
• Do you have dedicated reps for leads with specific needs and features?
• What integrations do you use with the lead routing software?  
• How do you nurture low-value leads? 

Your work doesn’t end with establishing a lead routing process. Now, it’s time for documentation. Bring all the important information together on a single platform, ideally an internal wiki. This way, your sales reps can easily access updates or training materials whenever they need them.

Balance workloads

We hate to sound like a broken record, but we’ll say this one more time: don’t let reps get overwhelmed by unbalanced lead distribution because when specific reps consistently receive more leads than others, it affects their performance, and they become more prone to mistakes. 

Now, don’t think we forgot about you! Your best bet is to implement a round-robin system where leads are assigned to sales reps in a rotating way. So if you have three reps, the first lead goes to Rep A, the second to Rep B, the third to Rep C, and then the cycle repeats.

Another option is to opt for a weighted distribution system, which is not really similar to round-robin because the reps get matched with leads based on predefined criteria, such as the rep’s expertise or performance history. 

So when one rep has a track record of converting high-value leads, they might get a slightly larger share of those leads, while less-experienced reps manage a greater number of lower-value leads.

Implement Score-Based Routing

A successful lead routing process is matching the right rep with the ideal customer profile. But there’s a lot more that goes into this. You need to evaluate leads based on different factors like deal value, company size, geography and level of engagement—and the same applies to the rep. 

We might need to elaborate on this a little more, so let’s break it down with this example: let’s say you’re a software development company, and you assign points to your lead for actions such as:

A lead who attends a webinar, requests a demo, and has the job title of CTO might end up with a score of 40, so it goes without saying that he’s showing a strong interest and must be routed to your top-performing rep for immediate follow-up.

Meanwhile, a lead who only downloaded an eBook and hasn’t taken any further action might have a score of 5, so in this case, they might be directed to a junior rep. 

So, what’s the takeaway from all of this, you ask? Score-based routing enables sales teams to segment their generated leads and personalize their outreach process to get prospects excited about completing their purchase because, after all, what’s the whole point of lead routing really about? Improving conversion rates, right?

Choose the best automation tools

You could say that you can manually route leads even when the volume gets high and we can agree but then we’d both be lying! So, what do you do as your business scales? The answer is automation tools.

For those who might not be tech whizzes, it’s important to know that all the lead routing examples we’ve talked about won’t work without proper automation and to keep your lead assignment running without any interruptions; your best bet is to invest in a powerful automation solution.

All leads are not the same, which is why you need to use multiple software to tailor your lead assignment rules to their ever-changing needs. So, to achieve that, here are some of the lead automation tools you can use: 

• Email marketing automation to send personalized messaging. 
• AI chatbots in order to offer instant answers to frequently asked queries. 
• Predictive analytics tools which use data-driven algorithms to predict which leads are most likely to convert and prioritize them for follow-up.
• CRM tools with built-in routing typically come with customizable lead routing workflows such as HubSpot or Zoho CRM. 

Final Words

Now that we’ve covered the ins and outs of lead routing, one thing is clear: adjusting your sales team’s lead routing models is a process that is too important to ignore as it directly impacts your conversion rates. 

And if you’re still spending time manually assigning leads, it might be time to invest in lead routing software. It’s not always easy to make the switch, but the juice is worth the squeeze

We hope our top strategies help with your lead routing — we’d love to hear what you implement!

Wish you good luck, faster response time and more conversions!