A study reveals that calling a web lead within 5 minutes increases their likelihood to convert 9 times. But do all companies call back within this time period? There are various challenges that might stop them from doing so. They may be getting leads that do not belong in their geography or area of expertise, or they may be getting so many leads that they wouldn’t know which one to prioritize first.
How do you solve this problem? That’s where Lead distribution comes into the picture.
How does Lead Distribution work?
Ebook: 10 Effective Ways to Close Quality Leads (Download Free)
A good lead distribution system will allow a business to easily assign its leads to its sales team. This could be done either manually or automatically. Typically, a business may have a number of sources from which leads are captured. These could be through chat, website, phone, social media, events, partner websites, emails, inbound phone calls or ‘n’ number of different sources. The system should be able to capture all of these leads without any leakage.
Once the leads are captured, the lead distribution system should then check the quality of the lead. If the lead matches the prerequisites for a good lead (defined by the business), then it will be classified as high-quality and high-priority, and a high lead score will be automatically assigned to it. Here’s an example:
These leads will then have to be automatically distributed to the sales or tele-calling team. This could be based on criteria like geography, product, industry or level of expertise.
Lead Distribution Features:
While purchasing a lead distribution system for your business, don’t forget to look out for these features in your tool.
1. Automatic process:
When a lead enters the system, the manager should not have to look at the lead, check its quality, and then figure out who it should be assigned to. Not only is this process very long, it’s impractical, especially when there are thousands of leads pouring in a day. To eliminate this, your tool should be able to automatically assign leads based on pre-defined criteria.
For example, take an insurance company that sells health and life insurance in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. So, when a lead from Mumbai signs up for health insurance, then the system should automatically assign it to the person responsible for it in Mumbai.
2. Availability-based distribution:
But sometimes, the person the lead is assigned to, may not be in the office or he may have gone on vacation. Which means, that the lead may not be followed up on immediately, and the 5-minute target may not be met. That is why the system should be able to check whether the user is available or not. This way only people who are available and able to take the call immediately will be assigned new leads.
[Also read: What is Lead Routing & How it Reduces Response Time?]
3. Quality-based distribution:
But what if a lead, that’s is going to bring in a lot of business is assigned to the rookie in the office? This is not an ideal situation as the person will not be able to handle the client as well as, say a person with 5 years of experience.
This is why the tool should be able to check the quality of the lead and assign it to the right salesperson. Not just the lead, but the quality of the salesperson should also be taken into account while distributing leads.
4. Zip-based distributions:
This is probably the most common distribution criteria. You may have sales team located around the country or even around the globe. A lead from India being assigned to someone from the US sales team would simply be a waste of time and resources. Hence, your lead distribution system should allow for geography-based distribution as well.
5. Instant notifications:
If the lead gets assigned then the lead should know about it. Which is why the tool should send notifications as soon as a new lead is assigned to them. They will then not miss out on the new lead and follow-up them as soon as possible. This is especially important for enterprise business with a large lead inflow.
6. Complete lead tracking:
But a lead’s journey doesn’t end with just assignment. You need to look at how the lead moves along the sales funnel. You should have access to every information on the lead right from where the lead entered the system, the pages they view on your website, the communication he has with your sales team and the lead stage he is in. This will help the lead be prepared for their first call.
7. Detailed reports:
These reports are more useful to the managers as this allows them to get an idea of how their team is handling the leads assigned to them. They can know how quickly the follow up has happened, how many of the follow ups have been closed and how much revenue each salesperson has brought in.
8. Completely customizable:
If the lead distribution comes with pre-built templates, then that might not be good news. For some businesses, like an automobile seller, geographical distribution is important. But for an insurance business, getting in touch with the customer is more important. So, availability based distribution will be an essential feature. Which is why your distribution software should be customizable to suit your business’ needs.
Benefits of a lead distribution system:
- Reduced turn around time: Because of instant distribution, the time it takes for the salesperson to make the first call is reduced. This means instant responses and increased prospect satisfaction
- Increased transparency: Since the entire process is automated, there will be no confusion in terms of the leads assigned. There will be a clear view of who the lead owner is and how many leads were assigned to him.
- Better lead quality: Only qualified leads are distributed to the leads. Which means that there is no necessity for the salesperson to spend time nurturing the lead until they are sales-ready.
- More accurate targeting: Leads that belong to a particular bucket are assigned to the respective salesperson. As they would have some amount of expertise with that lead’s requirements, it becomes easier to sell to him.
- Increased sales efficiency: As the process becomes simpler and straightforward, this directly affects how efficient the salespeople are in terms of closing the deals.
- Accurate revenue attribution: There is now no room for confusion as to whose lead brought in the most revenue. Since everything is mapped together, this makes for precise attribution.
- No room for manual errors: When manual distribution happens, chances of missing out on leads or assigning the same leads to multiple people is possible. This can be eliminated with a lead distribution software.
So, does your company have a distribution system in place? Or do you still manually assign leads to your team? If you do, then you should consider getting one to make your and your team’s lives much simpler. Take a look at LeadSquared which combines the features of a CRM and a lead distribution system to make for an awesome sales execution platform.
