Lead routing is the automated process of assigning incoming leads to the correct sales representative based on predefined rules: territory, company size, industry, account ownership, or round-robin distribution. Good routing gets the right lead to the right rep in minutes. Bad routing sends enterprise accounts to the SMB team, West Coast leads to East Coast reps, and existing customer inquiries to new business SDRs.
Why It Matters
Speed-to-lead is one of the strongest predictors of conversion. Responding within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes increases contact rates by 100x (per InsideSales research). But speed means nothing if the lead goes to the wrong person. A misrouted lead sits in the wrong rep's queue, gets ignored or deprioritized, and by the time it reaches the right person, the prospect has moved on. Accurate data is the prerequisite for accurate routing.
Common Routing Criteria
- Territory: Route by geography (state, region, country). Requires accurate, standardized address or location data
- Company size: SMB leads go to one team, mid-market to another, enterprise to another. Requires employee count or revenue data
- Industry: Specialized reps handle healthcare, financial services, or technology verticals. Requires standardized industry classification
- Account ownership: If the lead's company already exists in CRM, route to the account owner. Requires company name matching
- Round-robin: Distribute evenly among reps when no specific criteria apply. Fair, but misses specialization benefits
Example
A company routes leads by company size: under 100 employees to SMB, 100-1000 to mid-market, 1000+ to enterprise. But 35% of inbound leads have no company size data. Those leads go to a "general" queue where response time averages 8 hours instead of 12 minutes. After enriching inbound leads in real-time with company size, the general queue drops to 5% and average response time falls to 15 minutes.
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