5 reasons you need to implement lead routing

Contrary to what you might believe, there is such a thing as too many leads. If your marketing efforts result in too many leads, many of them will simply get lost in the process. Whether they get assigned to the wrong sales rep or fail to follow up at the right time, all your efforts will go to waste if you fail to properly manage your leads.

What’s more, in today’s fast-paced world, your leads expect an instant response, and you can quickly lose customers to your competition if you’re not fast enough. According to HubSpot, even 83% of customers expect an instant response to marketing or sales-related questions. These numbers are even higher regarding supporting issues, with a whopping 90% of customers claiming they expect an immediate reply.

You not only need to know how but also when to approach your leads because, in sales, timing is everything.

To make the most out of each lead and protect them from getting discarded too soon, you need lead routing.

How does lead routing work?

Lead routing software helps you efficiently move leads through the entire sales cycle by automating processes such as lead prioritization and call cadence.

With a comprehensive sales engagement platform, you can create customized workflows that will allow your sales reps to always know who to call next. With auto dialing software, automated lead scoring, and lead tracking features, your sales reps won’t have to waste time on menial tasks and will be able to focus on closing deals instead.

Additionally, lead routing also helps distribute leads to the right sales rep. Some leads require more seasoned sales reps or someone who speaks a specific language. You can utilize lead routing to automatically find the best match for each lead and boost the chance of finalizing the sale. Lead routing is one of the main aspects of sales engagement that helps sales reps know the next step in the sales call process.

Benefits of lead routing

Manual lead management can be overwhelming and challenging to handle. It takes a lot of value away from your sales reps, and leads can easily slip through the cracks due to human mistakes. Automating lead routing will help you save time and resources, minimize the risk of human error, and get more accurate predictions and reports.

Let’s go over some of the main benefits of lead routing and why you should automate it.

1. It improves response time

Customers today have a short attention span and are accustomed to instant business responses. They expect to be contacted within an hour or two after making the initial request, and if you fail to do so, they will turn to your competition.

Unfortunately, many businesses simply take too long to respond to their leads. According to a study done by Harvard Business Review, 37% of businesses tend to respond to their leads within an hour. However, 24% take more than 24 hours, and even 23% of them never respond at all.

A lead routing software allows for real-time lead distribution that can help you quickly identify leads that need immediate attention and assign them to a sales rep who can respond as soon as possible to keep your leads happy.

You can set your criteria and create a rule-based traffic delivery system to easily assign leads or reroute them to the next available sales rep if there are any delays from your side to shorten the response time.

2. It provides more accurate data

Chances are, your sales reps already have a lot on their plate, so they don’t have time to manually collect and analyze lead data to make decisions.

Even if they had enough time, sales reps simply can’t manage data as well as software and are prone to making mistakes and misjudgments.

By automating lead management, you’ll be able to properly collect and analyze lead data, improve sales intelligence, spot lead routing trends, and improve forecasting accuracy.

With advanced analytics and comprehensive reporting dashboards, you’ll never be in the dark and will always know who your hottest leads are and which sales rep should handle them.

3. It helps better organize leads

Automated lead routing also helps organize leads more effectively. According to VentureBeat, even 80% of marketing automation users witness an increase in their number of leads, and 77% experience an increased number of conversions.

It is crucial to have leads presented in proper order so they can be contacted at an optimal time by the right person.

Leads can be organized in many ways, such as by location, communication channel, engagement period, behavioral patterns, etc. You can also easily detect leads who have already been contacted and avoid getting in touch with those who are not interested.

Filtering your leads will help you check lead statuses and find the most relevant ones without wasting time searching and guessing, significantly improving business productivity.

Once leads are appropriately organized, it’s much easier to coordinate lead distribution and maintain contacting schedule.

4. It helps easily distribute leads

Organizing your leads is so important because it will give you the necessary information to properly distribute them. Well-distributed leads will result in fewer dead calls and more closed deals.

5. It helps you build and maintain relationships

Building and maintaining a solid relationship with your leads often requires more than one call. Constant engagement and consistency are keys to warming up your cold prospect no matter how long the sales cycle is.

Lead routing helps connect your sales reps with leads who might need a follow-up or an additional nudge to finally decide to make a purchase. Follow-up is crucial in sales, so make sure to automate it as much as possible.

Lead routing can help you determine which leads are getting cold and automated follow-up can help to warm them up again. Finding an effective sales email template with personalization tokens can make following up even more accessible, as it will allow your sales reps to send highly personalized emails in no time.

Conclusion

Lead routing has many benefits, from helping you organize and distribute leads to improving response time and building stronger relationships with your leads. That’s why automated lead routing is essential for anyone who wants to improve lead management and boost sales.