Lead Distribution Info

The Benefits You Can Enjoy from Sales Force Automation

2009-03-27T17:27:00.001-07:00

With the advent of technology such as the Internet, lead generation has never been more active. Internet marketing is a very effective tool to use for advertising. Because of this, marketers practically deal with a large amount of leads every day. That can be very difficult for the salesperson and the marketer and may even result in their inefficiency and disorganization.

That is where sales force automation (SFA) comes in. SFA is simply introducing an automated system that your sales force, comprising of sales managers, sales agents, and marketers--can use.

Areas that SFA Covers

Sales force automation covers three important areas in your sales department. These areas are the following:

Lead management. Without an automated solution, lead management can be very inefficient and cluttered. However, with sales force automation, you can enjoy several benefits like efficiency and accuracy. For example, an automated lead management system can make sure that no two marketers or salespersons are handling the same leads. You can also make sure that the action being taken on a certain lead is appropriate for the level of interest that he or she holds for the product or service offered to him or her.

Opportunity management. An SFA’s opportunity management feature improves greatly the productivity of your sales teams. For example, it allows them to come up with a very efficient process of handling sales leads. They are also able to pool together their skills to identify potential weak spots as well as exploit strong points in the sales process.

An SFA also allows sales managers to streamline the operations of their salespeople, as well as accurately measure their progress by real-time tracking.

Account management. In order to keep track of the movement of your current customers as well as organize their information, a sales department needs to maintain an account management system. While legacy account management systems have done a good job in the past, the amount of information generated by the Internet is simply too much for these systems to handle.

By introducing sales force automation, you can accurately track and manage your customer’s accounts. You can easily access information that will allow you to team up with the salespeople based on how they can take very good care of your customers. These include pieces of information like interest in a product and previous purchases, for example. These are also data that can help you gauge whether or not this particular customer will want to buy a similar or related product in the future.

Territory management. Territory management is simply defining who gets which lead to handle. With the territory management features of an automated sales force program, the flow of information can easily be manipulated in order to cope with any changes that may occur in your company. For example, department A was previously in charge of handling leads with very high lead scores.

At some point, the company has decided to reorganize departments, and department A is now in charge of new and raw, unprocessed leads. With an automated system, the change can easily be adapted to with a few clicks of the mouse to facilitate reassignment.

Contract management. Another important part in sales management is contract management. With a contract management solution in place, you can easily manipulate contracts. For example, it is easy to find which contracts are about to expire and would need renewal. This way, you can right away inform the contract holder. Contract management features of an automated sales force will also let you quickly access important information on an account through electronic databases.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Some More Ideas on How to Do Lead Routing

2009-03-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

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Lead routing or lead assignment is a lead management process that should not be taken for granted. Without it, your leads can be worked on by salespeople who don’t have the capacity to transform them into customers. You may also end up giving too much leads to work on to a few number of people while the rest have nothing better to do.

But lead assignment is very complex. There are so many ways on how you do it. To give you an idea where to start, you can take a look at the list below:

Using Geographical Location Proximity

Are you a business with several branches found all over the state, country, or even the world? One of the most effective means to assign your leads is through the most ideal geographical location. For example, if you have an office located in San Francisco, California, and you have leads who came from that area, you can assign these to your salespeople in the satellite office.

There are several advantages of doing this one. Sometimes geography can affected the purchasing decision of your prospects. You can attribute it to their location or to the culture that they are familiar with. Your sales people there would have a very good idea of the buying habits of these leads, so they basically know the best things to offer to them and how they will be able to do it. Second, they have more options on how to track leads. They can call them—since they don’t have to pay for long-distance calls—e-mail or even personally visit these prospects at their homes or offices, just in case no other communication method is available. Moreover, when they want to set up trade shows or launches, they can conveniently invite these leads as both the prospects and the company don’t have to pay for exorbitant fares.

Using At-risk Criteria

What are considered as at-risk leads? These are actually the prospects who need your services right away. They can no longer wait for few more days or even hours before they can get the offers that they need. The problem with this in relation to lead routing is that it becomes very hard for you to determine which among your prospects are already at the at-risk state. Usually, by the time that you can recognize their presence, they are no longer interested or may have shifted their attention to another company.

Thus, it’s very important for your salespeople to update the lead distribution software as often as possible. After all, they will be highly dependent on real-time data. Information such as pending deals should be very obvious, so they will instantly be worked on by the salesperson who is responsible for such lead.

Coming Up with Your Own Lead Routing Rules

You may have noticed that I have already given you the different ways on how you can distribute your leads. You can follow them, or you can set up your own. What is important is that you have very clear rules on how you can route your leads to the right salespeople. An example could be this:

New salespersons should not work on fresh leads. New leads offer higher conversion rate for you since they have the most recent need of your product or service. They do not only have the interest but also the sense of urgency. You cannot allow new salespeople to handle them since they are still not accustomed to closing important deals. Rather, you can let them work on historical leads, or those that have not been worked on for 30 days or more.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

The Importance of Maintaining a Database in Lead Management

2009-02-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

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There are so few people who actually appreciate the use of a database in relation to their lead management tasks. In fact, some marketers do not maintain or use their databases at all since they are so engrossed in pursuing new leads or are spending too much time building leads that they forget to maintain or organize a database.

An electronic database is actually very useful for the lead management process. Here are just some of the reasons why marketers should purchase and maintain a database in relation to lead management.

A Database Allows You to Access Old Leads

Some marketers have the mistaken concept that, to have a great-running business, they have to build a lot of leads. That is why great emphasis is placed on lead generation rather than lead nurturing.

The truth is that no lead should be ignored during the process—in fact, at any stage of lead management. Most marketers would naturally reject leads and leave them rotting on the database when they give an unfavorable response to mails with offers or when they totally ignore it. They then turn their focus to looking for new leads without giving the old ones a second thought.

Proper lead nurturing would entail follow-ups in the hope of closing a sale. This would include new and old leads. To do that, someone would need to be able to access the information from old leads. The only way to be able to do that is to maintain a database, where you can access and organize information on the old leads like contact information and others.

It Is Easy to Assign Leads to the Right Persons

The database contains not only names and contact information of a lead. It also has fields like lead priority, lead score, and many others. Using the information like lead priority, marketers can discern which of the many leads they have need the most urgent action from their part. They then can assign them to the best salespersons there are to maximize the chances of closing a deal with the prospective clients.

Lead score, on the other hand, gives a hint as to how interested a lead is about the products that you are offering because a score is assigned for every action the client has done in relation to the offer. The higher the lead score, the greater the interest the lead has for a product. Like lead priority, marketers can tell using lead score if the lead requires urgent and decisive action to close a sale.

Marketers Can Easily Evaluate Their Marketing Performance

Aside from using the database to contact leads and peddle their products, marketers can use the database as a guide as to how well they are doing with their marketing efforts. For example, the size of the database is already indicative of how effective their marketing strategies have been. It is even possible to check which advertising campaigns have had success with the market by simply checking the field that shows the source of the lead.

There are many ways that one can use the database to evaluate their performances. Here are some examples:

Using the number of new leads produced in a period, one can already make a performance report for that period. By querying for leads produced within a set period, you can use the number of fields returned for a statistic.

The information of the database can also be used to find out which of your products have been able to arouse interest from your target. You can simply check out how many leads have signed up for that offer.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Automatic versus Manual Lead Distribution

2009-02-13T10:27:00.000-08:00

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Lead distribution, which is a step in the entire lead nurturing process, is a process all on its own. Well, each step is a detailed procedure that needs to be done. In this case, lead distribution is necessary in order to make sure each lead is handled by somebody that is best qualified to do something with it like selling products or services. Here’s how lead distribution by a lead tracking company is done.

The Leads Are Grouped into Categories

The first order of business for an outsourced lead handling company is to group incoming leads. The reason for this is that an outsourced lead handling firm does lead handling for several companies. If they don’t group these leads into categories, then they’ll end up sending leads to the wrong companies. Even if they manage to send the right leads to the right companies, they might end up sending non-qualified leads.

The categories are usually the niches that the lead handling company is working on. If they get a lead from a website that is intended for promoting home improvement services, then they file that under “home improvement.” The list goes on and on. Under each category, one might also want to further segregate the leads by their scores, which makes it easy for the company to know which leads needs more “pushing” or more efforts to increase their interests in the product.

Looking into the Dealer-Company Relationship

The tricky part of referring leads to companies is the firms’ relationship to the lead handling company. For example, some lead companies are governed by contracts with a dealer that compels them to submit to them the leads that are located on the area in which the dealer is located. Some companies may be free to submit leads to whatever dealer is near to the potential customer. Afterward, the company would have to consider several other factors. These include the manner of priority in which they deliver which lead to which dealer, and many others.

Should the Process be Automated or Still Left Manually?

And now, there arises the question on whether or not the lead handling or distribution process should be automated. We shall answer the question by looking again at the first two processes and how a company can benefit from automating the procedure.

First, we could see how daunting and how time-consuming it is for the company to segregate the leads. Even if you have a lot of people handling the segregation for you, you can still actually save time and improve the efficiency of your business if you introduce the automation of your lead distribution function. Special software can handle the job better than a simple Excel sheet; the program has the advantage of using a database, which makes the second process better. Although entering the information into the database can be similar to entering the same information into a spreadsheet, the only difference lies on how it affects the ease or difficulty of the next process.

With the advantage presented to you by the software’s database, it is now easier, quicker, and more efficient to distribute the leads using the factors keyed in to the data fields for each lead. For example, the program can just pull out the leads that are located in, say, Iowa and send them out to the dealers that are located in the same area. If you are still using a spreadsheet to do that, you’d have to manually send out the leads to the qualified distributors to receive them. That can take a lot of time and effort; a program clearly increases your efficiency.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Why You May Think of Outsourcing Handling of Leads

2009-01-29T21:48:00.000-08:00

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Outsourcing is a common practice among companies nowadays. Outsourcing is defined as the contract between two companies to allocate part of a core function to the second company on behalf of the first firm. Before you get on the outsourcing bandwagon, think first if outsourcing your lead handling functions can be beneficial and not detrimental to the company’s goals and visions.

Advantages of Outsourcing

Outsourcing, in the context of lead handling, has a variety of advantages. These advantages include the following:

It is less costly to outsource certain company functions to a third party. This is very true. When you outsource your lead handling functions to a third party, the only thing you need to worry about is the payment. You won’t even have to spend anything extra on payroll and equipment; the third-party company handles that for itself.

Another cost-saving feature in outsourcing lead handling is that you won’t have to train your people anymore. All you have to do is enter a contract with the third party, regularly pay the agreed fee, and they take care of the rest.

You have guaranteed expertise. The companies that handle lead handling for you are experts in the field. By outsourcing your lead handling activities, you can make sure that your company is in good hands. In fact, they could do a better job than you probably can.

You have more time for other business functions. Handling lead nurturing in-house can be good; however, it can be detrimental to the efficiency of your operation when you have to manage such a complex task. Your sales people may incur backlogs, which can be difficult to manage. Also, most of the times, these backlogs are totally ignored and not followed up on. This translates to a loss of a potentially qualified lead and potential customer.

Outsourcing greatly decreases the work load you have to encounter. You can have more time to devote to building sales since you won’t have to spend time sifting through lead information and filtering out the noise from the usable information. In addition, sales handling companies can do the research necessary for you to generate qualified leads--they are efficient. All these can be obtained for a fixed fee agreed upon on the contract.

Outsourcing gives a more professional approach to your marketing department. Lead handling services typically include 24-hour “live chat” service as well in-phone inquiries. The image of the person or company handling these services is judged greatly by how he handles inquiries. Because they are experts in the field, third parties that handle lead handling functions are able to take a more formal and professional approach to lead nurturing. This can make your company appear more impressive and reliable in the eyes of prospective customers, which is a plus point in converting leads into customers.

You have access to state-of-the-art lead distribution and data reporting solutions. As part of their expertise and specialization in the field, service companies that handle lead handling services use efficient and advantageous sales lead distribution software that makes it easy to exchange qualified leads between the service company and your salespeople. This data, when forwarded, makes it easy for you to measure the return of investment and other data necessary for making a report.

People who don’t understand the requirements of outsourcing can probably conclude that outsourcing is contradictory to a company’s goals. This is probably because you are letting a third party handle tasks that pertain to your own operation. However, if you look closely at it, outsourcing is simply delegating a part of your own tasks to someone else. It is still your company that benefits in outsourcing in the long run.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

More Ways on How to Distribute Your Leads

2009-01-16T08:29:00.000-08:00

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If you can recall, we already talked about the different methods of distributing leads. We tackled about FIFO, LIFO, round robin, and a lot more. We also learned that even if there is really no definite and right lead distribution system, it doesn’t really mean that all of them are ideal. Some are not. For example, the round-robin approach, though the simplest, may not be appropriate to use for a number of reasons. First the leads may end up with the wrong sales agents, those who don’t know how to deal with them or sell your product lines to them. Second, it may establish unfairness in the sales team. Those who are fast in making deals will be the ones who get to do the job more than those who are slow.

Right now, you will learn more techniques. Again, keep in mind that you don’t really have to follow them to a T. I am giving these to you to provide you with more options. You do have the freedom to tweak them to suit the needs of your company.

Warm-up Telemarketing

This is one of the most popular methods these days. The concept is also simple. Once a lead places a call, a sales specialist will pick up the call and pre-qualify the leads. If the prospect is good, then the phone will be transferred automatically to the sales agent. The transfer is warm, which means that you don’t put the customer on hold or compel him to put down the phone. Moreover, these agents are trained to discuss about specific product lines. Thus, they can talk about the product extensively to the prospective customers.

There are a number of advantages of doing this. First, it can boost the morale of your sales agents since most of the leads that go through them are very easy to convert. They may already have high interest level on the product. You can also expect the conversion rate to increase. The leads, on the other hand, will feel confident over the company, as they can expect immediate response from your sales team.

But there are also downsides. As your leads continue to grow, this process may not longer prove to be inefficient for the simple reason that it’s time-consuming. There are also some leads who tend to provide wrong or incomplete information because they are not really expecting for sales agents to immediately talk to them.

Going through the Pipeline

Another method of lead distribution means the use of a sales pipeline. What is this? Sometimes called a funnel, it simply traces the movements of your leads until they become regular customers. Usually, they start out as prospects, then qualified leads. Depending on the effectiveness of the lead scoring or filtering techniques used, these qualified leads can become sales-ready ones. By then, there is almost 100 percent chance that they will purchase a product from your company once an offer is being placed.

How does the process go? Everything begins with a lead. Using their contact information—which include their phone numbers and e-mail addresses, you then qualify them. There are a lot of criteria that you can use, but usually, it’s about the capacity of the lead to buy the product you’re selling as well as his interest on it. If you are selling leather bags, for example, you may want to deal with leads who have their own businesses since they prefer luggage that can store as many documents as possible and are strong enough to last for a long time. The qualified leads will then be dealt with by the sales agents. Now replies can vary. They may say no or yes. Depending on how well you train your sales agents, those who say yes will then advance to the next level and would commonly become your new customers.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Grave Mistakes You Do with Your Lead Distribution

2009-01-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

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Unless you are willing to work on your leads alone—which is very impossible, you will have to assign your leads to your sales agents. They are the best people to work on them. They already have the negotiation skills. Besides, they are trained to do the job.

Sad to say, most of the flaws in lead management happen in lead distribution. When you get at this point, that’s when you start to mess up. There are actually plenty of reasons for the mistakes. Knowing them, though, will allow you to control their occurrence and even eliminate them:

1. You stick with wrong methods of lead distribution.

Today there is a variety of ways on how to distribute leads. Some consider the FIFO method. This means that sales agents will have to work on the older or the first leads in the database. Others would go with the round-robin approach because it’s simple. The leads will just have to be worked on by the agent who doesn’t have any. All these approaches may work with other companies but most definitely not with a lot. The problem is that they don’t put any value on the quality of your leads. Depending on the campaign that you have or the products you’re trying to sell, not all the prospects will qualify. You may just end up calling those who really don’t have interest over your offer.

2. You have the wrong lead distribution software.

If you just search through the World Wide Web, you will discover that there are countless lead routing programs that you can use. But not all of them will be ideal for your business. You have to consider what you need, the kind of lead distribution system you want to implement, and how it’s easy for you to customize your lead assignment program. You may also want to utilize a web-based lead distribution application. This way, you will be able to work on those leads anytime and anywhere you want to. You can also set up a centralized system to make sure that no lead will be assigned to different sales agents.

3. You failed to check your database.

You may have found the right lead distribution software, but if there’s something wrong with your database, then you’re still bound for mistakes. You may have utilized crude databases such as a spreadsheet or you failed to implement a fool-proof way of entering lead information. Thus, a lead may be listed more than once. The list will then be carried over into your lead assignment program.

4. The leads are assigned to the wrong person.

This can be one of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever do when it comes to lead assignment. Having the best sales agents doesn’t really guarantee that they are also the most ideal people for the leads that you have. It will only get worse when these leads are assigned randomly. Your sales team may only end up providing wrong or misleading information to your potential clients. Some of them will not have an idea on what to do with the leads and how to effectively convert them to your loyal customers.

5. No one updates the lead distribution software.

Once a sales agent already makes a call on the leads assigned to him, he needs to update the application. This way, the sales supervisor can determine which of the prospects are already dealt with and which ones aren’t. It will also inform him which of the agents may be finding a hard time with sales leads. However, not all will be diligent enough in doing so. Thus, a lead who may have expressed disinterest may be contacted by another of your sales agent.

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Where and Who Do You Distribute the Leads?

2008-12-18T21:43:00.000-08:00

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So many tried it, but a lot of them failed. This is because they may have become too reliant to technologies, allowing these man-made applications to work things for them rather than simply seeing them as tools. For example, though lead managers have become very important part in businesses, since they permit you to manage your leads more effectively, they are not the “be all end all.” The success of the business still relies on its human resources: you and your sales agents.

So how you can make sure that you can convert as many leads as possible? You can take note of these effective ways:

1. Come up with a good lead processing plan. You have to keep in mind that it’s never enough that you have leads, all arranged neatly in a database. Unless you give each one of them a call and set an appointment, they are all worthless. If you bought them from a lead generation company, then they become expenses rather than investments. It’s therefore essential that you and your team can devise a workable lead management plan. What are the best ways to nurture them? Should you implement drip marketing? How do you exactly keep track on your leads, and how should lead prioritization go? All these questions—and even more—must be answered by the plan.

Because there are a lot of uncontrolled situations that you’re going to meet along the way, there’s the possibility that you can’t follow everything in your plan. Nevertheless, the most important thing is that you have a guide that can help you get on track just in case you get lost.

2. Communicate immediately. Don’t wait for the next day or even few hours before you make that important phone call. In case you don’t know, it’s very easy for leads to change their minds, especially if you don’t pay attention to them. What you need to do is to just get an appointment with them so you can present your products and services. This would not take a long time, around 3 to 5 minutes the most.

3. Ensure that the leads will have a pleasurable experience with you. It’s all a matter of providing the best impression to your leads, even for just a short time. For one, you can increase your response time from 10 to 15 minutes for follow-up leads. You may also offer some freebies or other perks to your leads if they agree to an appointment with you. You may also offer discounts for every product that they are going to buy at a certain period of time.

4. Score your leads. Not all leads are similar. Some of them may be eager to buy your products or avail of your services. There may be also others who are just as interested in your business but would likely postpone the purchase in the next few days or months. Others will never be interested at all, and they may have been added to your database because of faulty opt-in list. With scoring your leads, you can easily determine which of these leads will be given priority. Of course, you would go for the first one, knowing that it will not take you a long time to persuade them to make a purchase from you.

You are the master of your own business. Thus, the power to make it successful or complete failure rests upon you. With the aid of dependable lead management software and excellent sales training of your staff, it will not be completely impossible. With this, you can direct your enterprise to the right direction.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Lead Management Software: An Efficient Lead Distribution Tool

2008-12-04T08:12:00.000-08:00

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We all understand that lead distribution is a process in lead management that ensures that all leads are acted upon after leads are tracked and rated according to criteria set by the marketing firm. In this step, all leads are assigned to the agents that hold the responsibility of following up to these prospects.

Because of that, we also understand that it is vital that the lead distribution process is streamlined as much as possible. A smooth lead distribution process ensures efficient assignment with as less time spent as possible in sorting through the leads and giving someone in charge of a specific lead group. More time can then be spent taking the necessary actions to close a sale with these prospects.

The Lead Management Software

It is undeniable that only an artificial intelligence has the processing power to handle such complex tasks with ease. Hence, one needs a computer and lead management software to handle these tasks in order to make the process smooth and fast. If lead management is automated, all the marketers need to do is just follow up and convince prospective customers to join the many existing customers that the company has.

Specifically, lead management software handles these tasks on behalf of its human counterparts:

• Lead tracking
Lead management software makes it possible to track a huge number of leads automatically. Marketers no longer have to keep track of individual mails and encode them on an electronic spreadsheet file. All information is handled electronically and entered into a database, where they are easily updated. New leads can also be added by just a few clicks of the mouse.

• Lead scoring
Lead management software also automatically scores a lead each time he makes a response to marketing emails. The software takes note of the status of the email and assigns a relevant score will then be based later on for lead distribution.

• Lead distribution
The software allows for quick and easy distribution by just letting marketers enter a certain criteria, and it automatically queries the database for all leads that satisfies the criteria specified by the user. Lists can then be generated and distributed to the appropriate sales agents for immediate action.

• Lead nurturing
With lead management software, marketers no longer have to send emails manually to a large group of prospective clients. Mailing lists can just be generated according to lead group, and these lists can be easily exported as recipients of any specific marketing email the company chooses to send.

Advantages of Using a Lead Management Software

As you could, lead distribution via lead management programs has several merits to your company. These merits include:

• Everything is easily categorized with small margins of allowable errors. The software can quickly query and look up data for existing leads to determine its status and lead score.

• Lead accountability is also improved. Marketers can easily check how much they’d be spending per lead with the program’s quick calculation feature.

• Programs and offerings that the lead qualifies for are easily determined by just using the lead score or priority as an index for quick searching.

• Periodic assessments of existing leads will no longer be done manually. Marketers can just use the system to check on which lead remains active, and which ones are dead and should be deleted from the system.

• Reports are easily generated into hard copies when the need arises for these documents. There is also no doubt about the accuracy and reliability of the reports since it is system-generated with little to no human intervention involved in the process.

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Other Basic Lead Distribution Techniques Being Used

2008-11-19T23:35:00.000-08:00

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There are a number of other lead distribution techniques you can use when you want to get the most out of the leads you get. Some of the more popular lead distribution and lead assignment techniques that are commonly used by a lot of companies include the FIFO/LILO, round robin and handing out leads to specialists of certain products that the company has. There is also the random handing of leads to agents that a lot of companies know is rather ineffective when it comes to handling leads properly but is still the easiest way to distribute leads. There are other ways for you to distribute or assign leads and here are some of the other lead distribution strategies that you may consider using.

Hunt Group

This kind of a lead distribution strategy is similar to the round robin style, only this kind of a technique focuses more on what certain agents in your company can do and how much each one can handle. This kind of a lead distribution technique is commonly used in customer service oriented businesses and in call centers where some agents are faster and better at handling more calls than others due to their quick thinking and understanding of what needs to be done.

This kind of a lead handling and distribution strategy is also a way to motivate people to try and work better since they will be given the chance to handle more clients or leads which can then lead to more chances of closing a sale and getting a commission. Of course, this kind of a lead distribution strategy has its drawbacks like inter-office jealousies and an unbalanced workload but it can produce positive results with the right incentives and motivation. Your agents will find that handling leads fast and efficiently can create a favorable incentive package for them which will then make them try harder to convert a lead into a sale. The more leads that they handle properly with their efficiency, the more they can earn.

Grab Bag

This kind of a lead distribution tactic is essentially not as effective as its other counterparts but is still being used by some companies. You can call this kind of a lead assignment and distribution strategy somewhat counterproductive since you are basically telling your agents that your leads, qualified or not, are theirs for the picking from the “bag”and that they can just go ahead and handle these leads as they see fit. This kind of undermines the qualities of the leads and actually gives your agents the idea that whether or not the lead is important, you don't really care that it turns a sale. This kind of a strategy is sadly still in use to this day and is not really a pretty productive way to get your sales agents and lead handlers motivated to try and do their best.

Source Specialist

Somewhat similar to the lead distribution technique called the product specialist, the source specialist focuses on a certain source or kind of source for their lead assignments. An example of this is when an agent is told to handle only leads that come specifically from one site alone. Since the type of people who visit this one site have a particular thing in common and may, in fact, be handled a specific way due to that common denominator, the person who handles the leads from this source develops a certain standard operating procedure that he or she finds is extremely effective when handling the people from this one source. While this kind of a strategy may take some time to prove effective, it does create a specialization that produces more positive results over time than the random assignment of leads from different sources to certain agents.

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Why Use Lead Distribution Instead of Just Random Lead Assigning?

2008-10-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

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Some people may ask why lead distribution and lead routing is important when it comes to handling leads. This question often pops up when some agents get to handle the more lucrative leads than those in their team or company. The answer to this is simple: it is done to generate sure sales for the company. Leads are pretty tough to come by and qualified leads even tougher. If you waste a lead by simply handing it to a random agent in your team, you stand a chance of losing such a lead, and what a waste that would be if the lead were a qualified one.

You can compare this strategy of lead assignment to a real store where you see a customer walking in. When you see or sense that the customer is a sure buyer who is simply indecisive as to what they want to purchase, you do not send your most inexperienced sales clerk over to assist them. You would probably have one of your best sales clerks or even the store manager to assist them. This is usually true when the buyer is a returnee who is known to be a big spender. These kinds of customers usually want their usual quality service, and they often want the same clerk that handled their purchases before to handle them again.

The same strategy applies to taking care of leads. With a lead distribution system that allows a company to hand over leads and return customers to those agents that know how to take care of them, a company rests assured that a sale or a positive result is in the offing. While this may seem unfair to some new sales agents who want to be able to convert a lead into a sale or who want to better themselves, this kind of a movement, when it comes to lead assignment, is a tried and tested technique that keeps the company in the blue and keeps people employed.

Creating More Qualified Agents with Lead Distribution and Assignment Strategies

How a company can create more agents who can face up to the challenge of such a demand from customers is easy. One of the ways that can be done with the use of lead distribution or lead assignment to top agents is to pair these agents with the newer, less experienced sales agents. These new agents can “shadow” these top agents and learn the tricks of the trade from them. Once they have learned enough to assure that they have a fighting chance to turn a qualified lead into a sale, then lead routing can send a few of these types of leads over to them to test their mettle, so to speak. These new agents will get to see the proper way of handling leads and how to convert them from those who have been doing it for a longer period of time and have perfected a certain strategy to close a sale.

This kind of a strategy of pairing up agents, a neophyte and a veteran, can work well in a company where commissions are not individually earned but rather distributed evenly among colleagues. It can also work in an environment where commissions are earned according to teams or pairs achieving certain sales quotas and such. With a pairing off of a new agent and an older, more learned one, the company ensures that they have a steady stream of knowledgeable agents taking care of their customers and the number of learned agents will increase with the “shadow” technique. Once these “shadows” know the ropes and can handle customers as well as their senior counterparts, the company ends up with a very strong workforce that is now capable of getting more prospects to convert into revenues for them.

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Introducing the Other Methods of Lead Distribution

2008-10-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

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Perhaps you’ve heard of round robin and FIFO/LILO. You may have also practiced giving your leads to the best producers or agents of your sales department. However, there are also other methods of lead distribution that you have to know. This doesn’t mean that they are the most effective. The key here is to be able to find one that will allow you to maximize your time, effort, and money you spend on every lead while generate the highest possible return on your investment.

Giving Same-source Leads to Specific Agents

Normally, sales agents are trained to handle any kind of lead. This means that he is well-experienced in dealing with online leads as well as those that have been derived from trade shows, exhibits, and other forms of marketing ploys by the company. However, this special type of sales lead distribution means you’re only giving a set of leads that may come from only one source. For example, sales agent A may be working with sales leads that were gathered from the mailing list, while sales agent B have to track and work with leads that have come from product testing.

This is efficient since your sales agents will be able to specialize working with leads from one source. The only problem is that it may take a while before he will get used to working with leads that come from other sources. It may also not prove to be fair, as other sources may generate more number of leads than the other. For instance, sales agent A will be working with twice the number of leads than that of sales agent B, because the online marketing promotion is working more effectively.

Random Choosing of Your Sales Agent

The concept may confuse you with the FIFO method, but it’s actually totally different. The FIFO method means that the first lead should be the first one to be dealt with by any sales agent who is not at the moment handling anything. With the random choosing, however, the sales leads become up for grabs. You just need to wait for someone who is willing to take on such lead and make sure that he’s going to be able to close a sale in the end.

When you know that your sales agents are the most assertive and aggressive people that you’ve ever met, this method will surely work. They don’t make any standards—they just do their work. However, there are also sales agents that are actually very choosy. They love to handle those that appear to be much easier to convince than the others. If your agents fall on the latter, then you’re in deep trouble.

Sales Leads to Product Experts

There are some sales agents that are trained to handle a specific product or account. For example, if you’re the owner of Apple, you may have those that are well-versed in mobile phones, while others in other electronics like iPods. Because the information they contain are more concentrated, you can expect them to be able to communicate well with your target leads. They can easily discuss the benefits and features of the products, and usually, they know how to position the brand that it becomes easy for them to convert sales leads to customers.

The dilemma starts, though, if wrong sales leads fall into their hands. The leads may be passed on from one sales agent to another, and worse, the amount of time that the sales agent may have spent on a misplaced sales lead will never be get back.

You can use a lead routing software to help you out in distributing your sales leads. But be ready of the fact that it may actually be a trial and error at first. Nevertheless, along the way, you’re going to learn some essential things, which will help you determine the most ideal lead assignment scheme for your business.

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Managing Lead Distribution

2008-09-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

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A simple lead is virtually anyone who became interested in what you were offering. With the use of a specialized software, this lead is collated along with other leads for further processing and analysis. A grading system is automatically applied to the leads after they filled up some forms or were called by customer support. Correct lead assignment will give you good customers who will be willing to pay for your goods in return to your great service.

Distribution

Statistics have shown that a lot of people bought answering machines so that they can accept messages while they were not around and to screen off frequent but unwanted calls from a telemarketer. This is actually what happens when a bad lead distribution system is used. You resort to extreme measures that will only drive away customers.

You will be amazed how an effective lead distribution system increases your potential and real sales. The customer was approached by your salesman and had agreed to try your products. Or, possibly, a prospective customer read your ad while surfing the Internet and thought that your products look interesting. Your system picks these leads and directs this to your customer service who will evaluate the leads with the help of your software. Your representative will then follow up on the customer’s interest on your product. Always, when the merchant is too eager to sell, he calls up the customer and bugs the latter to buy the product; definitely, this will have a very negative effect on your customer. This is not what would happen if you had a good lead distribution process.

With proper lead distribution procedure, the business, especially the sales agents, can accomplish the following:

1. Eliminate the possibility of having stale leads. This means that there will be no leads that will remain not called by the sales agents in the span of a week or more. Otherwise, you will not be able to build on the curiosity of your customers, particularly those who are highly interested, and you would lose them.

2. Set predetermined criteria for each. Each leads will be classified using the criteria or standards set by the company. Those that match closely will be the first ones to be called. Normally, these are the leads that are very easy to convince.

Routing

After you have identified your customer’s needs and followed up the leads, lead assignment will take you to the next very important level in your business process: lead routing. This will ensure that the customer will get his product on time. How so? If you have an effective lead routing system, you will automatically learn where your prospective customer is located. Identifying from which state he is located can help you direct his calls to the nearest support team available. The team will be able to handle his queries fast. This is because the lead routing process will allow you to set where to direct customers’ replies or orders to the correct key personnel.

Do you have a branch near your customer’s location? Lead assignment to that branch will add to their sales while making sure that what your client was supposed to buy can be delivered at the soonest time possible.

Also, with correct lead routing, you will know where in your process flow your customer and his product order belongs. This ensures that a product scheduled for sending to UK will not be sent to the United States; some of their states/cities might possibly have the same names. You can also track your lead and, later, his items. That way, when he calls, which he possibly do, you can tell him where exactly the sold item is at. Had it been dropped off for courier pick-up, or was it an invalid buy? Proper routing will let you know the details.

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Assigning and Distributing Leads: The Importance of Lead Distribution and Lead Routing

2008-09-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

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When you talk about marketing strategies that work, generating leads is one of them. While this is indeed a tried-and-tested strategy for a lot of companies who wish to generate favorable results when it comes to marketing and generating revenue, getting the right leads to the right people at the right time can be somewhat tricky. Lead distribution can be a bit choppy if you do not know who to get the leads to and who should handle the follow up of such a lead. There are a few ways of going about lead routing or handing out leads to the right sales agents who will then use these leads to the advantage of the company or the client.

One of the most used lead routing techniques is the round-robin system. While this is the simplest of all lead assignment strategies, it is not the most effective by far. The round-robin system basically gets the generated lead to any of the available sales agents as soon as the lead gets in. This means that you may not be getting the lead to the most effective agent you have and thereby could waste the lead that was generated. This can also be the fastest way to get leads attended to but may not be the most sales effective way for you to go about it. The upside of using the round-robin strategy when distributing leads to your people is the potential of finding out who your most effective people are.

Another way you can do lead distribution is by using the FIFO and LILO system. First in, First out and Last in, Last out system of lead distribution is a process where you take care of the leads that came in first and have them handled first before you handle the next ones. This is a pretty cut-and-dried way of handling leads, and while there may be pitfalls in this technique at times, where you cannot distribute your leads efficiently and you may have to trim off the aging leads that your team cannot handle in the quickest possible time, this is still considered a very effective lead for a lot of companies.

Lead assignment techniques that are also being used by a lot of businesses also include giving out the bulk of the leads to your top producers or to your best agents. This is a pretty good technique to use when you are thinking in terms of revenue alone, but the downside of such a marketing strategy is the stagnation of some of your sales agents. This may become a sore point for your company and may be detrimental to the company’s welfare in the long run. The idea of handing out the most leads to top agents or the top performers of your team can lead to creating dead weight, whereby the agents who do not produce do not learn how to become top producers themselves. Mentoring or pairing off top producers with these rather slow-producing individuals can help create a more balanced workforce that is more effective and more income generating in the long run.

You can also use the hunt group method when handing out leads to your agents. This is similar in a way to giving leads to top producers with the difference being that the leads are handed out to the first agent that finishes a previous lead handling job. This also shows who the faster agents are, although not necessarily the most effective. You may need to monitor the success of the agent during the transaction to determine if the number of leads they handle is equivalent to the number of successful leads they handled.

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Lead Distribution: Getting the Right Lead to the Right Sales Person at the Right Time is More Than Just Round Robin Lead Assignment

2008-08-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

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For marketers, generating new leads is an exhilarating experience. However, it cannot be considered any less that a significant part in the sales cycle is getting the leads to the right persons. Allocating sales leads to a workforce that effectively maximizes pull-throughs is a challenge that is tantamount to generating the customer leads.

Lead distribution varies in format in different businesses. The more commmon methods of handling lead distribution include phone calls, faxing notes and sending of e-mails.

By the same token, lead distribution can become complex and even confusing, and is not a flawless process. This is because the lead distribution process works against sales expectation and customer expectation -- two opposite, yet equally powerful forces.

In distributing leads, time is critical. When a customer is decided and ready to purchase, any lead distribution delay can possibly mean loss of sale -- which companies want to avoid at all costs.

Lead Distribution vs. Round Robin

Contrary to common notions, lead distribution cannot be defined alongside the Round Robin process. The Round Robin method means that as leads come in, they go out to each person in turn. Thereafter, simple faxing or e-mailing to the leads or turning them over to channel partners or sales teams follow.

Over time, the Round Robin way can become less and less inefficient, with various factors at hand, including the special products being sold, needs of customers or skills of sales persons. In this respect, distributing in-turn, despite effectiveness and availability indicators, can possibly result to eventual spoilage of leads, alongside customer dissatisfaction.

Essentially, lead distribution is a more sophisticated method of routing leads to appropriate sales team members while taking into account certain predetermined rules. More importantly, lead distribution focuses not only on the right team member, but also the right timing for it.

Specifically, lead distribution should include certain methods that will allow the sales force to engage in meaningful interaction with the ones that assigned them the leads. This way, sales people can acquire the necessary information to enrich their knowledge about the leads. In the same manner, healthy interaction will aid the marketing team to define lead generation, and proceed with the qualifying, as well as the distribution processes. Ideally, sales and marketing teams must be allowed to track the lead progresses throughout the entire sales cycle.

The systems and methods behind lead distribution identifies, based on margin scores, the more profitable destinations appropriate for business leads received. Organizations adopting the methods must take into account strict compliance with the associated business rules, while being fully aware of the lead source and the destination.

Technically, “candidate destinations” associate with revenue scores, and are reflective of the payable amounts for a business lead, along with other business considerations. Each destination's margin scores are calculated based upon the revenue and cost scores. Accordingly, the business lead will be distributed, based in part on the margin scores that were calculated.

Lead Distribution Solutions Are Mushrooming

In the lead distribution system, organizations should analyze the process in which leads are distributed. It should be noted that
while tecnology does a good job in the lead distrbution mechanism, it is not the most effective way. Technology can fail, more specifically with transmissions that get lost or faulty communication machines. Moreover, there can be no assessment after lead distribution through technology happens. Oftentimes, the process ends after the communication has been passed on.

In this regard, companies that offer marketing automation services -- which are notably mushrooming -- say that adopting the lead distribution system manually can possibly have more room for failure. Accordingly, marketing solution providers claim that automation solutions help re-engineer the strength of technology and eliminate the manual elenemts of lead distribution through a more advanced framework for integration and coordination.

In sum, distributing customer leads effectively and efficiently is critical to business success in the overall. Hence, business experts suggest that in implementing lead distribution and lead management systems, it is best to do tests, optimize and do a re-test on the distribution methods on a regular basis. According to them, marketing methods, personnel and product or lead types vitally impact lead distribution methods for any organization.

To minimize system pitfalls, analysts say that understanding lead distribution in its most basic patterns is the way to go. Similarly, breaking down the allocation processes and the pervasive techniques that go with the system can maximize results.

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