Lead Distribution, Proven Patterns and Strategies

Generating leads can be one of the most satisfying accomplishments of a marketer. However, we often forget the most important part of our job to the customer and to the sales teams we support--Lead Distribution. Get those customers to the right person as quickly as possible is our ultimate job. Designing a good lead distribution process can be complex, confusing, and unforgiving as we begin to scale our lead management process. This learning curve can be shortened with a better understanding of basic lead distribution patterns.

Lead Distribution Patterns for Success

Distributing leads to a sales force for maximum sales production can be as challenging as lead generation. The lead distribution process has two powerful forces working against it: customer expectation and sales expectation. By breaking lead allocation techniques into patterns, although none are necessarily unique, can be helpful in maximizing your results.

Here are some of the most popular lead distribution techniques:

Round Robin

This is undoubtedly where everyone starts, and it is a fine place to start. It provides fair and equitable distribution method, similar to dealing a deck of cards in a game. As leads come in, leads go out to each person in turn.

However, over time this lead distribution pattern can be difficult to maintain and loses value. As you begin to add special products, customer needs, or sales agent skills to your organization you will increasingly have mismatched customer needs and sales agent skill.

Distributing in-turn, regardless of lead characteristics, sales agent availability, or skills is a recipe for eventual lead spoilage and waste; not to mention customer frustration.

Another reason this method is important and an excellent place to start is because it helps you collect good baseline performance data. Round robin distribution will eliminate most statistical bias from your performance metrics. This foundation data can also allow you to build a more complex model later.

FIFO/LIFO

The common inventory control systems of First In, First Out and Last In, Last Out is a fundamental pattern to consider in any lead distribution process.

Which is better? The freshest lead or continually trimming off potential aging leads? Generally this is a question of customer expectations and your sales processes. If you are generating or buying real-time leads there is little debate--FIFO and manage leads aging as a sales capacity issue to be solved immediately. In contrast, if you are moving into the end of a reporting cycle or working pipeline leads the LIFO method may yield higher short-term production.

Top Producers

Giving leads based on sales performance is a natural inclination and is always going to happen to a degree. But, be cautious this can have unintended consequences. There are a couple of hidden pitfalls in this distribution strategy:

• Harder to find new top producers because you starve newer sales team members
• These trend maybe temporary and propped by overweight lead flow
• Performance may have been motivated by previous lead scarcity
• Increasing lead flow may reduce diligence and determination

Top producers should be rewarded. And part of that reward should be premium lead flow, but remember top sales results is typically fueled by hunger.

Hunt Group

The hunt group is the classic call center methodology of looking for an available agent/line. This approach is good for managing large, centralized sales forces. It is founded on the principle of load balancing. This approach attempts to optimize lead distribution by seeking agents or pipelines that can handle another customer.

The big challenges in this strategy is the human element. In order to get the best results you need to know each agent's capacity and lead volume. An extensive set of measurements and metrics are needed to get this to baseline. The baseline also needs to account for agents' point of declining effectiveness and any performance cycle(s).

Grab Bag

The grab bag or the trash can method, as I like to call it, is certain to lead to unintended consequences. Tossing leads into an unmanaged pool does two things quickly: lowers the perceived value of the leads and begins to age them.

This method never produces the feeding frenzy of hungry sales agents that you may think. The best way to describe what actually happens is through this analogy:

Imagine for a moment, as new lead comes in you immediately print it out and toss it into the office waste basket. Now you tell all your sales people that the best and hottest leads are in the waste basket. Leads distributed! But, now watch--no feeding frenzy?!? That's right.

Think for a minute the message you just sent: These leads are not important enough to get to you immediately to make you accountable for their follow-up. So, why would your sales team break from their current pipeline and rummage through a waste basket to seek after something you said was unimportant.

This is not likely to be your highest producing strategy.

Source Specialist

This is a method may surprise you a bit. You would think that a good sales person, with the same product set, would be equally capable on any marketing source. Granted a good sales person will certainly perform within standards on most any lead. However, there is an interesting phenomena that occurs when a sales person is give a concentrated, single or limited, stream of leads from a specific marketing channel. Typically, they will improve over time and out convert agents working the same leads, but with a broader range of lead sources.

The increased conversion from distributing a single source of leads to specialized sales teams is most likely driven by customer attracted by the particular marketing placement or methods.

Product Specialist

Organizing sales teams and distribution groups based on products and special training is an obvious skills-based structure. This type of distribution emphasizes the customer needs and connecting them to a knowledgeable agent.

One of the potentially bad effects of distributing based on product specialty is the inevitable misplaced or mislabeled customer. The experience of bouncing between agents or even worse, valuable time expended by the client looking for the right person to help them, is frustrating.

Telemarketing Warm-up

Using high-volume telemarketing specialist to pre-qualify and hot transfer customers to more qualified sales professionals is increasingly common. This technique was perfected by many large Internet lead buyers using call centers in the mortgage and education business.

The concept grew from expectations of the Web customer:

• Expectation of immediate response
• Tendency for customers to provide inaccurate information
• Challenges in effectively capturing and filtering customer segments
• Intense competition on leads sold to multiple companies

As Internet consumers, lead generation, and sales teams mature, this technique may lack the efficiency that it once provided.

Push, Email Me

This is certainly the default mechanism for distributing leads today. It functions much like email distribution. Someone has a want or need and crafts an email that they send or push into your Inbox. At that point, I become 100% reliant on that person to handle the email effectively.

It is certainly an efficient method from a marketing perspective. I am probably measured on lead volume and how quickly I get it into sales. However, if you take the time to calculate ROI you may be shocked what this process is doing to your marketing budget.

In low volumes and small teams this may make sense, but as you scale there will be large queues of lead aging and spoilage.

Pull, Lean Methodology

This is one of my favorites and the results always amaze. Taken straight from the efficiency proofs of Lean Manufacturing it will increase your output per lead. Working on the premise that sales agents are working a sales pipeline (lead inventory) much like an assembly line, there is no need to keep shoving in leads if nothing is being produced out the back.

A pull-based lead distribution system within your lead management software allows you to constantly balance capacity and create a natural performance-based distribution process.

Lead Distribution Can Help or Hurt Chose Wisely

Distributing your leads efficiently is critical to your overall business success. For this reason the best advice in implementing a lead distribution or lead management system is to test, optimize, and re-test your methods constantly. Changes in personnel, lead types, product types, and marketing methods are all factors that may impact the best distribution method for your organization.