Lead Distribution Tutorial: How To and Best Practices

Lead distribution is an important part of lead management for companies that work with this type of strategy.

Thinking about making your sales management even more refined, we’ve prepared this content.

In it, you’ll delve into the subject, learn about the benefits of distributing leads correctly among the sales team, and discover how to do it.

Continue reading!

What is lead distribution?

Lead distribution consists of directing contacts among the sales team members, utilizing the sales funnel to increase conversion rates and reduce consumer wait times.

A good distribution process can identify which contacts are more likely to close a deal, quickly and at the right time, so that sales opportunities don’t cool down.

Moreover, it takes into consideration the profile of the leads and the sales representatives to connect them strategically.

Until lead distribution is achieved, these contacts go through a journey. The stages are:

Visitor attraction

The first stage is attracting visitors.

This happens when the brand offers relevant content, positions itself through consumer contact channels, communicates with them through the website, blog, social media, ads, etc.

When a user reaches one of these brand channels, they are considered a visitor.

To move to the next phase of the sales funnel, they need to transition from just a visitor to becoming a lead.

Lead capture

In lead capture, the consumer who arrives at a page, website, or another brand channel provides personal information in exchange for something offered by the company.

There are different types of lead capture hooks that align with the phase consumers are in within the sales funnel.

For example, the brand can offer an e-book or informative video for leads at the beginning of the funnel, or offer a demonstration or free trial for those leads who are more mature in terms of purchase readiness.

🤿 Dive deeper: How to Generate B2B Leads? The Latest Strategies

Lead qualification

Various types of leads enter a brand’s database, as mentioned, and not all of them are ready for a commercial approach.

This is why lead qualification is so important: it’s through this process that the best contacts for the sales team are identified.

For a lead to be qualified, they need to have already decided on the solution they want and be in the decision phase of choosing which brand to go with.

Additionally, more in-depth information about this contact needs to be available so that the sales representative can prepare the approach.

😉 Check it out: How to Generate Sales Leads and Convert Them Faster

Lead distribution

It’s important to reinforce that not every generated lead should go directly to sales.

Based on the information collected about the lead, they can be distributed among the sales team (when they are already in this stage of the funnel) or forwarded for nurturing (when they still need further qualification).

There are several ways to distribute leads among sales representatives, and we’ll address this topic shortly in this content.

What is the importance of lead distribution?

Lead distribution is fundamental to sales management.

Check out the main benefits of investing in this strategy:

Helps create a more efficient sales process

Want to make your sales team more efficient?

Invest in lead distribution strategically.

By connecting the right leads with the right sales representatives, sales will be much faster, which benefits the customer, the seller, and the company.

An automated process also assists team leaders, who don’t need to assign each new lead to someone on the team, reducing the chances of errors or lost leads.

✈️ Go further: How to Capture Sales Qualified Leads in 2024

Allows mapping the consumer journey, facilitating analysis and attribution

From the first contact with your company to closing a purchase, consumers may interact with various professionals on your team.

To see the process more transparently, determine who owns that lead, and which sales representative is actually responsible for handling that negotiation, it’s essential to have a lead distribution process.

Increases productivity, as every salesperson knows exactly what to do

With lead distribution, the work between marketing and sales departments becomes more fluid, as the leads captured and qualified by marketing have a clear destination in the hands of sales.

As a result, salespeople receive the contacts they should approach, eliminating the need to “hunt” for leads. The focus truly shifts to those contacts more likely to close a deal.

Speeds up response time and sales follow-up

This is a significant benefit of lead distribution: agility in customer service.

Qualified leads, especially those that convert into bottom-funnel hooks or actively reach out for a commercial approach, are in a hurry.

If your company has good lead distribution, the consumer’s wait time decreases since these leads gain priority among the sales team.

🔎 Read more: Lead First Contact - 13 Tips on What to Say, Where and When

Reduces CAC and improves sales results

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is a metric that helps understand your company’s financial health and the results of investments in Marketing and Sales.

If your sales process is more efficient, your sales conversion rate increases, meaning you sell more with fewer resources.

As a result, the customer acquisition cost decreases, and the company’s financial health improves.

Step-by-Step for Efficient Lead Distribution

Let’s go through the step-by-step process for distributing leads?

Integrate your lead generation with sales tools

Regardless of the solution used to generate leads (chatbot, forms, etc.), it’s crucial to ensure that the sales team has access to lead information.

Therefore, the first step is to integrate the tools used by marketing and sales, adjust the qualification and opportunity tagging rules, and ensure that sales representatives receive complete information about each consumer.

Align the SLA between Marketing and Sales

Both teams responsible for leads (marketing and sales) need to work together and align with the overall business goals.

This integration is also important to ensure that leads are sent by marketing at the right time, and that the sales team ensures timely response to contacts.

Determine the desired lead profile

To know which contacts will be directed to sales and which won’t, you first need clarity about the desired lead type.

It’s essential to define the qualification criteria.

Some examples of criteria are budget, authority, need, and timing.

Filter the most qualified contacts

Apply the qualification criteria in some automated form.

Thus, leads that fit the desired profile are automatically selected for commercial dispatch.

Solutions like Lead Scoring and/or Lead Tracking can be used to determine the most qualified contacts.

Establish conditions for lead distribution

For leads to be distributed strategically, they can’t just be randomly assigned among the team.

Distribute leads based on criteria such as:

Location

If geographical location affects the sale your company makes, distribute leads according to location for sales representatives who cover that area.

This streamlines the seller’s work and speeds up face-to-face meetings if necessary.

Sales representative’s experience

Take into account the sales representative’s experience, especially for complex negotiations and contracts with higher value, as newer representatives may not have the necessary experience to handle these challenges.

Area of expertise

If you have representatives with different areas of expertise, either regarding certain products or services or certain customer profile types, use this as another lead distribution criterion.

Activity flow

The availability of sales representatives should also be considered when assigning responsibilities for leads.

It may be that, according to other criteria, a particular lead is directed to your most experienced sales representative.

But if they are already dealing with a long list of contacts, they won’t be able to give quick attention to this opportunity.

In that case, it’s better for another salesperson, who is more available, to handle the approach.

Therefore, this should be a point of attention.

Type of product or service

If it makes sense, you can also assign specific products or services to each representative for sale.

This way, leads interested in a particular solution are directed to the responsible seller.

Company sector

Remember how we said that the salesperson’s expertise matters?

The same applies to B2B sales.

Let’s say a company selling a financial solution can get clients from various sectors needing that service.

But the difficulties and needs of a law firm are different from a software development company, for example.

Different salespeople can be assigned to each sector of the client’s B2B activity.

Response rate

Sales representatives with better response rates also stand out in sales results.

This can be another metric and criterion for lead distribution in your company.

Distribute leads among sales representatives

With everything ready, it’s time to distribute the leads among the sales team.

For this, there are some methods and tools that can be used.

Learn about the lead distribution methods

What is the best lead distribution method?

That depends on the resources and dynamics of each business.

Check out the most used ones.

Manual lead distribution

Lead distribution can be done manually, usually by leaders or in a system where the salespeople choose themselves.

The problem with this type of distribution is that it’s not scalable, takes time from those who do manual selection, and has a higher tendency for errors, such as missed opportunities.

Blind Pull

In this model, professionals can only access lead information after it’s been assigned.

This way, there’s no favoritism towards one salesperson or another, and personal preferences are not applied.

Cherry-Picking

In this format, sales representatives choose from available leads based on their expertise.

On one hand, this ensures more specialized service, but on the other hand, there’s a risk of less attractive leads not getting timely attention.

Shark Tank

In the Shark Tank distribution format, speed is what matters.

Sales representatives can select new leads as soon as they become available.

This increases competition among salespeople, but it can also encourage representatives to take on more leads than they can handle, and lead distribution may not be as balanced.

Automatic lead distribution

Automated lead distribution is the most recommended, as it uses some type of system or software for lead distribution.

Learn about two of these methods:

Round-Robin Distribution

In this format, leads are rotated among sales representatives.

If you have five salespeople, each of them will receive a lead for handling, and the next lead will be distributed following this sequence.

This methodology divides leads equally, but does not take into account the criteria we’ve discussed.

Automated according to rules

In the automated method based on predetermined rules, criteria are set, and these criteria automatically match leads with salespeople.

You can select one of the methods or combine them according to your sales team’s dynamics and the volume of qualified leads generated.

Conclusion

Distributing qualified leads will improve the sales process and enhance the commercial team’s results.

Rely on automation tools, marketing, and sales to improve strategies, pass on relevant information, mark qualified and unqualified leads, and get the timing right for approach and sales follow-up.

Moreover, generated leads that are not qualified or are discarded can be reworked in nurturing flows until they are ready for a commercial approach.

You can distribute leads to you sales team through Leadster! We offer a funcionality that automatically distributes sales qualified leads.

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