Sales leads are valuable. Handing a good customer to the wrong sales agent can be disastrous. Design your sales process to distribute leads to sales people base on some basic criteria. Most capable CRM systems can assist you in setting up this process. These are the things I look to do in setting up a new lead distribution system.
Sales Skill to Needs Matching
All customer inquiries are not equal. Each customer comes with different needs. Chances are they can be categorized, but they are different. Make sure you are sorting those needs and distributing them as quickly as possible. Needs to skill match is critical to getting the sale.
General inquiries should go to inside sales reps and qualified first. Do not frustrate field sales agents with requests for brochures and marketing material. Likewise, don’t frustrate customers with a hard charging, quota carrying sales professional.
Product Expertise to Inquiry Matching
Sales people are specialist. They tend to settle into a groove or expertise that maximizes their personality, motivation, and potential. Don’t try to adjust that–maximize it.
People sell from different backgrounds, giving them unique talents. This makes them more or less comfortable with certain sales. If you have a consultative sales person, bringing big numbers on enterprise software sales don’t flip them to selling package desktop licenses.
Same principle works at the sales team level. If you are a mortgage broker you may specialize in good credit mortgages, while other brokers in the branch are good at credit repair.
Most often sales teams naturally do this organizational split. Be cautious of assuming every sales person is the same. This is why round robin lead distribution can be deadly.
Local Lead to Local Sales
A large sales organization may already be divided up into regional sales territories, which makes lead distribution a necessity. However, even smaller teams can benefit from local lead routing.
Sales increase when you make a personal or local connection – don’t lose that opportunity. Ensure that your CRM flags prospects in local sales areas. Route those sales opportunities to local reps that are familiar with face-to-face sales.
Sales meetings over lunch or dinner turn into long-term profitable relationships.
