Lead routing

Lead routing describes the trans­fer­ring of qualified leads to sales. This changes re­spons­ib­il­ity from the marketing de­part­ment to the sales de­part­ment. Lead routing also ensures that leads are forwarded to the ap­pro­pri­ate sales people. With suitable software, this process can be automated.

The term routing refers to con­trolling or main­tain­ing data movement. According to the defin­i­tion of lead routing, the last parts of the lead man­age­ment process are therefore directed towards main­tain­ing contact data, albeit in one direction: from the sales de­part­ment to a suc­cess­ful trans­ac­tion. Basically, lead routing describes the content being passed from the marketing de­part­ment to the sales de­part­ment.

In the B2B area (where great im­port­ance is attached to personal contact), the process follows a classic pattern: When lead nurturing is complete and the maturity (defined by lead routing) has been reached, the lead is then passed on to the ap­pro­pri­ate sales rep­res­ent­at­ive. They take the contact on and are re­spons­ible for further com­mu­nic­a­tion with them. The goal is clear: to achieve a suc­cess­ful trans­ac­tion and to deliver products and services to the customer in a prof­it­able way.

The takeaways from the lead scoring process are essential to complete the lead man­age­ment process. It is only through clear eval­u­ation that it is possible to estimate how in­ter­est­ing a lead is for the re­spect­ive sales target – and whether the lead is ready for an offer at all. It’s not just the user-related data or the user profile that play an important role, but also the activity and reactions towards measures that have been tried. All this counts towards the lead routing process.

A lead scoring model evaluates each pro­spect­ive customer and specifies their priority in the lead routing process. It also defines the exact status in the customer journey. When the lead is at the point where they’re ready to make a decision a critical phase begins: You shouldn’t wait too long before im­ple­ment­ing specific measures and you must make personal contact at the right time. The sales rep­res­ent­at­ive has everything they need: all essential in­form­a­tion and analyses so that they can adapt their sales strategy ac­cord­ingly.

Even if fi­nal­ising the lead man­age­ment process has been mentioned: it is by no means completed. Lead man­age­ment, and es­pe­cially lead nurturing models and lead scoring models, are con­stantly de­vel­op­ing. It is a con­tinu­ous process.

Con­trolling and analysing play a central role here; they show where the pur­chas­ing process can be improved and where you can use better methods to win over potential customers. This creates a marketing auto­ma­tion machine, which is based on modern lead man­age­ment tools.

With programs such as HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Teamgate, you can organise all your actions in a clear way. By allowing all data from different channels to enter into a central platform, you can segment leads more easily and make them ac­cess­ible to both de­part­ments – marketing and sales. It is also easier to define unique lead routing rules.

The big challenge remains to find the optimal balance between auto­ma­tion and per­son­al­isa­tion. If you then find the right approach for the target group and the right content for the campaign design, the lead man­age­ment strategy is sorted. Companies are therefore able to establish suc­cess­ful business re­la­tion­ships and to maintain contact with new and existing customers on a sustained basis.