What is lead routing?

The term lead routing comes from the English (routing = to pass on) and means the transfer of qualified leads from marketing to sales. The lead is handed over from marketing to sales for the conclusion of a contract.
Lead routing is an important component of professional lead management. It aims to win over interested parties and lead them step by step – with the help of cross-channel content marketing along the customer journey – to the conclusion of a purchase or contract. Since decision-making processes can extend over several months, especially in the B2B sector, marketing and lead management campaigns also take a correspondingly long time. That is why the success of B2B lead management stands and falls with the transfer of qualified leads to sales. This process is called lead routing. It should only take place when the potential customer has completed a large part of his customer journey and is “ready” to buy. Lead scoring, for example, can be used to determine when the right moment has come to hand over a lead.
Lead scoring as a basis for lead routing
Lead scoring is the automatic evaluation of leads with regard to their sales readiness:
How far has the decision-making process of a potential customer progressed or how great is his interest or need?
What is the relevance of the lead with regard to the predefined sales target?
In order to be able to qualitatively evaluate a lead, meaningful information about the prospect is needed. Companies obtain this information within the framework of lead nurturing by offering a potential customer suitable information to download at the right time. This allows the lead to be developed in a targeted manner towards purchase maturity. Depending on which form fields (e.g. position, company, industry) a prospective customer fills in during a download and which actions (e.g. open, click, send) they perform, companies can assign different values.
A lead routing tool automatically assigns the corresponding values to a lead. This results in an overall score that gives indications of the relevance of the lead with regard to the sales target and its sales maturity. In order to be able to decide whether and when a lead is sales-ready, marketing and sales should jointly define a scoring threshold.
The lead routing step is essential in that it is another stage in the conversion process at which a lead can be lost. This phase of the lead management process also represents a change in responsibilities within the company.
The lead management process is divided into five phases:
Lead generation: A website visitor is converted to a lead by entering and confirming their email address (double opt-in). This validates their interest.
Lead qualification: Marketing takes the lead into its care. It becomes a Marketing Accepted Lead (MAL) and can be further developed with suitable marketing measures within the framework of a lead management campaign until it is ready for sale.
Lead routing: The lead has passed through the campaign or its relevance with regard to the company’s sales goal has been confirmed and its interest has been consolidated thanks to useful content. Now this Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is ready for contact with sales.
Lead validation: If the lead meets certain previously defined criteria with regard to the above-mentioned relevance and interest, the sales department accepts the lead – this is referred to as a Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) – and qualifies it with suitable offers for purchase or conclusion of a contract.
Closing: If the sales department has qualified the lead sufficiently (Sales Qualified Lead SQL), for example with the help of the BANT model, nothing more stands in the way of a successful conclusion.
Challenges during the lead handover
Now it is a matter of doing everything right in lead routing when it comes to controlling contact data in the context of lead handover: Marketing assigns the responsibility for the further care of the prospect to a sales employee or sales partner. Even if a lead is ready for sales – if you make mistakes during the handover, you lose a potential customer just before the finish line.
The following aspects must be considered in lead routing:
The lead is to be handed over to a sales employee who is suitable in terms of geographical allocation, product division, industry affiliation, company size, key account affiliation, existing customers, position, etc. The lead is to be routed to the sales employee who is responsible for the sales process.
In addition to the complete contact and profile data, the complete lead history, including all collected information, must also be handed over to the sales employee.
The corresponding sales representative should contact the lead personally as soon as possible. If several days or even weeks go by, the lead has “cooled down” again.
The lead should not receive any more marketing materials after the handover. Otherwise, there is a risk that the lead will feel harassed and drop out. Therefore, every transferred lead should be deleted immediately from current and planned marketing campaigns.
How is lead routing technically implemented?
Once a lead has reached the previously defined scoring threshold, it is time to hand it over directly to sales. But how? If you have a marketing automation solution in place, you can also automate this process. This is particularly useful if a large amount of lead data has been collected in the course of lead nurturing and now needs to be passed on to sales. As a rule, the transferred data is available and usable in the CRM system. Lead routing can take the form of a reporting e-mail containing all relevant lead information, which Evalanche automatically sends to the sales manager or a suitable employee. Or the transfer is done via an interface between the CRM system and the marketing automation solution.
In this case, there are a few things to consider in advance:
Connectors & interfaces
The basis for the transfer of leads from a marketing automation solution to a CRM are connectors/interfaces that link the individual systems and enable an automated exchange of data.
Mapping
For the transfer of a data record in the course of lead routing, it plays a decisive role which name a data field has in the respective system and which values a data field can assume. Mapping ensures that the data transfer runs error-free in both directions, because each system knows how to synchronise the respective data.
Synchronisation interval
With large data sets, for example, it makes no sense to synchronise the entire data set in real time. Instead, it is advisable to “query the update”: the synchronisation only includes the fields that have changed compared to the previous value, all other fields and values remain unchanged.
Database
The most important prerequisite for data synchronisation is a clean database. Incorrect values in incorrect fields, incorrect and incomplete values as well as duplicates must be cleaned up beforehand. Only then can both systems interact smoothly with each other and thus create added value.
Lead routing via connector and the advantages for the sales department
The automated linking of CRM and Marketing Automation enables consistent, bidirectional and permanently up-to-date data management across both systems. Usually, from a technological point of view, the CRM solution functions as the main system in which a company brings together and maintains all data. Sales in particular benefits from a connection of the marketing automation solution to its master system. It benefits from this in several ways:
No unsuitable contacts reach the sales department, but only qualified leads.
Upon transfer, the sales department receives a detailed lead history, which helps them to advise the prospect individually and to create custom-fit offers.
The probability of closing increases when a lead is ready to make a decision.
Even with long decision-making processes, potential business opportunities are not lost.
Sales resources can be planned more effectively and used more efficiently.
Seize the opportunity
If marketing and sales take these recommendations to heart, nothing stands in the way of successful new customer acquisition. It is up to the salesperson to use the available information to customise their sales strategy for each lead to close the deal.