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Lead Routing

  • Updated

Lead Routing can be a complex process. It is important to think about your existing processes and any improvements you may want to implement before beginning your jobs in Openprise.

 

Step 1: Prep Leads

We recommend cleaning leads before sending them through your routing process. Here are a few Data Essential steps to consider in preparation for lead routing:

  1. Data Cleansing
    • Cleanse (e.g. formatting)
    • Standardize
    • Flag or Remove Junk
    • Resolve inconsistent geo data
    • Blacklist/whitelist (eg. free email domains)
  2. Data Enrichment
    • Verify email/phone accuracy
    • Append or update contact and company details
    • Infer blank values
  3. Lead to Account Matching
  4. Deduplication
    • Identify and merge leads to contacts in your CRM database
  5. Segmentation
    • Leads/Contact/Accounts into defined segments per your requirements 
  6. Grading
    • Apply grading requirements if your routing logic is based on the grade of your leads or accounts

Step 2: Define Your Routing Logic


What Are Your Rule Types

There are various assignment criteria to consider when building out your lead routing logic. Below are some of the most common routing rules used across organizations. You can also combine multiple rules to form one criteria set (i.e. route leads that match rule type “industry, and region” to SDR John Smith).   

  • Route by company size
  • Route by geography, region
  • Route by industry
  • Route by Account
  • Route by business unit/technology platform
  • Route by customer and product
  • Route by round robin

Lead Routing Table

Next, consolidate all your routing logic into one shared spreadsheet, which should contain the various rule types you will use to assign leads. Openprise provides a sample Lead Routing Table in our Data Catalog. This table can be downloaded and edited to meet your requirements whether simple or complex.

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The sample Lead Routing Table contains the following columns, which can be modified if needed:

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  1. Rule Type - criteria that must be met for a lead to be routed
  2. Territory Name - defines how lead should be routed based on region or territory
  3. Country - defines how lead should be routed based on country 
  4. State/Province - defines how lead should be routed based on state/province 
  5. Postal Code Min - defines how lead should be routed based on minimum postal code range 
  6. Postal Code Max - defines how lead should be routed based on maximum postal code range
  7. SDR Email - provide SDR email who will be assigned lead 
  8. AE Email - provide AE email who will be assigned lead

Columns 9 - 14 are used in Round Robin: 

  1. Load - load balancing counter; indicates how many leads an SDR has been assigned
  2. Max Load - maximum number of leads an SDR can be assigned before they must be removed from the rotation
  3. OOO Start Date - First day SDR will be out of office; timeframe where SDR should not be routed leads 
  4. OOO End Date - Last day SDR will be out of office; timeframe where SDR should not be routed leads
  5. SLA (Hours) - Number of hours since lead has been assigned to an SDR. If elapsed time exceeds this value, reassign to another SDR in the rotation. 
  6. Bypass - Yes/No field indicates which SDR to include in the rotation

Additional columns that can be added to your routing table include: annual revenue, customer size. 

 

Round Robin

Use Round Robin to evenly distribute leads across all SDRs, or a subset of SDRs within your Lead Routing Table. 

Follow instructions on setting up Round Robin here.

 

Step 3: Build it in Openprise

 

Import Routing Table

The first step in building Lead Routing will be to import your routing table as a data source in Openprise. We recommend importing this table as a Google Sheet, which can then be shared with your Customer Success Manager. Alternatively, you can download the sample Lead Routing Table in our Open Data Library, and re-import the modified spreadsheet as a data source. 

Learn more about how to import data sources here. 

Your spreadsheet should contain columns for the Rule Type, Priority, and any other criteria, which will be used to route leads. Here is an example of what your spreadsheet should look like:

Screen_Shot_2021-11-09_at_11.02.37_AM.png

You will also want to import your separate Round Robin table in this step if you are using this process to evenly distribute leads across multiple SDR’s

Building the Job

The first job in your Lead Routing process should clean or prep data that will be used as criteria for your routing logic. The input data source will be Leads data followed by standardization steps. 

Below is an example of a Lead Routing - Prep job that has been split by region. This job is standardizing geo fields, which are used as part of the customers overall Lead Routing logic:

Screen_Shot_2021-11-09_at_11.07.00_AM.png

Next, create your routing job using the last task from the prep job as your input data source. Subsequent steps infer SDR information and are split by various Rule Types outlined in this customer's routing table. Build steps in an order you wish to prioritize Rule Types. The order of steps is determined by which Rule Type takes precedence when routing leads.

Screen_Shot_2021-11-08_at_1.26.25_PM.png

For example, if the lead record contains “industry” “state” and “city” values, infer SDR information using Rule Type “Industry, State and City”. If SDR information cannot be inferred from this Rule Type, move to the next step in the job, Rule Type “Industry, State, and County”.  

TIP: Create a manual data source at the end of your routing job using the Export: Create Manual Data Source task template. Configure it to “always add”; this will track every lead that is processed in the job and can help you review historical data. 

REMINDER: Test your lead routing process in Openprise prior to exporting. Use the Manual Data Source to verify outputs during each iteration, and make any necessary changes to your overall logic before updating your end system. 

 

Automate Lead Routing

Create a bot to automate your lead routing process. The first step in this bot should be to purge your prep job before running it, followed by running subsequent jobs in the process (i.e. routing, export). 

 

Step 4: Maintain Routing Table

Follow these steps in this order if any drastic modifications (i.e. remove/replace SDR, edit Rule Type, etc) need to be made to your routing table once your lead routing process has been automated: 

  1. Cancel recurrence on your bot by clicking on the clock icon. Wait for the bot to stop running before moving onto the next step.Screen_Shot_2021-11-08_at_2.24.27_PM.png
  2. Make changes to your lead routing spreadsheet directly. 
  3. Go to Data Data Sources Search for your routing table. Click on the data source tile and select “Purge”. 
  4. Once the record count has reached “0”, click on the data source tile and select “Import Now”. 
  5. Once the data source has re-imported, re-enable the bot by clicking on the clock icon.

 

 

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