sales-skills/sales-lead-routing

Design Lead Routing Rules

Help the user design and implement lead routing — from choosing a routing model and defining assignment rules through platform implementation, speed-to-lead optimization, and capacity management. This skill is tool-agnostic and covers Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Apollo, and standalone routing tools.

Step 1 — Gather context

If references/learnings.md exists, read it first for accumulated knowledge.

Ask the user:

1. What's your team structure?

   • How many reps (SDRs, AEs, or both)?
   • Are reps specialized (by segment, territory, vertical) or generalist?
   • Any tiered seniority (senior reps vs junior)?

2. Where do leads come from?

   • A) Inbound (website forms, content, events)
   • B) Outbound (SDR-sourced, cold outbound)
   • C) Product-led (signups, trials, PQLs)
   • D) Partner/channel
   • E) Mix — describe

3. How are leads routed today?

   • A) Manual assignment (manager assigns)
   • B) Round-robin
   • C) Territory-based
   • D) CRM automation rules
   • E) No system — first come first served
   • F) Starting from scratch

4. What tools do you use?

   • CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, other
   • Sales engagement: Salesloft, Apollo, Mailshake, other
   • Routing tools: LeanData, Chili Piper, Distributely, none

5. What's your lead volume? (weekly or monthly inbound leads, rough estimate)

If the user's request already provides most of this context, skip directly to the relevant step. Lead with your best-effort answer using reasonable assumptions (stated explicitly), then ask only the most critical 1-2 clarifying questions at the end — don't gate your response behind gathering complete context.

Step 2 — Routing model framework

Choose the right routing model based on team structure and lead characteristics.

Decision matrix

| Model | Best for | Team size | Complexity | Speed-to-lead | |-------|----------|-----------|------------|----------------| | Round-robin | Equal distribution, generalist teams | Any | Low | Fast | | Territory-based | Geographic or named-account specialization | 4+ reps | Medium | Fast | | Score-based | Matching lead quality to rep skill | 6+ reps | High | Medium | | Account-based | Named accounts with assigned owners | Any with ABM | Medium | Fast (if owner exists) | | Hybrid | Complex orgs with multiple segments | 10+ reps | High | Varies |

Round-robin

• How it works: Leads assigned in rotation to each rep equally
• Variants: Simple (A→B→C→A), weighted (A gets 40%, B gets 30%, C gets 30%), availability-aware (skip reps who are OOO)
• Best for: Small teams, equal lead quality, no specialization needed
• Limitation: Doesn't account for rep skill, lead quality, or territory

Territory-based

• How it works: Leads assigned based on geographic region, industry vertical, or company size segment
• Territory types: Geographic (NA West, NA East, EMEA, APAC), vertical (Healthcare, FinTech, SaaS), segment (SMB, Mid-market, Enterprise)
• Best for: Teams with regional/vertical expertise, large enough to specialize
• Limitation: Uneven lead distribution if territories have different volumes

Score-based

• How it works: High-score leads go to senior/experienced reps, lower-score leads go to SDRs for qualification
• Tiers: Hot (80+ score → senior AE), warm (50-79 → standard AE), cold (30-49 → SDR), below 30 → nurture/discard
• Fallback rules: Route unscored leads (missing data = no score) to SDRs for manual qualification. When a tier's rep pool is at capacity, overflow to the next tier down (e.g., hot leads overflow to standard AE pool if all senior AEs are maxed). Set per-rep capacity caps (e.g., max 30 leads/week) and auto-redistribute when a rep hits their cap.
• Best for: Teams with lead scoring in place (see /sales-lead-score), tiered rep experience
• Limitation: Requires a working scoring model; bad scores = bad routing

Account-based

• How it works: Leads matched to existing account owners. Net-new accounts routed via other model.
• Logic: Check if lead's company matches an existing account → assign to account owner. If no match → fallback to round-robin or territory.
• Best for: ABM teams, named account strategies, preventing rep conflicts
• Limitation: Requires clean account data and dedup

Step 3 — Design routing rules

Priority waterfall

Build routing rules as a priority waterfall — the first matching rule wins:

| Priority | Rule | Example | |----------|------|---------| | 1 | Existing account match | Lead's company matches an owned account → route to account owner | | 2 | Named account list | Company on target account list → route to assigned AE | | 3 | Score threshold | Score ≥ 80 → route to senior AE pool | | 4 | Territory match | Geography/segment matches territory → route to territory owner | | 5 | Round-robin fallback | No other rule matched → round-robin across available reps |

Speed-to-lead SLAs

Speed-to-lead is the most important metric in routing. Response time directly impacts conversion:

| Response time | Conversion impact | |---------------|-------------------| | < 5 minutes | 8x more likely to qualify vs 30 min | | 5-30 minutes | Baseline | | 30-60 minutes | 50% drop in qualification rate | | > 1 hour | 80%+ drop | | > 24 hours | Essentially dead — better to re-nurture |

SLA recommendations by lead type:

• Inbound demo request: < 5 minutes
• Inbound content download: < 1 hour
• PQL (product-led): < 15 minutes
• Outbound response/reply: < 1 hour
• Partner referral: < 30 minutes

Overflow and fallback rules

What happens when the assigned rep can't respond in time:

| Scenario | Fallback | |----------|----------| | Rep doesn't respond within SLA | Escalate to manager + reassign to next available | | Rep is OOO | Skip in rotation, assign to backup | | Territory owner at capacity | Overflow to adjacent territory or SDR pool | | No account owner exists | Fall through to round-robin |

Conflict resolution

• Multiple reps claim same lead: Account owner wins. If no account owner, first-touch attribution.
• Lead matches multiple territories: Primary territory wins (define primary in territory rules).
• Existing customer, new contact: Route to account owner, not round-robin.
• Recycled/re-engaged lead: Route back to original owner if still on team, otherwise round-robin.

Step 4 — Platform implementation

Once the routing model and rules are decided, implement them in the user's CRM / sales-engagement tool. Read references/platforms.md for the platform-specific click-paths and native features (Salesforce Assignment Rules / Queues / Flow, HubSpot Lead Rotation / Workflows, Salesloft Rhythm, Apollo sequence assignment, plus third-party routers like LeanData and Chili Piper). Pull only the section for the tool the user named.

Step 5 — Measurement

Key metrics

| Metric | Target | What it tells you | |--------|--------|-------------------| | Speed-to-lead | < 5 min (inbound demo), < 1 hr (other) | Are reps responding fast enough? | | Lead acceptance rate | > 80% | Are reps accepting or rejecting assigned leads? Low acceptance = bad targeting or routing | | Conversion by route | Compare across models | Which routing path converts best? Identifies if certain territories or tiers underperform | | Capacity utilization | 70-90% per rep | Are reps overloaded or underutilized? Adjust weights or territories | | Cherry-picking rate | < 10% | Are reps ignoring low-score leads? May need to enforce SLAs or adjust scoring |

Optimization cadence

• Weekly: Check speed-to-lead and acceptance rate
• Monthly: Review conversion by route, adjust weights or territories
• Quarterly: Full routing model review — does the model still match team structure and lead sources?

Gotchas

• Don't route without enrichment. If leads arrive with just an email (e.g., from a form), enrich with company data before routing. Without company/title data, territory and score-based routing can't work. Use /sales-enrich to fill in gaps before routing.

• Don't ignore speed-to-lead. A perfect routing model with slow response is worse than a simple round-robin with fast response. If you can only optimize one thing, optimize speed-to-lead. The data is clear: 5 minutes vs 30 minutes is an 8x difference in qualification.

• Don't overcomplicate before simple works. Start with round-robin. Only add territory or score-based routing when you have data showing it improves conversion. Complexity increases maintenance burden and failure modes.

• Self-improving: If you discover something not covered here, append it to references/learnings.md with today's date.

Related skills

• /sales-qualified — Qualified platform help (Salesforce-native real-time lead routing from website chat)
• /sales-lead-score — Design the scoring model that feeds score-based routing
• /sales-enrich — Enrich leads with company/title data needed for routing rules
• /sales-prospect-list — Build prospect lists with pre-segmented territories
• /revops — Design the broader marketing-to-sales handoff process
• /sales-cadence — Design cadences for different route segments
• /sales-do — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill.

Examples

Example 1: Round-robin for growing team

User says: "I have 8 SDRs and about 200 inbound leads per week. How should I route them?" Skill does:

1. Recommends weighted round-robin as baseline (equal distribution initially)
2. Designs SLA rules: demo requests < 5 min, content leads < 1 hour
3. Adds overflow rules for when reps are at capacity or OOO
4. Provides HubSpot/Salesforce implementation steps Result: Round-robin routing with SLAs and overflow handling

Example 2: Territory routing

User says: "I need territory routing for 4 AEs: NA West, NA East, EMEA, and APAC." Skill does:

1. Defines territory rules by geography (country/state mapping to each territory)
2. Handles named accounts that override geography
3. Adds fallback for leads with unknown geography
4. Provides CRM implementation steps Result: Territory routing with named-account override and geographic fallback

Example 3: Score-based tiered routing

User says: "I want to route high-score leads to senior reps and low-score leads to SDRs. We use HubSpot." Skill does:

1. Defines score thresholds for tiered routing (hot/warm/cold)
2. Maps tiers to rep pools (senior AEs, standard AEs, SDRs)
3. Adds fallback for unscored leads
4. Provides HubSpot workflow implementation steps Result: Tiered routing with score thresholds, rep pool assignment, and fallback rules

Troubleshooting

Leads sitting unworked

Symptom: Leads assigned but not contacted within SLA Cause: Rep overload, no SLA enforcement, or leads assigned during off-hours Solution: Add escalation rules — if no activity within SLA, reassign to next available. Implement capacity caps per rep. Route based on business hours/timezone.

Uneven distribution

Symptom: Some reps have 3x the leads of others Cause: Territory imbalance, weighted round-robin misconfigured, or account-matching sending too many leads to one owner Solution: Audit territory volumes monthly. Adjust weights to normalize. Add capacity caps to prevent any single rep from getting more than X leads/day.

Rep conflicts over lead ownership

Symptom: Multiple reps claiming the same lead or account Cause: No account-matching step in routing, or duplicate accounts in CRM Solution: Add account-matching as the first step in routing waterfall. Deduplicate accounts in CRM. Establish clear rules: account owner always wins for existing accounts.