How to Handle Lead Distribution in a Modern, Complex B2B Sales Environment

You can generate all the leads in the world. But unless you route them to the salesperson best positioned to close them, those leads won’t turn into revenue. Moving from lead generation to lead distribution, then, is business critical.

That’s easier said than done—especially if you’re trying to automate lead distribution. It requires a level of flexibility that most RevOps tech stacks struggle to handle.

Let’s walk through what effective lead distribution looks like in B2B sales and what you can do to maximize the value of incoming leads and boost your close rates. 

Key takeaways

• Lead generation isn’t enough—you need to build systems & processes for sales representatives service and pipeline those leads after their initial conversion
• Lead distribution processes must be designed with one end in mind: how do we get this lead to the salesperson best positioned to close it? 
• The flexibility required in modern B2B selling requires you to rethink how you approach your lead distribution softwares and workflows

What is lead distribution?

Simply put: lead distribution is the process of sending your leads to sales reps, ideally to the rep best positioned to close the deal.

The exact rules used to define your distribution strategy will vary by organization. Some follow a straightforward pattern—like round robin rules. Others will be more intentional—like using rules-based routing to match leads with reps that have similar industry backgrounds.

Regardless of the specific approach, manual or automated, lead distribution is a critical link in marketing-to-sales handoff and inbound/outbound pipeline. Without lead distribution, there’s no mechanism to convert qualified leads into paying customers. 

Moving from lead generation to lead distribution

Most organizations with solid marketing, products, and value props don’t struggle to generate leads. But lead generation is only Step One. To get from lead generation to distribution, you have to follow this roadmap.

1. Lead generation

Inbound lead generation is about more than just getting demo requests on your website (although those are important!). It’s about ensuring that wherever you engage your target audience online—website, social media, third party sites, etc.—you provide a way for them to engage with you further. 

Modern lead gen forms should include the following elements: 

• Easy to set up and don’t require developer resources to deploy (better yet if there are pre-built templates based on top use cases)
• Ability to match your forms to your UX/UI and brand guidelines
• Dynamic fields that automatically shorten based on information you already have
• Automatically integrate scheduling with the form to accelerate speed to lead by 240X (see our stats here) 

2. Lead enrichment

As soon as a contact is created via online form, it’s important to know as much as is humanly possible about them. This helps not only with lead qualification and distribution, but enables more personalized, relevant, and timely outreach. 

Lead enrichment involves the use of third-party data to augment the information captured via your lead gen forms and determine which are high-quality leads.

The best way to handle lead enrichment is through form automation software that automatically enriches leads in real time, at the point of conversion. For example, Default uses data from Clearbit and Apollo as part of our built-in lead enrichment software. 

3. Lead qualification

Your sales representatives’ time is valuable. You don’t want them wasting it on leads that’ll never close. The best lead qualification software uses the data gathered from enrichment to help score and prioritize potential customers based on fit and likelihood to close. 

The faster you book meetings with qualified leads, the higher your conversion rates will be. We’re talking five minutes, tops. 

Obviously qualifying leads in less than five minutes isn’t something that works if you have manual processes in place. But with automated lead qualification software, you can identify and distribute high-quality leads much faster.

4. Lead distribution

After you enrich and qualify a lead, it’s time to get it into the sales pipeline. Built-in lead routing software handles the following functionality: 

• Assign new leads to owners (and identify the current owner if the lead is from an existing account)
• Lead-to-account matching for any object in your CRM software
• Segment leads by ownership, segment, territory, company size, and more
• Automatically schedule meetings at the point of conversion

5. Lead outreach

Once an inbound qualified lead has been assigned, distributed, and booked, the next step is to move them through your sales process and close their business. This involves a combination manual and automated workflows. 

From there, you can track a number of RevOps metrics and KPIs that can help indicate how well your processes are performing and whether they're helping you meet your sales goals.

What to consider when distributing leads among your sales team

The simplest approach to lead distribution is an automated, evenly balanced round robin. But simplest isn’t always best. Just because a rep is next up on the docket doesn’t mean they have the skills, experience, or ability to close that particular deal. 

When creating assignment rules for inbound marketing qualified leads, here are some key factors to consider. 

1. Salesperson expertise

Sales success is about more than having good sales skills. Especially in B2B, deep knowledge of your product, how it solves prospect problems, and broader insight into the industry are all factors that impact their ability to win business. 

So it’s important to distribute inbound leads to reps whose expertise matches the prospect’s profile and interests. For example, if a VP of Operations at a large bank is interested in your Fintech product, you don’t want to give that lead to a rep whose experience is selling to healthcare providers. 

2. Salesperson background & expertise

The larger a sales opportunity, the more critical effective lead distribution becomes. If an inbound lead comes in from a large CPG company interested in your enterprise AI/ML solution—let’s say the deal size is six figures—you want that deal in the hands of a rep who knows that industry inside and out. Or, if you're dealing with a large, seven-plus figure deal, you'll want to send it to more experienced sales reps.

3. Good performance

Another approach to lead distribution involves rewarding reps for their past performance. In essence, reps who’ve proven themselves effective at converting inbound leads into business get more leads. 

The only downside to this approach is that it’s easy to overload your top performers. If their calendars get too full, not only will it lead to burnout, but it can also hurt their ability to adequately address all the leads on their plate. 

So while rewarding rep performance is a good idea, it’s probably best to make it an exception, not the rule. 

4. Geographic location

Another common approach to lead distribution is to assign leads based on geographic location. This is especially important in industries where regional differences are significant enough to impact the prospect’s needs and problems. Energy and agribusiness are two examples of industries where this is the case. 

This is also important if you have a global client base and need to align leads with reps in their same (or close) time zone. 

5. Fairness

Although fairness isn’t as important as sales effectiveness, if you can distribute leads as fairly as possible, it can make things easier. When reps feel your sales systems and processes are fair, you’re more likely to have buy-in and team morale can remain high. 

Lead distribution methods 

As we mentioned already, there are a variety of rules, workflows, and processes you can use for lead distribution. The first choice to make: do you go with a manual or automated distribution process? (We have our preference, but you’ll have to keep reading to figure out what it is.) 

But even after you make that choice, there are still a number of options available to you. Some methods work best for smaller teams, others are necessary once you start to scale up your inbound flows. 

Manual distribution

Manual lead distribution is exactly what it sounds like: a human person chooses where each inbound lead goes. In some cases, reps get to choose their own leads. In others, the sales manager or head of revenue assigns leads.

There are some advantages to manual distribution. It’s highly flexible and can account for outliers and edge cases. What’s more, because the distribution process is highly selective, the chances of giving a lead to the rep best positioned to close it are high. Which means the odds of closing that lead are also high. 

What’s more, if you’re in the early stages of building your inbound lead flows, manual distribution keeps your sales team in a state of hands-on engagement with your audience. This is critical so they can learn as much as quickly as possible. 

On the other hand, it really only works well for small sales organizations with a low volume of leads. Once you scale, expand, and diversify your inbound flows, manual lead distribution quickly becomes infeasible. 

Cherry-picking

The cherry-picking method lets your reps each pick which leads they want to work. But reps can be really picky—only choosing leads they can close quickly with minimal effort. 

As a result, you’ll have unwanted leads that you have to figure out how to handle. What’s more, this approach is slow and significantly hinders lead response times (and, by extension, conversion rates).

Spoon-feeding

The spoon-feeding method is like the cherry-picking approach, except the sales manager (or other designated person) decides which reps get which leads. Their decisions can be based on a variety of factors, including rep attributes, previous successes, and more.

While the spoon-feeding method gives you better coverage than cherry-picking, it’s not without its flaws. First and foremost is the subjectivity. One person decides who gets which leads, and this can cause conflict when one rep feels they’re not receiving adequate assignments. 

The other problem is that the one designated person can’t be on the clock 24/7. If you choose the spoon-feeding approach, some leads will inevitably fall through the cracks. 

Shark tank

No, we’re not talking about pitching your business idea to a panel of multi-millionaires. The shark tank lead distribution approach is a “first come, first served” model. 

On the one hand, this approach encourages competition and can seriously accelerate speed-to-lead. On the other hand, it encourages fast responses over personalized, intentional messages. So while yes, the rep may be the lead, a hastily written email may decrease the likelihood of a response and result in a poor customer experience.

Automated lead distribution

Alternatively, you can use inbound marketing automation software for automated lead distribution. In this scenario, no human person decides in real time where a lead goes. Those decisions are made well in advance when you implement and configure your automation software. 

Not only does this speed up your lead distribution, but it also provides a single source of truth that helps to resolve disputes and friction among your sales team faster. 

However, automation isn’t without its downsides. One of the biggest is that most automation platforms have a hard time with outliers. While rare, these can be valuable business opportunities and contribute significantly to your bottom line. 

Round robin

Round robin meetings are like dealing cards: every rep gets a lead assigned to them before the cycle begins again. See the following illustration: 

Round robin routing is simple and fair. But it doesn’t necessarily help leads end up with the ideal salesperson. For that, you’ll need some variation of round robin, like one of the following approaches. 

Flexible round robin

Flexible round robin enables leads to choose which available reps they want to schedule a meeting with. This enables more control over their meetings, reduces the likelihood of a scheduling conflict, and can help them self-select reps they’re more likely to develop a rapport with. 

Weighted round robin

Some reps can handle higher workloads than others. Other reps are dealing with higher value contracts and, thus, can’t handle the same lead volume as others. Or, perhaps some reps have been performing better lately and managers want to reward them.

In any of these cases, weighted round robin rules adjust your automated lead distribution so that reps with a higher weight receive more leads before other reps do. See the following illustration: 

Rules-based lead assignment

An alternative lead distribution approach is based on specific rules. Company size, job description/level, industry, existing vs. new accounts, product interest, intent level, etc.—these are all rules you can use to ensure the lead is matched to the best possible rep. 

Customized round robin

Customized round robin is a hybrid of sorts between rules-based and round robin routing. While the rotational nature of round robin is still there, there are built-in exceptions and limitations based on specific rules. 

These rules can include specific territories, company sizes, lead-to-account matching, or outliers that don’t align 100% with your ICPs.

In the following example, a lower-value ICP (#1) is distributed via round robin rules to SDRs, while the higher-value ICP (#2) is distributed via round robin rules to AEs and more experienced sales reps: 

Advantages and disadvantages of manual and automated lead distribution

So which should you choose: manual or automated lead distribution? The best option is going to vary based on specific attributes of your ICP or business growth stage: 

• Low vs. high LTV (and thus short vs. long B2B sales cycles)
• Low vs. high lead volume (depending on where you are in your growth cycle)
• Low vs. high variance in ICPs (e.g. different industries where the use case requires specific expertise to sell effectively)
• Small vs. large sales teams (if you only have two reps, you don’t need to overcomplicate lead routing)

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of each lead distribution approach. 

Pros of manual distribution

The biggest advantage of manual lead distribution is a high degree of control and flexibility. Because reps or managers are making the assignment decisions, you can afford to evaluate leads on a one-on-one basis. 

Manual distribution also works well when you’re starting out building your inbound flows and learning more about your target market. So when you do start to automate inbound flows, you can use the learnings from this stage to improve your decisioning. 

Cons of manual distribution

The biggest disadvantages of manual lead distribution are lack of scalability and low speed to lead.

Manual lead distribution is great for 1-10 inbound leads per month. But once you start bringing in dozens and hundreds of leads, it quickly becomes much for one person to handle. At that point, your pipelines start to bottleneck and inbound sales come to a screeching halt.

But even before your lead volume becomes unwieldy, manual distribution still requires a human person to examine and evaluate leads one-on-one. In a world where minutes can be the difference between booking a meeting and losing out to a competitor, this puts you at a serious disadvantage. 

Pros of automated distribution

The right automated lead routing software, especially when you use a platform like Default, can offer a scalable, fast lead distribution solution. 

With the best software, leads that come in from inbound forms can go through the following steps in seconds:

• Automated enrichment from email address
• Form data + enrichment data sent to the CRM and a record is created
• Lead-to-account matching for new contacts at existing accounts
• Real-time lead scoring and qualification
• Lead is routed to existing account owner or to a new sales rep (using round robin or rules-based lead distribution software)
• Built-in sales scheduling to accelerate qualified bookings

When all of these functions happen automatically, you can get meetings on the calendar in minutes. Which means your chances of closing that new business are much higher. 

Cons of automated distribution

The biggest downside of automated lead distribution is a lack of flexibility. Once your leads enter an automated sales workflow, that workflow treats them all the same way—unless they’re built for outliers.

But a lack of flexibility in lead distribution has less to do with automation itself and more to do with which tool you choose. If you use a patchwork of point solutions (or, as we like to call it, a Frankenstack) or a tool with rigid workflows (see our Default vs. HubSpot comparison to see what we mean), you’ll end up with automations that don’t serve your customers or your business.

A platform like Default that handles forms, enrichment, qualification, routing, and scheduling in a single platform enables a high degree of flexibility. This includes the ability to create complex lead routing rules, workflows for outliers, and more. 

Lead distribution FAQ

How do you distribute leads evenly?

The most common approach to distributing your leads evenly is through round robin rules. With this approach, every sales rep receives the same number of leads. 

What are the three different groups of leads?

The three different groups of leads are: hot leads, warm leads, and cold leads. Hot leads are a good fit for your product and ready to buy now. Warm leads are gathering information about you and your product, but may not be ready to buy. Cold leads are unaware of your company or brand. 

What’s the best way to categorize your leads?

There are plenty of ways to categorize your leads. The most basic categorization is into qualified (good fit, ready to buy) and unqualified (either a poor fit or not yet ready to buy). From there, you can further categorize leads by company size, job description, new vs. existing account, industry, and more.

How to automate lead distribution with Default

As we mentioned earlier, success in automating your inbound sales depends entirely on the tools you use. Using a Frankenstack with a bunch of point solutions will be slow and prone to broken integrations. On the other hand, many enterprise lead distribution platforms lack the flexibility necessary when handling complex B2B use cases. 

With Default, on the other hand, you get speed + scalability + flexibility in a single platform: 

• Seamlessly route leads, contacts, or accounts by owner
• Match new contacts to existing CRM objects and set prioritization rules for deduping
• Route leads by ownership, segment, industry, company size, or other data in your CRM
• Automate no-shows and abandoned flows with nurture sequences

Default is built to replace your existing RevOps tech stack. Sound too ambitious? Take a look at the platform and judge for yourself. Schedule a Default demo today. 

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