Automated lead routing (preview): Right salesperson, right time, more sales

The lead routing capability (preview) in Dynamics 365 Sales automates the distribution of incoming leads to sellers and teams, ensuring that leads are consistently assigned based on repeatable rules and configurations defined by your organization. Automated lead routing creates process efficiencies, so the right prospect reaches the right salesperson at the right time, eliminating errors from manual routing, and creating a balanced workload for global sales teams.

Dynamics 365 Sales lead routing (preview) is based on an easily configurable, rule-based assignment engine that automatically distributes leads using various commonly used parameters, strung together in a simple rule framework.

Shorten sales cycles and improve conversion rates

Customers are looking for quick solutions. In this digital age, they are aware of their needs, and know how to fulfill them. If customers don’t get a quick and satisfactory response to their query, they can easily reach out to a competitor.

It is critical not only to assign the correct seller to a lead but also to ensure that leads are assigned immediately. Lead routing in Dynamics 365 Sales assigns it to the seller as soon as a lead is either created or updated. The system detects a change, and if it fulfills the rules conditions then the lead gets assigned to the seller. The assignment is also expedited with the use of target segments within the rules, which helps in improving the lead conversion rate.

The right people for the right job

Sellers have different skills and competencies, they speak different languages, they’re located in different geographies, and they have different levels of selling experience. Assignment of incoming leads should be based on these characteristics, to make sellers more effective in their engagements and improve the overall customer experience, resulting in overall higher conversion rates.

Lead routing in Dynamics 365 Sales can be configured using detailed seller attributes and business rule configurations. The lead routing rules provide the flexibility to support the simplest of matching to complex ones, based on business needs.

Lead routing rules support:

• Direct matching of attributes between seller and lead, for example the geographic location of the lead matches where the seller is located.
• Indirect matching of attributes between seller and lead, for example the lead’s parent account territory matches the seller’s territory.

Seller attributes used in a rule can come from two different sources:

• General seller attributes, which come from within the master data form in Dynamics 365.
• Specific seller attributes, which are used only for routing rules.

Here are a few common ways seller attributes can be used:

• Territory and geography (country, state, district, pin code)
• Specialization
• Availability and/or capacity of seller
• Product of interest
• Lead score

Automation keeps focus on strategic activities

Kitchen automation tools were invented to help cooks focus on critical cooking activities and bring relief from mundane tasks. The cooks’ focus was directed toward making a delectable dish and efficiencies were gained to be able to serve more dining guests within a limited amount of time.

Similarly, lead routing features can help those responsible for lead assignments focus on strategic and mission critical activities and bring relief from time-consuming lead assignment and distribution. The Dynamics 365 Sales lead routing is flexible and easy to construct.

The distribution can happen in the following ways:

• Round robin
• Load balancing

Lead distribution can take into consideration seller capacity and availability. Capacity can be set for each seller and availability is maintained by the seller in the availability calendar.

Lead routing is a critical factor of sales success. Accurate and timely distribution of leads can significantly impact the top line of the organization. Lead routing in Dynamics 365 Sales provides an automated, rule-based routing process.

Next steps

Learn more about lead routing in the Administrator guide, and try out the lead routing capability in Dynamics 365 Sales.

The post Automated lead routing (preview): Right salesperson, right time, more sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.