Lead Distribution 101: Methods, Strategies & Ping Post Technology

Victoria Berezhetska

Content Lead

13 minutes read

Did you know that responding to leads within just 5 minutes can increase your chances of conversion by up to 9 times? Timing is everything in the fast-paced world of business, and lead distribution software is the secret weapon every company needs to maximise the potential of their inbound leads.

Businesses often grapple with the complexities of assigning inbound leads to their marketing and sales teams, hindering the conversion process. The accuracy of the lead qualification process ultimately determines your sales conversion rate, and the key to success lies in mastering effective lead distribution strategies that not only streamline the conversion process but also provide substantial control over revenue.

But how can businesses navigate through this chaos and ensure a seamless lead distribution process? The answer is leveraging cutting-edge lead distribution solutions that efficiently handle declined leads and empower businesses to wield control over their revenue streams.

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In this article, we’ll delve into the value of the lead management process and the pivotal role played by lead distribution systems in fostering business growth.

The Importance of Streamlined Lead Management

Let’s start by understanding the core of the lead management process – identifying, managing, and converting prospective customers into loyal, paying ones. Lead management solutions, including lead distribution and tracking, empower businesses to attract high-quality leads, manage them efficiently, and ultimately generate income by converting them into loyal customers.

Let’s dive into the details of the management process, exploring each stage and examining how a lead distribution solution makes it possible.

The 5 Essential Stages of Lead Management

Traditionally, lead management is segmented into five stages. Here’s a brief overview of each phase to enhance your comprehension of the process.

Stage 1. Lead Capture

Lead capture entails leads entering a company’s database for the first time. The initial entry of leads into the company database comes from various sources like social media, websites, events, email campaigns, and PPC efforts. As a result, businesses generate inbound leads in substantial numbers today.

Here is a list of channels that marketers commonly employ to capture leads:

The growing array of lead sources prompts brands to automate their lead capture process instead of handling inbound leads manually in an Excel spreadsheet.

By utilising marketing automation tools such as lead distribution and tracking, businesses can leverage integrated lead capture features. These functionalities enable capturing leads from diverse sources and seamless transfer to the relevant sales professionals for subsequent follow-up.

Stage 2. Lead Tracking

Businesses use the lead tracking stage to determine lead sources and types – inbound or outbound – and use this data to plan and enhance future conversion strategies.

Stage 3. Lead Distribution

In this stage, sales professionals are strategically assigned leads based on behaviour, website engagements, and relevant experience.

Carefully planned lead distribution can enhance conversion rates and boost sales. For example, companies can allocate leads considering factors such as geographic location, interest in specific products, or account size. In certain scenarios, sales representatives may be designated to the same region, necessitating the application of specific rotation methods and lead assignment rules to ensure equitable distribution of leads.

Stage 4. Qualification Process

During the qualification process, sales professionals engage with assigned inbound leads, using lead scoring to identify sales-ready opportunities. In the process of qualifying a lead as a sales opportunity, sales representatives commonly rely on a set of features provided by their managers, aiming to eliminate any guesswork involved.

This procedure is referred to as lead scoring, involving the assignment of specific scores, typically ranging from one to ten, to inbound leads. These scores are determined based on various criteria, such as demographics, engagement, buying history, behaviour patterns, interests, and more. Leads deemed qualified, particularly those with higher scores, are considered sales-ready and usually given the highest priority.

Stage 5. Lead Nurturing

A highly advanced lead generation process doesn’t guarantee an abundance of high-quality leads. 

In other words, the majority of inbound leads may not receive high scores or make an immediate purchase. Even if leads lose interest in your offerings, it’s important to view them as potential buyers.

Develop and implement lead nurturing strategies to keep leads interested and engaged until they convert into customers.

What Is Lead Distribution Software?

Lead distribution systems serve as the bridge connecting consumers with the products or services they seek. Businesses can employ various marketing channels to match leads with the most suitable representatives, optimising the conversion process.

The lead distribution system enables the use of various distribution logics. Here’s an illustration of a lead distribution logic employed by a financial services company:

Source: A Marketer’s Guide To Call Tracking & Distribution

Lead generation firms frequently employ distribution and lead distribution software, effectively linking prospects with ideal buyers. Businesses employing automated lead distribution capitalise on advanced algorithms, aligning representatives, buyers, sellers, and leads based on information garnered during the lead and call tracking processes.

For example, Phonexa’s LMS Sync, a lead management and distribution solution, includes a distinctive filtering feature. This feature swiftly empowers buyers to receive the most pertinent leads, reducing lead response time. Moreover, it facilitates lead distributors and generators in promptly directing leads to the appropriate destination.

Distinguishing Lead Distribution From Lead Management

While lead management encompasses capturing, tracking, validating, nurturing, and forwarding leads to sales professionals, lead distribution is about capturing inbound leads and directing them to specific destinations or lead buyers. It not only facilitates monetising declined leads but also connects businesses with more interested parties.

Automated Lead Distribution Methods

As businesses scale, manual lead management becomes less effective. Automated methods ensure efficient lead distribution. Here are four common automated methods:

• Round Robin Lead Assignment: This algorithm distributes leads based on the availability of representatives, reducing lead response time.
• Top Performer: Prioritises high-performing leads and matches them with top-skilled reps.
• Geographic Location and Language: Routes leads based on sales professionals’ location, avoiding language and time zone issues.
• Company Budget and Size: Tailored for B2B leads, considering the unique aspects of marketing to enterprise-level companies.

Crafting Effective Lead Distribution Strategies

Customising lead distribution rules and automating tasks is crucial for success. Follow these steps to develop an effective strategy:

• Identify the Best Distribution Software: Choose software that allows seamless buying and selling of leads.
• Screen Prospects for Quality: Ensure the distribution system assists in screening prospects for quality.
• Customise Distribution Rules: Tailor rules to handle and distribute inbound leads effectively.
• Test and Evaluate: Regularly test distribution rules, compare conversion rates, and fine-tune strategies for optimal performance.

It’s likely that sales representatives and marketing professionals on your sales team have employed one of the lead distribution strategies outlined below. Although each strategy has its merits and limitations, it’s essential to grasp how these approaches can assist you in determining the most suitable fit for your company’s upcoming growth stage.

The following are common lead distribution strategies.

Fine-Tuning the Lead Distribution Process

After selecting a distribution strategy, optimising and streamlining the process is crucial. Here are five tips:

1. Implement Marketing Automation Tools

The collaboration and seamless transfer of leads between sales and marketing departments are vital. Businesses can streamline their lead capture process by implementing an appropriate marketing automation solution.

Whether a lead signs up for a trial, communicates through social media or completes a web form, their information can be captured, behaviour tracked, and then directed to specific sales professionals via the CRM system integrated with the lead distribution tool.

2. Automate Lead Qualification Process

Businesses should identify the factors influencing their lead qualification process, such as geographic location, company size, budget, and organisational challenges. This enables the filtration of inbound leads based on specific predetermined criteria, ensuring that only high-intent leads are directed to your sales representatives.

3. Set Lead Distribution Rules

Following lead qualification and prioritisation, businesses should allocate them to appropriate sales professionals, establishing specific lead distribution rules. Common factors considered in setting these rules include:

• Experience and skill set: Many brands prioritise high-quality leads for experienced sales reps, ensuring top-level performance and maintaining high conversion rates.
• Geographic location: Assigning leads to company representatives from the same area can be an effective approach in certain cases.
• Representative’s availability: A standard method involves assigning leads based on the sales rep’s availability.

Regardless of the chosen criteria, it’s essential to ensure that company representatives have sufficient resources to engage with leads effectively.

4. Capitalise on Measurable Outcomes

Monitoring and assessing the outcomes of the applied lead distribution strategy is equally crucial as evaluating each stage’s performance within your sales funnel. Here are key metrics that businesses commonly monitor:

• Call duration
• Lead response time
• Conversion rate
• Close rate

5. Leverage Tech Stack Integration

Before deploying a lead distribution system, brands should verify that their lead generation, call tracking, lead management tools, lead distribution tools, and CRM can seamlessly integrate. This ensures that companies can minimise lead response time, maintain an efficient sales process, and foster transparency within sales and marketing teams.

Lead Distribution and the Lead Generation Process

More than 50% of marketers allocate half of their budget to lead generation efforts, a practice hardly surprising given that effective lead generation builds a sales pipeline by capturing and stimulating the interest of potential buyers. Businesses leveraging lead gen to define their ideal customer profile can confidently pursue capturing higher-quality leads.

The synergy between lead generation and effective lead distribution is pivotal. Let’s delve into how lead generation efforts can enhance your company’s lead distribution system.

• Streamlined sales process: Companies armed with distribution and lead distribution systems can expedite the routing of new leads, deliver prompt responses to enquiries, and successfully close more sales deals.
• Elevated customer experience: Allocating the most knowledgeable representatives to handle lead enquiries unquestionably enhances the customer experience, fostering trust and satisfaction.
• Enhanced performance tracking: Among the various benefits of lead generation, its ability to simplify data analysis and performance tracking stands out. Combined with a tracking and lead distribution solution, businesses can assess how many sales representatives a lead has engaged with until the deal is closed.

Why Use Lead Distribution Software?

Efficiency and streamlined processes are paramount for organisations aiming to boost performance. Lead distribution software ensures better performance, speed, and integrations, allowing businesses to focus on innovative lead generation methods without compromising lead quality.

Phonexa’s lead distribution software, featuring ping post technology, empowers businesses to optimise traffic flow, craft customised ping trees, harness predictive insights into active campaigns, and strategically direct leads in real-time. This comprehensive software facilitates lead management and distribution processes by offering advanced reporting, automation, call tracking, and distribution resources, making it one of the most effective lead distribution solutions on the market.

Within Phonexa’s ping tree software, a sophisticated lead distribution process unfolds, utilising ping post technology to deliver and route leads to multiple sellers and buyers based on diverse factors, filters, and lead prices.

All these functionalities converge at the lead management dashboard through LMS Sync, Phonexa’s comprehensive lead management, tracking, and distribution solution. The ping tree software further enables publishers and affiliate marketers to promptly disseminate the same leads across a network of potential buyers for real-time bidding.

Features of Phonexa’s Lead Distribution Software

Intelligent Lead Distribution

Utilises rules-based distribution to find the best match between a lead and sales rep based on specific criteria such as lead origin, language, interests, etc.

Streamlined Sales Process

Seamlessly organises lead data, distributes leads, adds prospects to the sales pipeline, and streamlines the sales process with CRM integrations.

Multiple Integration Options

Allows integration with CRM software, ensuring automated workflows, strategic decisions, and accelerated lead data transfers.

Advanced Reporting

Provides granular analytics and an easy-to-use dashboard for detailed insights into agent performance, unpaid invoices, and more.

Customer Feedback Capture

Facilitates lead assignment while tracking leads and prospects through the sales or marketing process.

Real-Time Bidding and Lead Acquisition

Ping Post Calls 2.0, powered by Phonexa, enables collaboration between performance marketers, small businesses, and enterprises for real-time bidding based on the best call and lead data attributes.

Lead Distribution Software Use Cases Across Industries

Let’s explore how businesses can leverage lead distribution software in four different industries.

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Financial Services

Financial institutions frequently employ technical terminology to explain their processes and products, posing a challenge for potential customers to comprehend these offerings and complicating purchasing decisions. As prospective clients often have numerous questions, they reach out to financial advisors for clarification and informed decision-making.

Implementing lead distribution software can provide significant advantages for financial institutions, including:

• Automate key business processes, including lead distribution, ensuring prompt engagement with inbound leads.
• Use lead distribution to channel leads to appropriate financial advisors, enhancing first-call resolution.
• Capture customer feedback to assess and improve the performance of advisors.

Home Services

The home services and improvement sector encompasses various specialised offerings, such as solar power solutions, remodelling, and roofing.

When home service providers predominantly receive inbound leads from performance marketing companies or an affiliate network, these leads are concurrently distributed to multiple contractors. Essentially, the same lead may be sold to multiple contractors in a specific area, underscoring the importance of swift contact.

Implementing lead distribution software can assist contractors in achieving several objectives:

• Minimise lead response time
• Enhance conversion rates and increase sales
• Develop effective lead generation campaigns
• Distribute a higher volume of leads in less time
• Collect and capitalise on valuable lead data

Insurance

In the highly competitive arena of insurance, professionals and providers engage in strategic manoeuvres to secure a favourable position. Consequently, it is crucial to incorporate technological tools and solutions to enhance customer engagement, bolster retention, attract high-quality insurance leads, and execute effective lead distribution.

Here’s how insurance carriers and agencies can optimise the benefits of lead distribution software:

• Employ automation through ping tree and ping post technology to maximise sales and profits resulting from lead distribution endeavours.
• Enhance understanding and control over the generated inbound leads.
• Customise and fine-tune filters to attract a greater volume of insurance leads that align with specific criteria, thereby boosting the conversion rate.

Leverage real-time reporting capabilities to uncover trends in lead data.

Travel & Hospitality

Consumers reach out to hotel chains and tour operators to enquire about travel packages and accommodations, typically through phone calls, email, or live chat.

Implementing lead distribution software can be instrumental in helping travel and hospitality businesses meet their sales and marketing objectives by:

• Ensuring efficient lead distribution by directing calls and web leads to knowledgeable agents and sales representatives.
• Alleviating misunderstandings and language barriers by distributing leads to local sales professionals.
• Concentrating on closing more deals and optimising sales processes by channelling leads to the most suitable sales representatives and generating invoices proactively, even before prospective clients reach out to competitor companies.
• Fine-tuning the customer journey, recover lost inbound calls, and avoid missing any calls by integrating a marketing automation suite that encompasses call tracking and lead distribution solutions.

Optimise Your Lead Distribution

The continuous cycle of generating, capturing, qualifying, and distributing inbound leads persists across industries and niches. Consequently, formulating a distribution strategy and integrating lead distribution software is a reliable method to expedite the outreach process to leads and provide them with the optimal customer experience.

Schedule a consultation with Phonexa’s experts to discover how a comprehensive solution can increase lead response time, streamline sales workflows, and automate your lead distribution process.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an inbound lead?

Inbound leads are prospective clients who initiate contact with a business after an organic search, referral, or chance encounter with the company’s content.

What is lead distribution software?

Lead distribution software assigns inbound leads to suitable sales professionals based on predefined criteria, ensuring optimal matching for increased conversion rates.

What does it mean to distribute leads?

Distributing leads involves assigning inbound leads to sales reps manually or automatically based on specific criteria.

What is round-robin lead distribution?

Round-robin lead distribution involves assigning each new inbound lead to a distinct sales professional until every sales representative has received and managed an equal number of inbound leads. Subsequently, the process repeats in a cyclical fashion.

Why is lead distribution software essential?

Lead distribution software ensures that each lead is assigned to a sales rep with the right experience and skill set, optimising the customer experience and boosting conversion rates.