Online leads are one of the fastest ways to grow your business. In the first two parts of our series, we showed the importance of being the first property manager to reach out to a lead. And while being first is important, we also covered why persistence is key in converting a lead into a customer.
But how can you be persistent when you have so little time in your day? The answer is to distribute your leads, which involves managing the volume of leads by assigning different leads to different sales agents. In this third part of our five-part series, we home in on why and how you should distribute your leads.
Distributing leads to appropriate sales representatives means taking all of the weight off of your shoulders and spreading it around to different team members. It can help your business operate more efficiently and potentially grow faster. A study from LeadSimple found that ”automatically sending each lead to the right person(s) improves lead response times and overall follow up.”
How do you this? After determining your bandwidth (for example, comparing how many leads you typically have in the pipeline with how many agents you employ), figure out the best approach for your business.
Perhaps the method of push lead distribution will work best for you. For example, you could divvy up the leads based on your agents’:
- Territory
- Experience
- Expertise
One format of push lead distribution is called round robin. Create a list of your sales representatives, ordering them either randomly or by the above criteria. The first lead is given to the first representative on the list, the second lead goes to the second representative, and so on.
Another way to assign leads via push distribution is based on your agents’ performance. In this variation, you reward your top-performing sales reps with more leads.
On the flipside of push distribution is pull lead distribution. This means you let your sales team pick their leads from a lead pool. This option gives the sales reps more control over who they contact.
Both pushing and pulling have their pros and cons. The success of push lead distribution depends on how well you set up your distribution plan. It may take iteration upon iteration before you figure out the right formula to maximize sales conversions. Push lead distribution tends to be more motivating for a sales team when compared with pull distribution, particularly when you use a rewards-based system.
Pull lead distribution, on the other hand, leaves the assignment and nurturing of leads to the sales team. This approach is more hands-off, but it may provide less motivation for the sales reps.
Because both push and pull distribution have benefits, it’s worth trying out both methods. See what works best for your sales team and your schedule. If you want to better organize your distribution, consider investing in customer relationship management (CRM) software like Salesforce or LeadSimple.
Regardless of how you distribute leads, what’s most important is that your sales agents know about new leads as soon as they become available so they can contact those leads immediately, striking before the competition has a chance to spring into action.
Next in our series: How to Communicate with and Nurture Your Leads
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