{"id":1668,"date":"2026-01-20T16:11:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T21:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog2wrkdev.wpenginepowered.com\/lead-routing\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T07:51:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T11:51:35","slug":"lead-routing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog2workato.wpengine.com\/lead-routing\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Lead Routing: Definition and 4 Proven Best Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The vast majority of organizations, (99%, according to our study<\/a>) fail to email or call an inbound lead within 5 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This lack of responsiveness can be all it takes to lose potential deals, often to competitors, and hurt your organization\u2019s reputation in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To boost your lead response time<\/a>, you can turn to lead routing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can you implement lead routing effectively at your organization? We\u2019ll tackle this question by offering a variety of best practices, but before we do, let\u2019s align on what the term means. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is lead routing?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lead routing is the end-to-end process of collecting leads and distributing them internally. <\/strong>This process can vary widely depending on how the leads are collected and how you want to route each\u2014but, generally speaking, the overarching goal remains the same: to respond to more leads, faster.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this definition in mind, here are some lead routing best practices that experts at Etumos<\/a>*, Edward Unthank, and Nate Smitha, shared with us!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: Etumos is a marketing technology consultancy that enables marketers to maximize the effectiveness of their tech stacks, using proven best practices to ensure their clients can stay focused on activities that create revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related: 7 types of sales automation that your organization can implement<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lead routing best practices<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Though there are countless tips we could mention, we\u2019ll cover 4 that are critical.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"If<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

1. Set up routing criteria that enable leads to reach the right person<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Who you route the lead to can depend on the lead’s employer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does the lead work at an organization that isn\u2019t already a customer? Then you should send the lead to a sales development rep who can qualify the lead\u2014before moving them to the account executive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively, if the lead works at an organization that\u2019s already a client, you can pass them on to the appropriate customer success manager (CSM). They\u2019ll be in a better position to upsell\/cross-sell the lead based on their current relationship with the customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This process of routing leads based on their employer\u2019s relationship to yours not only helps your team convert leads at a higher rate, but it also allows you to provide a better experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, the CSM can help educate the lead on what other stakeholders at their organization are doing with your product\/service, as well as offer more prescriptive solutions based on the CSM\u2019s knowledge of the lead\u2019s organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related: How to use intent data effectively<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"This<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

2. Match appropriate account types\/profiles with the right employees<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Your sales reps likely vary in their strengths. Perhaps some have been particularly successful at converting leads in a certain industry, while others have done well with leads who work in a specific job title. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you can identify your reps\u2019 strengths and use them to determine who gets which lead, you\u2019ll be more likely to convert leads at a higher rate and delight your employees (as they\u2019ll be positioned to succeed). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s worth noting that your criteria can extend far beyond industry and job title. For example, it can include things like organization size, department, job level, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.  Don\u2019t be overly-prescriptive<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This best practice is hard to follow successfully. After all, it\u2019s hard to draw the line between helping reps and providing them too much information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you manage to provide colleagues with a variety of details that aren\u2019t necessarily essential, like the last activity a lead performed with your organization, you can unintentionally motivate your reps to cherry pick leads and neglect certain ones altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This naturally lowers your conversion rates and hurts your sales long-term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smitha explains further:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s perfectly natural for sales reps to cherry pick. After all, people are naturally wired to figure out how they can extract the most value with the least amount of effort. If certain MQL categories are perceived as less valuable, specific leads may be the last to be worked and may even be skipped altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This can hinder marketing\u2019s efforts to improve the performance of (historically) poorer-performing offers or channels that are represented to sales as MQL categories.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To ensure that cherry picking isn’t impacting conversion rates, Smitha advocates for marketing and sales leadership to partner on regular testing that looks for variance in conversion rates with respect to how MQLs are categorized and presented to sales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparative conversion rate testing can be done either by working with dedicated SDRs tasked with focusing on traditional low-performing categories or by obfuscating MQL categorization for subsets of total lead volume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related: How Lead Bot can improve your lead routing workflow<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Route leads based on geography <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Assuming that your organization determines lead ownership (at least partially) by location, this best practice is worth following closely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? An employee who works in the same time zone as the lead is more likely to be working and ready to respond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, that employee is likely in a better position to nurture that lead as they\u2019ll have an easier time scheduling meetings, and naturally have more to connect on (e.g. plans for a regional holiday).

Related: What you need to know about RevOps<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leverage Workato to route leads intelligently<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Workato, an enterprise automation platform, allows you to route leads in a variety of advanced ways that you couldn\u2019t do otherwise. For example, it lets you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n