More and more companies are abandoning traditional sales territories in favor of round robin lead assignment. It’s not hard to see why. Sales territories are difficult to manage and often result in feelings of inequality among sales team members.
Round robin assignment refers to assigning leads to a group of sales reps in a rotation. Round robin assignment is easy to manage and will put an end to debates among your sales reps about territories. More importantly, round robin assignment does away with traditional territory boundaries–giving you the flexibility to assign leads based on any criteria you want; e.g. sales rep availability, workload, industry, location, product line, and more. In this article we’ll explore some of the benefits of round robin assignment.
1. Eliminate Territory Complaints
Dividing territories equally among your sales reps is what Harvard Business Review called the sales profession’s “biggest trouble spot”. Territory management is an exhausting process. And spoiler alert: your sales team will never be happy with the result.
Save yourself the hassle and consider a round robin strategy instead. You might be surprised at how receptive your sales team is to ditching territories.
2. Compare Sales Reps on Equal Ground
Territories make it IMPOSSIBLE to accurately measure sales rep performance. Ask a sales rep why he/she didn’t meet his/her quota and the response will almost always be “the leads were garbage”. How do we separate sales rep performance from leads?
The only 100% accurate way is by using round robin. This removes statistical bias by assigning leads evenly among a group of sales reps. Thus allowing you to determine who is the best (or worst) at closing leads.
3. Assign Leads to the Best Sales Rep
The best assignment strategies ensure that leads are assigned to the RIGHT rep the first time. Round robin assignment makes it possible to match prospects to the best rep based on industry, product line, location, language, and more.
You might be thinking “WHOA, that sounds like a lot to manage!” This used to be the case–but modern technology makes it possible to fully automate lead assignment.
4. Assign Leads Based on Availability
Leads go cold in a matter of minutes. If you’re assigning leads to reps who are unavailable (whether they’re on vacation or in a meeting) you’re throwing money down the toilet.
With traditional territories, sales reps often have to find someone to cover for them while they’re away. With round robin it’s possible to ensure leads never get assigned to unavailable sales reps.
5. Avoid Cherry-Picking
Sales reps will often selectively work some leads while ignoring others in their territory. With traditional territories there’s not much that can be done about this. You can create a service-level agreement (SLA) for your sales team that defines expected behavior for responding to leads. However, enforcing this SLA can be difficult.
Round robin assignment makes enforcing SLAs much easier. For example, you can automatically reassign unworked leads after 30 minutes to the next available sales rep.
Conclusion
Round robin assignment is a simple yet powerful way to assign leads. And the best news? There is a fully automated lead assignment solution already available for Salesforce CRM. Kubaru makes it easy to assign leads to your sales reps based on skill set, availability, workload, and more. To see how Kubaru can help you optimize your lead assignment strategy, schedule a demo today.