3 ways to improve round-robin sales lead delivery
Round-robin lead delivery doesn't always end up even for sellers. What can you do to fix it and uphold your GTM rules of engagement? Read: "Everything Starts Out Looking Like a Toy" #228
Hi, I’m Greg 👋! I write weekly product essays, including system “handshakes”, the expectations for workflow, and the jobs to be done for data. What is Data Operations? was the first post in the series.
This week’s toy: a portable audio “sketchbook”: tape is a charming skeumomorphic audio recorder (yes, it looks like an old-school Walkman cassette tape. It’s a bit expensive in its current form, but ask yourself: what would you do with a portable 4 track recorder? Edition 228 of this newsletter is here - it’s December 9, 2024.
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The Big Idea
A short long-form essay about data things
⚙️ 3 ways to improve round-robin sales lead delivery
At your holiday table, one of the most important things to measure is the ratio of pie slices to people who want pie. If someone wants a piece of pecan pie and ends up with apple pie instead, they might be satisfied if a little disappointed. But end up with no pie for dessert? That’s a bigger problem.
GTM teams have a similar challenge in allocating the leads that arrive evenly among multiple sellers. Everyone wants to take the newest lead, and we need to allocate leads evenly and fairly to sellers while also optimizing for other factors like who can respond quickly to the prospect.
The likely solution? A “round-robin” distribution where each time a lead arrives, we assign it to the next seller in line. When we reach the end of the line, we return to the first seller and continue the cycle by assigning it to them.
Common Round Robin Challenges
Delivering the most equitable sort of customers is not always the same as assigning leads evenly. Why? Leads don’t arrive evenly or in the same quality bucket.
There are a few typical challenges that need to be mitigated in an even distribution of leads:
Speed to lead - If you need the fastest response, some team members might not be working when the lead arrives
Lead Quality - Not every lead is great, and some of them might not be qualified
Number of “At Bats” - Receiving an unqualified lead makes you wait until your next turn in line
As a seller, things are great if you end up on the right side of these equations. But you might start questioning the process when you don’t get the leads you wanted. GTM teams want sellers to have the opportunities they need to sell!
Improving Speed to Lead
According to Vendasta, 78% of B2B customers buy from the company that responds to them first. Whether you’re working in a contested sale or you are the vendor of choice, responding promptly is important.
What does that mean for round-robin distribution? Having a list of people who will always respond the fastest might mean arranging a team by time zone, where each time-zone based team might work certain hours. However, it also means making sure you have adequate coverage during other hours.
Maximizing speed to lead might mean that some reps don’t get as many opportunities.
Better Lead Quality
Another common problem with leads is a lead that turns out to be … not so great. While you can find some obvious tells for spammy leads (nonsense emails, mismatch of information, use of disposable email domains), there will always be good-looking leads that turn out to be bad.
The key difference in handling those lower quality leads is the ability to divert them from the round-robin so that a seller can receive a higher quality option. Then, if you find that a “spam” lead is a false positive, that’s one to feed back into the process.
Having a minimum viable quality standard for a lead makes it more likely that every lead will be a good selling opportunity.
How many at-bats is the right number?
If you ask sellers how many leads is the right number among a group of arrivals, most people would say “an even distribution”. Yet in most businesses the arrival rate of leads is … probably not even.
Positing that the right number of leads is “an even number of similar quality” leads, there are a few things to keep in mind:
We want to keep the existing rules of engagement intact
We don’t want to penalize sellers who are making an extra effort and succeeding
We need the rules to be transparent so everyone knows what’s going on
With these constraints in mind, let’s think about a few ways to improve the availability, speed, and fairness of our round robin.
Balancing opportunities
Weighting the distribution is a tactic you might use when certain reps have fewer leads (or fewer good leads) than other reps. Instead of an even distribution, think of this option as a lottery where certain reps have more chances to get a lead than others.
Capping the lead distribution by limiting the number of current leads any seller can have is another way of redistributing leads among more sellers. If reps have different realistic capacity, this might not be a great idea.
Resetting the order of the round-robin is another option when you have many people in a distribution list and the arrival rate of leads slows down. By changing the order of the group (daily or by period) you can deliver leads to different people in the list.
All of these strategies might not work, or be subject to other constraints. That’s why it’s also important to have the ability for sales managers to figuratively “put their finger on the scale” and deliver leads to a rep who needs more at-bats. You can do this by having a dedicated slot for a single rep or a few reps in the round robin, or by changing your weighting.
Eventually, this all hinges on the perception of your lead delivery. Does it feel fair and understandable? That’s what sellers want to do their jobs well.
What’s the takeaway? Round-robin lead distribution is a common method of balancing the delivery of leads among a team. Other factors in your GTM environment may make lead delivery uneven, so it’s important to understand the tools available to rebalance as needed.
Links for Reading and Sharing
These are links that caught my 👀
1/ A fantastic gift guide - If you’re looking for a gift for your favorite data nerd or anyone else in your life, Jason Kottke’s holiday guide is an excellent place to start.
2/ Stats say: go for it - NFL coaches, paying attention to success metrics and analytics, are going for it on 4th and 1 more than ever. The risk apparently is worth it, especially when the reward is keeping your opponent off of the field.
3/ Behavior change by candy dispenser - Dan Mayer conditioned himself to run more miles by using an automated candy dispenser and the Strava API. What’s great about this approach is that it’s both attainable and relatively low-tech. It would make a great integration for a candy or nut delivery company to give away automated dispensers plus software.
What to do next
Hit reply if you’ve got links to share, data stories, or want to say hello.
The next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.” - Chris Dixon