LRM: Best Practices IV - Lead Routing by J Font Lead Routing is a very powerful automation tool that is available from within Lead Response Management software. In fact, most good CRMs and good marketing software in general will have routing capabilities as well. Its proper use can really streamline work flow, and assist in the getting the best results from your marketing and sales efforts. By setting up rules for routing leads, a manager of a marketing or sales team can automatically assign leads to their representatives without having to take any action on the leads. Depending on your business model, it can be an indispensable time saving tool. Oftentimes, lead routing is used simply to make sure leads are distributed evenly among all of the members of a team. This is a great way to use lead routing, but is only one of its basic capacities. When more advanced routing is required, LRM software can be a very powerful tool, with features that may not be available in other types of software. For example, if your company is set up in a way that requires all of your premium / qualified leads to go to a specific individual or a specific group of individuals who are specialized members of your team, LRM tools can come in handy. Furthermore, because leads often need to be screened or qualified before they are routed and distributed among a team, LRM lead routing features help a great deal. This is because LRM software has built in automated features which act on specific triggers. Thus, lead routing on any given lead does not have to take place only when the leads enter the system. It can be triggered by a change in any value of the lead information at any time of the lead's life within your system. Setting up a good lead routing system touches on a topic I continually emphasize on, you need to understand your leads. Once you understand them, you will be able to know which of your employees is the best one to handle them well and turn the opportunity into profit. Without this, a lead routing system is just another nice feature without much more than a convenience value to it. Lead routing is definitely an option to be considered if your company has large departments is which a significant amount of distribution of leads occurs. Automating this part of the lead management process can really help managers save a great deal of time. With extra time comes extra productivity. What manager does not want more time and productivity?