Design Lead Routing Rules

Help the user design and implement lead routing — from choosing a routing model and defining assignment rules through platform implementation, speed-to-lead optimization, and capacity management. This skill is tool-agnostic and covers Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Apollo, and standalone routing tools.

Step 1 — Gather context

Ask the user:

What's your team structure?
- How many reps (SDRs, AEs, or both)?
- Are reps specialized (by segment, territory, vertical) or generalist?
- Any tiered seniority (senior reps vs junior)?
Where do leads come from?
- A) Inbound (website forms, content, events)
- B) Outbound (SDR-sourced, cold outbound)
- C) Product-led (signups, trials, PQLs)
- D) Partner/channel
- E) Mix — describe
How are leads routed today?
- A) Manual assignment (manager assigns)
- B) Round-robin
- C) Territory-based
- D) CRM automation rules
- E) No system — first come first served
- F) Starting from scratch
What tools do you use?
- CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, other
- Sales engagement: Salesloft, Apollo, Mailshake, other
- Routing tools: LeanData, Chili Piper, Distributely, none
What's your lead volume? (weekly or monthly inbound leads, rough estimate)

If the user's request already provides most of this context, skip directly to the relevant step. Lead with your best-effort answer using reasonable assumptions (stated explicitly), then ask only the most critical 1-2 clarifying questions at the end — don't gate your response behind gathering complete context.

Step 2 — Routing model framework

Choose the right routing model based on team structure and lead characteristics.

Decision matrix

Model	Best for	Team size	Complexity	Speed-to-lead
Round-robin	Equal distribution, generalist teams	Any	Low	Fast
Territory-based	Geographic or named-account specialization	4+ reps	Medium	Fast
Score-based	Matching lead quality to rep skill	6+ reps	High	Medium
Account-based	Named accounts with assigned owners	Any with ABM	Medium	Fast (if owner exists)
Hybrid	Complex orgs with multiple segments	10+ reps	High	Varies

Round-robin

How it works: Leads assigned in rotation to each rep equally
Variants: Simple (A→B→C→A), weighted (A gets 40%, B gets 30%, C gets 30%), availability-aware (skip reps who are OOO)
Best for: Small teams, equal lead quality, no specialization needed
Limitation: Doesn't account for rep skill, lead quality, or territory

Territory-based

How it works: Leads assigned based on geographic region, industry vertical, or company size segment
Territory types: Geographic (NA West, NA East, EMEA, APAC), vertical (Healthcare, FinTech, SaaS), segment (SMB, Mid-market, Enterprise)
Best for: Teams with regional/vertical expertise, large enough to specialize
Limitation: Uneven lead distribution if territories have different volumes

Score-based

How it works: High-score leads go to senior/experienced reps, lower-score leads go to SDRs for qualification
Tiers: Hot (80+ score → senior AE), warm (50-79 → standard AE), cold (30-49 → SDR), below 30 → nurture/discard
Fallback rules: Route unscored leads (missing data = no score) to SDRs for manual qualification. When a tier's rep pool is at capacity, overflow to the next tier down (e.g., hot leads overflow to standard AE pool if all senior AEs are maxed). Set per-rep capacity caps (e.g., max 30 leads/week) and auto-redistribute when a rep hits their cap.
Best for: Teams with lead scoring in place (see /sales-lead-score), tiered rep experience
Limitation: Requires a working scoring model; bad scores = bad routing

Account-based

How it works: Leads matched to existing account owners. Net-new accounts routed via other model.
Logic: Check if lead's company matches an existing account → assign to account owner. If no match → fallback to round-robin or territory.
Best for: ABM teams, named account strategies, preventing rep conflicts
Limitation: Requires clean account data and dedup

Step 3 — Design routing rules

Priority waterfall

Build routing rules as a priority waterfall — the first matching rule wins:

Priority	Rule	Example
1	Existing account match	Lead's company matches an owned account → route to account owner
2	Named account list	Company on target account list → route to assigned AE
3	Score threshold	Score ≥ 80 → route to senior AE pool
4	Territory match	Geography/segment matches territory → route to territory owner
5	Round-robin fallback	No other rule matched → round-robin across available reps

Speed-to-lead SLAs

Speed-to-lead is the most important metric in routing. Response time directly impacts conversion:

Response time	Conversion impact
< 5 minutes	8x more likely to qualify vs 30 min
5-30 minutes	Baseline
30-60 minutes	50% drop in qualification rate
> 1 hour	80%+ drop
> 24 hours	Essentially dead — better to re-nurture

SLA recommendations by lead type:

Inbound demo request: < 5 minutes
Inbound content download: < 1 hour
PQL (product-led): < 15 minutes
Outbound response/reply: < 1 hour
Partner referral: < 30 minutes

Overflow and fallback rules

What happens when the assigned rep can't respond in time:

Scenario	Fallback
Rep doesn't respond within SLA	Escalate to manager + reassign to next available
Rep is OOO	Skip in rotation, assign to backup
Territory owner at capacity	Overflow to adjacent territory or SDR pool
No account owner exists	Fall through to round-robin

Conflict resolution

Multiple reps claim same lead: Account owner wins. If no account owner, first-touch attribution.
Lead matches multiple territories: Primary territory wins (define primary in territory rules).
Existing customer, new contact: Route to account owner, not round-robin.
Recycled/re-engaged lead: Route back to original owner if still on team, otherwise round-robin.

Step 4 — Platform implementation

Salesforce

Assignment Rules: Setup > Lead Assignment Rules — define criteria and assign to users or queues
Queues: Create lead queues for pools (SDR pool, AE pool, territory queues)
Flow Builder: For complex logic — score-based routing, account matching, SLA escalation
Matching rules: Setup > Duplicate Management > Matching Rules — match leads to existing accounts
Escalation rules: Setup > Escalation Rules — auto-escalate if not contacted within SLA
Third-party: LeanData or Distributely for advanced routing with visual rule builders

HubSpot

Lead rotation: Settings > Users & Teams > Lead Rotation — built-in round-robin
Workflows: Automation > Workflows — build if/then routing logic based on properties
Contact owner assignment: Use workflow actions to set owner based on territory, score, or account
SLA monitoring: Create workflow to reassign if owner doesn't log activity within X hours
Third-party: Chili Piper for real-time scheduling + routing from forms

Salesloft

Rhythm routing: Rhythm prioritizes actions for reps — configure routing via CRM sync
Cadence assignment: Auto-import leads into cadences based on CRM assignment
Round-robin: Not native — handle in CRM, sync assignment to Salesloft

Apollo

Sequence assignment: Assign contacts to sequences owned by specific reps
CRM sync: Apollo respects CRM ownership — route in CRM, sync to Apollo
Lists: Create filtered lists per rep/territory, assign sequences accordingly

Step 5 — Measurement

Key metrics

Metric	Target	What it tells you
Speed-to-lead	< 5 min (inbound demo), < 1 hr (other)	Are reps responding fast enough?
Lead acceptance rate	> 80%	Are reps accepting or rejecting assigned leads? Low acceptance = bad targeting or routing
Conversion by route	Compare across models	Which routing path converts best? Identifies if certain territories or tiers underperform
Capacity utilization	70-90% per rep	Are reps overloaded or underutilized? Adjust weights or territories
Cherry-picking rate	< 10%	Are reps ignoring low-score leads? May need to enforce SLAs or adjust scoring

Optimization cadence

Weekly: Check speed-to-lead and acceptance rate
Monthly: Review conversion by route, adjust weights or territories
Quarterly: Full routing model review — does the model still match team structure and lead sources?

Gotchas

Don't route without enrichment. If leads arrive with just an email (e.g., from a form), enrich with company data before routing. Without company/title data, territory and score-based routing can't work. Use /sales-enrich to fill in gaps before routing.
Don't ignore speed-to-lead. A perfect routing model with slow response is worse than a simple round-robin with fast response. If you can only optimize one thing, optimize speed-to-lead. The data is clear: 5 minutes vs 30 minutes is an 8x difference in qualification.
Don't overcomplicate before simple works. Start with round-robin. Only add territory or score-based routing when you have data showing it improves conversion. Complexity increases maintenance burden and failure modes.

Related skills

/sales-lead-score — Design the scoring model that feeds score-based routing
/sales-enrich — Enrich leads with company/title data needed for routing rules
/sales-prospect-list — Build prospect lists with pre-segmented territories
/revops — Design the broader marketing-to-sales handoff process
/sales-cadence — Design cadences for different route segments
/sales-do — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill.

Examples

Example 1: Round-robin for growing team

User says: "I have 8 SDRs and about 200 inbound leads per week. How should I route them?" Skill does:

Recommends weighted round-robin as baseline (equal distribution initially)
Designs SLA rules: demo requests < 5 min, content leads < 1 hour
Adds overflow rules for when reps are at capacity or OOO
Provides HubSpot/Salesforce implementation steps Result: Round-robin routing with SLAs and overflow handling

Example 2: Territory routing

User says: "I need territory routing for 4 AEs: NA West, NA East, EMEA, and APAC." Skill does:

Defines territory rules by geography (country/state mapping to each territory)
Handles named accounts that override geography
Adds fallback for leads with unknown geography
Provides CRM implementation steps Result: Territory routing with named-account override and geographic fallback

Example 3: Score-based tiered routing

User says: "I want to route high-score leads to senior reps and low-score leads to SDRs. We use HubSpot." Skill does:

Defines score thresholds for tiered routing (hot/warm/cold)
Maps tiers to rep pools (senior AEs, standard AEs, SDRs)
Adds fallback for unscored leads
Provides HubSpot workflow implementation steps Result: Tiered routing with score thresholds, rep pool assignment, and fallback rules

Troubleshooting

Leads sitting unworked

Symptom: Leads assigned but not contacted within SLA Cause: Rep overload, no SLA enforcement, or leads assigned during off-hours Solution: Add escalation rules — if no activity within SLA, reassign to next available. Implement capacity caps per rep. Route based on business hours/timezone.

Uneven distribution

Symptom: Some reps have 3x the leads of others Cause: Territory imbalance, weighted round-robin misconfigured, or account-matching sending too many leads to one owner Solution: Audit territory volumes monthly. Adjust weights to normalize. Add capacity caps to prevent any single rep from getting more than X leads/day.

Rep conflicts over lead ownership

Symptom: Multiple reps claiming the same lead or account Cause: No account-matching step in routing, or duplicate accounts in CRM Solution: Add account-matching as the first step in routing waterfall. Deduplicate accounts in CRM. Establish clear rules: account owner always wins for existing accounts.

sales-lead-routing