Automated lead and opportunity routing: Right salesperson, right time, more sales
The assignment rule capability in Dynamics 365 Sales automates the distribution of incoming leads and opportunities to sellers and teams, ensuring that the leads, or records, are consistently assigned based on repeatable rules and configurations defined by your organization. Automated lead and opportunity routing creates process efficiencies, so the right prospect reaches the right salesperson at the right time, eliminating errors from manual routing, and creating a balanced workload for global sales teams.
Dynamics 365 Sales lead and opportunity routing is based on an easily configurable, rule-based assignment engine that automatically distributes records using various commonly used parameters, strung together in a simple rule framework.
Shorten sales cycles and improve conversion rates
Customers are looking for quick solutions. In this digital age, they are aware of their needs, and know how to fulfill them. If customers don’t get a quick and satisfactory response to their query, they can easily reach out to a competitor.
It is critical not only to assign the correct seller to a lead but also to ensure that leads are assigned immediately. Assignment rules in Dynamics 365 Sales assign this record to the seller as soon as a lead or opportunity is either created or updated. The system detects a change, and if it fulfills the rules conditions, then the record gets assigned to the seller. The assignment is also expedited with the use of target segments within the rules, which helps in improving the lead or opportunity conversion rate.
The right people for the right job
Sellers have different skills and competencies, they speak different languages, they’re located in different geographies, and they have different levels of selling experience. Assignment of incoming leads should be based on these characteristics, to make sellers more effective in their engagements and improve the overall customer experience, resulting in overall higher conversion rates.
Assignment rules in Dynamics 365 Sales can be configured using detailed seller attributes and business rule configurations. The assignment rules provide the flexibility to support the simplest of matching to complex ones, based on business needs.
Assignment rules support:
- Direct matching of attributes between seller and record; for example, the geographic location of the lead matches where the seller is located.
- Indirect matching of attributes between seller and record; for example, the lead’s parent account territory matches the seller’s territory.
Seller attributes used in a rule can come from two different sources:
- General seller attributes, which come from within the master data form in Dynamics 365.
- Specific seller attributes, which are used only for assignment rules.
Here are a few common ways seller attributes can be used:
- Territory and geography (country, state, district, pin code)
- Specialization
- Availability and/or capacity of seller
- Product of interest
- Lead score
Automation keeps focus on strategic activities
Kitchen automation tools were invented to help cooks focus on critical cooking activities and bring relief from mundane tasks. The cooks’ focus was directed toward making a delectable dish and efficiencies were gained to be able to serve more dining guests within a limited amount of time.
Similarly, assignment rule features can help those responsible for lead assignments focus on strategic and mission critical activities and bring relief from time-consuming lead assignment and distribution. The Dynamics 365 Sales lead routing is flexible and easy to construct.
The distribution can happen in the following ways:
- Round robin
- Load balancing
Lead distribution can take into consideration seller capacity and availability. Capacity can be set for each seller and availability is maintained by the seller in the availability calendar.
The assignment rule capability is a critical factor in sales success. Accurate and timely distribution of leads can significantly impact the top line of the organization. Assignment rules in Dynamics 365 Sales provide an automated, rule-based routing process.
Next steps
Learn more about assignment rules in the Administrator guide, and try out the capability in Dynamics 365 Sales.
