Lead Routing
Lead Routing is The automated process of assigning inbound leads and accounts to the right sales rep based on territory, segment, account ownership, round-robin rules, or custom logic.
Lead routing determines which rep gets which lead — and how fast they get it. Speed-to-lead is one of the highest-impact metrics in B2B sales: responding within 5 minutes vs 30 minutes can increase conversion rates by 10x. But speed only matters if the lead goes to the right rep.
Common Routing Models
- Round-robin: Equal distribution across reps. Simple but ignores specialization and capacity.
- Territory-based: Route by geography, industry, or company size. Requires clean data and maintained territory maps.
- Account-based: Match leads to existing account owners. Critical for enterprise motions to avoid duplicate outreach.
- Weighted/capacity-based: Factor in rep workload, deal stage distribution, or specialization. Most sophisticated.
The RevOps Challenge
Routing seems simple until edge cases pile up. What happens when a lead matches two territories? When the account owner is on PTO? When the lead's company has a parent account owned by a different rep? RevOps designs the rules and escalation logic that handle these scenarios.
LeanData is the market leader for routing. For more on the RevOps responsibility, see What Is RevOps?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is lead-to-account matching?
The process of connecting an inbound lead to an existing CRM account. Essential for ABM and enterprise sales to ensure leads reach the right account owner instead of being treated as net-new.
Get Weekly RevOps Intelligence
Salary benchmarks, tool reviews, and job market insights for revenue operations leaders. Every week.