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
If references/learnings.md exists, read it first for accumulated knowledge.
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-enrichto 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.
- Self-improving: If you discover something not covered here, append it to
references/learnings.mdwith today's date.
Related skills
/sales-qualified— Qualified platform help (Salesforce-native real-time lead routing from website chat)/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.