Round Robin Lead Distribution

Here is an interesting problem: how do you import a stack of leads and evenly distribute them between several reps? There is no inherent function within salesforce to accommodate this feat. But there is a way to do it. Here is one good way.

Essentially, you put an auto number on the lead record that assigns a new number to each new lead as they are created (or imported). To evenly distribute the leads between several reps, you simply divide that lead number by the number of reps and use the remainder +1 to assign each lead to one of the reps.

I'll use three reps in my example. If the lead number (the one we automatically generated) is divided by three and you just examine the remainder, you'll see this progression:

Lead Number Function Result Remainder Remainder+1 (Assignment)
1.......................... 1/3........... 0......... 1.................... 2
2.......................... 2/3........... 0......... 2................... 3
3.......................... 3/3........... 0......... 0................... 1
4.......................... 4/3........... 1.......... 1................... 2
5.......................... 5/3........... 1.......... 2.................. 3
6.......................... 6/3........... 2......... 0................... 1

Then just use assignment rules to assign the lead based on the result: just assign all the "1s" to the first rep, all "2s" to the second rep, and all the "3s" to the third rep.

The way I did this was to create two new fields. The auto generated number field called "Lead Number" and a formula field called "Assignment."

The formula I used for the Assignment field was this:

MOD( Value(Lead_Number__c) , 3 ) + 1

MOD gives you the remainder of a division, so you can see that I divided Lead Number by 3. The "Value" function takes Lead Number, which is actually a text field, and turns it into a real number. Then we add 1 so that a 0 is not returned.

Then create your lead assignment rule called "Round Robin" with 3 rule entries. The first entry will assign all leads with an Assignment field = 1 to the first rep, and so on for the second two rule entries.

If you have more reps, just divide by that bigger number and create the right number of rule entries.

Button for Reverse Number Lookup

Here is a pretty simple tool that I have found really helpful for some of the work that I do. I get leads from all over the country on my website. My web form, which feeds to web-to-lead in salesforce has a "best time to call" field that I added. I don't want to make the visitors to my web site fill out too much info because it tends to scare them away, so I only put a few neccesary fields - like the phone number, but I don't ask for time zone or city. However, if I'm going to call when they asked me to, I need to know where they are.

The easiest way for me to determine that is by doing a reverse number lookup on their phone number. I use the reverse number lookup on the whitepages.com website to find out the city and state of the lead. Then I know what time zone they are in.

That website allows you to feed the number you want to lookup in the URL. As a result, you can make a link or a button on your lead record, account record, or contact record that will automatically take the phone number stored in that record, send it to the whitepages website, and open up a page with the search results - big time saver.

Watch this video to learn how to set it up. The link you will need is included below.

http://www.whitepages.com/15055/search/ReversePhone?phone={!Contact.Phone