Lead Routing by Company Name

[Anonymous]

We are splitting a territory in half. We are going to do it by the first letter of the company name (not including parents, holding companies, etc). So if the company is Bank of American, it goes to rep "A", if the company name is Wells Fargo, then rep "B" would get the lead.

My questions is where to split the alphabet. Should we do 50/50? Looking for other users input.

ps - I also posted this to the linkedin group, hoping to get some answers.

[Anonymous]

Each company will be different. Splitting midway is usually a safe and easy approach.

If you want to get more technical, you could run a report of the current database and see where the chips fall. You could then use that data to draw better lines for division.

[Anonymous]

If it were me, I'd start with a 50/50 split of the alphabet, run Smart Lists for both, and see how close to an even half that gets you. From there, you can decide how to split it to make it more even. I'm guessing you're not using a Random Sample since you don't want reps getting leads from the same company?

[Anonymous]

Your goal here is probably the appearance of fairness, and most likely one of the sales reps will lose in the division or think they lose.

I'd take a standard list, like the Fortune 500 or the companies each rep is connected to in Linkedin, and distribute based on the 50% split in these.  This will be more difficult to argue about fairness.  Then review and update often enough to keep them happy.