Assigning leads, a core responsibility of a sales manager. Simply put however, it can be a hassle. Lead assignment requires a great deal of time and energy by knowing the who, what, where, why, and how, for every prospect that funnels into the dealership. This will always, because of human error, have mistakes that occur. A groundwork of rules must be set up to better govern the process, otherwise no dealership will handle them properly. But is this enough? In most cases, NO. So why then do we not look at Lead Pools rather than individual assignment as a means to success? Let's do just that.

First we need to look at the basic rules a sales manager in assigning leads. They must allow only truly active salespeople to take the leads, have time limitations set in place, avoid overloading employees, and being "fair". However being "fair" is looking at the dealership by individuals, and not as a whole. The only success that matters is the entirety of the dealership. Then and only then will all individuals "fairly" be triumphant. There are many who have conquered these steps, but again as with anything, human error will have an adverse affect on any rules set in place. This is why the dealership's CRM is so very important. The CRM will help control the pool of leads that come in, and can have guidelines and restrictions for the sales manager to work with. But no matter how well a dealership believes it's CRM is helping in its lead assignment and management, most likely, it can do MUCH more.

A dealership CRM must perform a few strategic actions to succeed in controlling leads that enter into the dealership.

• Perform the concept of a Lead Pool. Customer ownership allows leads to fall through the cracks, however, with lead pools it's on a first-come, first-serve basis. This type of function allows ALL incoming leads to become readily available for all sales personnel, creating an atmosphere where the LEAD is the center of attention and not the salesperson.
• The ability to set Lead Response Reserve Times. When you think of lost leads, think lack of response time. Why endure the constant frustration of losing leads to minuscule issues? Setting a reserve time allows the salesperson a designated amount of time to work on the prospect, otherwise the lead will be placed back into the Lead Pool for other dealership personnel to have the chance to work on.
• Settings that allow for a Minimum/Maximum limitation. Like it or not, salespeople will hog leads. Having the ability to set the number of leads salespeople must have, as well as the maximum number of leads he/she is allowed to have, will create that "fairness" that traditional lead assignment tries but fails to establish.

Having certain intelligent functions in place in a dealership's CRM will have direct results in lead conversion. CRM technology that allows the sales manager the ability to set in place the functions that work best for the specific dealership. From there the software can take care of the rest. With a plethora time saved for the sales manager, they are able to concentrate on the dealerships bottom line. Because let's face it, when the dealership succeeds, so do the salespeople that we strive to be "fair" to in lead assignment.