Smarter, Faster Lead Allocation for The Predictive Index

 
Complex lead routing requirements and consistent hyper growth in marketing performance were limiting gains sought from marketing automation by The Predictive Index. With help from InaPlex, a specialist in marketing automation integration, The Predictive Index was able to introduce timely and efficient automated lead allocation. This resulted in the redeployment of human resources, greater routing accuracy, and increased sales from faster and more relevant follow-up.

Introduction

“Making good use of new technology can give companies a strong edge. As avid users of marketing automation, and with a marketing stack built on HubSpot, we were quick to recognize the benefits that a scalable lead routing engine would have for our sales teams internally and across our network of independent partners.”

– Drew Fortin, Vice President of Marketing at The Predictive Index.

It’s not always easy to get technology to fit with business processes, as The Predictive Index found when trying to automate complex lead allocation within HubSpot. Their solution was to have InaPlex develop a specialized lead router to meet their specific needs and achieve the business gains they sought. This post summarizes the steps that were involved.

Background

The Predictive Index is an award-winning workforce assessment platform and sixty years of proven science, assessment software, and a curriculum of management workshops make The Predictive Index the perfect option for any company looking to assess, predict, and better manage their people anywhere in the world. Over 6,000 clients use The Predictive Index to define behavioral and cognitive job requirements, hire the best-fitting candidates, and keep them engaged. AT&T, DocuSign, the LA Clippers, Hugo Boss, and Subway are just a few of their notable clients. Businesses purchase subscriptions to The Predictive Index software or register for its workshops directly through its ever-growing global network of independent, certified Partners.

Since changing ownership in 2014, The Predictive Index has built a comprehensive marketing and lead generation program based on the HubSpot marketing automation platform. Members of The Predictive Index sales team and its partner network have access to HubSpot CRM and Salesforce to receive leads and manage their The Predictive Index business.

The need for a lead rotator

Although there are native ways to distribute leads via HubSpot or Salesforce, neither platform could accommodate the specific business model used by The Predictive Index. As a result, the distribution of leads was initially performed manually by a full-time Marketing Operations Specialist, however there were several problems with this approach, including:

• Speed: A fundamental objective was to distribute leads to partners within minutes of them arriving in HubSpot and this could not be achieved manually.
• Volume: The Predictive Index had a high volume of incoming leads which continues to grow, and one person could not handle the flow.
• Complexity: Many business rules are involved in allocating a lead to the correct partner based on territories, prior relationships and referrals, and it was difficult to apply these correctly using a manual process.

The Predictive Index calculated that automating lead routing would free a person to do more productive work, accommodate future growth, and also ensure leads were routed quickly and accurately.

Perhaps most important, industry benchmark data indicates that conversion rates increase dramatically if leads can be issued and called on in under 10 minutes – conversion rates of leads continue to increase with every minute that is saved.

Choosing a lead rotator engine

After first speaking with out-of-the box lead rotator application providers, The Predictive Index decided to select an expert in the field to build their rotator engine. InaPlex was chosen because of deep experience in this area, the ability to integrate with many different CRM and marketing automation systems, and powerful proprietary software.

InaPlex specializes in customer data integration and has worked directly with several large companies to manage lead allocation with marketing automation (read more here). These projects involved different business processes and automation systems but had challenges similar to each other and The Predictive Index.

All had complex business rules, multiple sites and nested sites, the need for fair and equitable lead allocation (round robin) and required the ability to adapt quickly to changing business processes. Speedy and accurate distribution of leads was also a priority.

Developing the lead rotator

There were 4 key steps involved in developing a lead rotation engine. Following is a summary of each stage.

Step 1: Set up business rules for lead allocation

The first step in providing a solution was to clarify the lead routing process.

The Predictive Index has been growing rapidly and adding new partners in many different regions across the globe, so rules for allocating leads based on partner territories and prior association is ever-evolving. Who a lead is passed to depends on several factors that that may include geography, prior lead conversion rates, prior association, previous lead volume, and more.

As a result, deciding which lead should go to which partner is complicated because there is an extensive set of constraints to satisfy. The following lead allocation process was setup to accommodate these constraints.

• Determine which region the lead is for based on a combination of country, state and county and postal code.
• Find all eligible partners in that region
• Allocate the lead on a round-robin basis to whoever is eligible
• As leads are allocated, track lead counts per partner per month

Step 2: Build a database of partners and their properties

The next step was to build a database of partners including the following properties:

 Region (Country down to zip code level)

Lead types accepted by each partner

Any caps or maximum threshold of lead volume

Properties can change at any time for Partners so the database was implemented to be easily updated by marketing operations.

Step 3: Geography and region mapping

Once the partner database was in place another database was created that mapped the various (sometimes conflicting) region mapping rules to a consistent set of territories. In the United States this was complicated because some territories had been set up based on counties, but county information was not available in the lead data. The solution was to remap counties to sets of postal codes.

Step 4: Cross reference partners and territory rules

With partner and territory mapping in place it became possible to build a cross reference list of partners and territories. In this case, partners may be allocated to multiple territories, and a single territory may have multiple partners.

Step 5: Build up an automated process for data flow

Once databases and mapping were in place an Inaport profile was built to manage the lead flow, including lead allocation. Key steps are as follows:

• Pull leads from a Marketing Qualified List in HubSpot
• Run the leads through the allocation decision process
• Change the ownership and status in HubSpot to allocate the lead
• Notify the partner by email of the new lead
• Update the Excel spreadsheet with lead allocation counts
• Update logs to accurately record the disposition of every lead

The process is run continually so that leads are captured, processed and distributed promptly.

A successful result

The solution implemented by InaPlex has given The Predictive Index automated lead allocation that is fast, accurate, flexible and scalable. It is built on business rules that can be modified by the client as needed, and provides audit trails and reporting for ease of monitoring and analysis.

The solution has met the objectives of The Predictive Index. As Fortin notes,

“InaPlex built a robust lead allocation engine that helped us solidify our process on time and on budget.  The Predictive Index is now able to allocate leads to internal and external sales teams in close to real-time, with full transparency throughout the process.”

Want to see how InaPlex could help your company? Book a free business assessment, call us to discuss your requirements, or visit our website to learn more.

The Predictive Index (PI) is an award-winning workforce assessment platform. 60 years of proven science, assessment software, and our curriculum of management workshops make PI the perfect option for any company looking to assess, predict, and better manage their people anywhere in the world. Over 6,000 clients use PI to define behavioral and cognitive job requirements, hire the best-fitting candidates, and keep them engaged. AT&T, DocuSign, the LA Clippers, Hugo Boss, and Subway are just a few of our notable clients. Learn more at www.predictiveindex.com.

InaPlex Inc. provides code-free, easy to use tools for moving information between any data sources, and our solutions are used by thousands of companies throughout the world. We specialize in CRM integration, turn-key CRM migration, Marketing Automation integration and lead routing, and bespoke Microsoft Apps, Microsoft Flow and CDS solutions. Contact us to find the closest InaPlex Partner or to speak with our Services Group, and you can learn more about our solutions at www.inaplex.com.