You're busy, and managing leads in Salesforce is a pain. You want to use the system but there's just too many hoops to jump through. This blog post will help you understand how salesforce lead assignment rules work and show you how they can make your life easier when assigning leads in Salesforce.
Lead assignment is a critical function in any sales organization and it has been our experience that many companies are not following these simple rules due to lack of understanding or poor training.
We hope to help you avoid these mistakes by sharing some of the most common mistakes made when assigning leads in Salesforce with you.
Salesforce lead assignment rules allow a user to specify rules that pick up a specific value from a custom object and assign it to the Contact Manager field of the Lead.
Lead assignment rules are created based on your business requirements, for example: If a prospect fills out an interest form or email marketing survey , you can automatically add their information as Leads in Salesforce, which makes them available for sales reps to follow up with.
Or maybe your company is growing rapidly and you need opportunities to be auto-assigned every time one is updated by an internal team member. In all these cases, lead assignment rules come in handy .
A lead assignment rule can be executed when a custom object record has been created, updated or deleted. It starts with a trigger and ends with an assignment rule.
For example: whenever a user updates the 'Lead Status' field on the 'Opportunity' object, update or delete (depending upon whether Lead Status is set to Closed/Lost or Reopened) the associated Contact record on the 'Cust Team' custom object.
The moment you save the lead assignment rules, Salesforce creates a picklist of Available Values with two options – Yes and No.
This is because a lead assignment rule can either create or update a record on another object, depending on the condition that you set.
Now, let's say you want to automatically create a new Lead record whenever the 'Lead Status' field on the 'Opportunity' object is set to Closed/Lost. To do this, we'll need to add an Assignment Rule. Select Assignment Rule as New Lead and choose the action as Create.
Under Object Type , select Lead and under Field Name , select Status . Leave Conditions blank and click Save .
You've now created a lead assignment rule that will automatically create a new Lead record whenever the 'Lead Status' field on the 'Opportunity' object is set to Closed/Lost.
But wait, this rule will create Leads for Closed/Lost Opportunities only. What if you also wanted to automatically create a lead whenever the Status is set to Reopened?
Well, all you need to do is add another Assignment Rule and choose both rules as New Lead . Select the action Create under the object Salesforce creates a picklist with three options – Yes , No , and No Match. This signifies that it will either update or create records depending upon its conditions.
To edit an existing assignment rule, follow these steps:
You can also delete a lead assignment rule by following these steps:
Now that we have covered the basics of Lead Assignment Policy, it's time to get into the specifics. Below are the seven rules of compliance for Salesforce Lead Assignment rules:
Rule 1: All leads must be assigned to a user.
This is a basic rule and should go without saying. All leads must be assigned to a user in order for them to be worked. If you're not sure who should receive a lead, consult your company's sales process and procedures.
Rule 2: Leads must be assigned in a timely manner.
Leads should be assigned as soon as they are created in order to ensure that they are worked promptly.
However, there may be cases where a lead expires before it has any activity. In these cases, you can either let the lead expire or reassign it to another user who may work it later on.
Rule 3: A user cannot belong to more than one owner-recipient pair in a single Salesforce organization.
A lead must be owned by one person, but that same lead can be assigned to one or more users within your team using owner-recipient pairs.
However, no single user should appear in multiple owner-recipient relationship fields for different leads in your database. If this happens, then all recipients will receive every opportunity created from every new lead that's assigned to the problematic user!
To avoid this, create a new lead assignment policy with the problematic user excluded. Then, create a new lead assignment policy without the problematic user and re-assign all of your leads to the appropriate users using owner-recipient pairs.
Rule 4: A user cannot be a recipient in more than one owner-recipient pair within a single Salesforce organization.
As shown by Rule 3 above, you can have an owner for a lead as well as multiple recipients on that same lead record. However, no single user should appear as both an owner and a recipient on different leads that are under the same qualifying rules.
If this happens, then all of those leads will route directly to your Salesforce Inbox! To avoid this, simply create a new lead assignment policy with the problematic user excluded and re-assign all of your leads to the appropriate users using owner-recipient pairs.
Rule 5: A recipient cannot be a member of more than one owner-recipient pair in a single Salesforce organization.
This is another rule that should go without saying, but just like Rules 3 and 4 above, it's important to ensure that you're not setting up multiple recipient relationships for the same user within your Salesforce instance.
To avoid this problem, simply create a new lead assignment policy with the problematic user excluded and re-assign all of your leads to the appropriate users using owner-recipient pairs.
Rule 6: Recipients must own at least one opportunity to be considered valid.
If you're looking for the most basic rule to begin with, this is it. If recipients are not set up to own one or more opportunities, then they won't have any activities in Salesforce automatically created for them when a lead is assigned.
This means that Leads will need to route directly into your Salesforce Inbox until you either create some activities for your team or manually assign the lead back to the original owner.
To avoid this problem, simply create a new lead assignment policy with all of your existing recipients included and re-assign all of your leads accordingly!
Rule 7: You cannot add existing users as recipients if their user records contain fields that are incompatible with assignment policy criteria.
There may be one or more cases where you have users who are already in your system but are not set up to receive leads through your lead assignment policy.
If you try to add these users as recipients for this newly created rule, then their accounts will show up in red because they won't meet the criteria defined in the assignment policy's qualifications field.
To fix this problem, simply create a new lead assignment policy by including existing recipients in your Salesforce instance. Then, re-assign all of your leads accordingly!
Lead Assignment rules are an extremely powerful tool inside Salesforce. They enable business users to control who can view and respond to leads, while also streamlining workflows and ensuring that important leads aren't being ignored.
However, as with all features in Salesforce, there are several drawbacks or limitations that need to be taken into account when a lead assignment rule is put into use:
Overall, Lead Assignment Rules are an extremely valuable tool for controlling workflows and ensuring that important leads don't fall through the cracks.
However, it's important to be aware of the drawbacks and limitations when using them in order to make sure they're being implemented in the most effective way possible.
Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules are an extremely powerful tool inside Salesforce. They enable business users to control who can view and respond to leads, while also streamlining workflows and ensuring that important leads aren't being ignored.
