Why Bad Lead Routing Destroys Partner Trust (and How AI Fixes It)

"Just give the lead to Partner XYZ."

"Why?"

"Because I like them."

🚩 Lead distribution like this is one of the fastest ways to lose partner trust. 

Here’s what bad looks like:

 ❌ Spray and pray by sending out a lot of leads to multiple partners without criteria considerations and transparency
 
❌ Playing favorites with leads going to the “friendliest” partner, not the most capable

 ❌ No thoughtful context and prep on the leads which reduces conversion win rates for the partner
 
❌ Delayed distribution. Time kills deals. 

📩 Here’s what good looks like:

 ✅ Customer centric criteria. Focus on the needs of the customer and choose partners based on merit that can best serve the customer. 

Examples: Relevancy of their portfolio of work (proof points) based on vertical, segment, function, use case, capacity needs, regional support, language requirements and capabilities required. 

I've built an AI matching system that can do this in <1 minute, explain the scoring and provide a summary of the top 3 partner recommendations. It saved me SO much time vs the manual look ups. 

 ✅ Clear rules of engagement communicated to the entire partner community. Share exactly what your merit based criteria is, so partners understand how the lead routing works. This builds trust. It also teaches your partners to be customer centric. 

And the best part? It gets them to start tracking the data and qualitative case studies in a customer centric way. 
 
✅ Speed + context, one of my favorite combos. You need to leverage AI to intelligently and effectively summarize leads and next steps and route these to partners with a tight SLA and with a human in the loop (especially in the early stages) for quality control.

 ✅ Data, data, data. You need to track the lead distribution down the funnel to ensure you know what's working and what isn't. 

Don't "set it and forget it." 
Set it, track it and report it. 

But a question that often comes up is...How do you get the reporting from partners? 

Build it in your partner program requirements. 

Want leads? 

You'll need to report back on your ability to effectively close and deliver success to those customer leads.