Lead distribution in CRM: assign web form, email and chat leads

Lead distribution in CRM decides who contacts a client and how fast. At a real estate agency, leads from the website, email and WhatsApp land in a shared list, and managers grab them themselves. The best leads go to the fastest person, the rest wait until evening, and meanwhile the client calls the agency next door.

Automatic distribution ends this race. Every lead gets an owner right away — in turn, by team or by a rule — and a repeat request goes to the manager who already works with the client. Calls are set up in a similar way and have their own article: automatic call distribution. This one is about leads without a call: website forms, email, messengers and API.

Watch the two-minute video, and below you'll find the step-by-step setup.

Why a business needs automatic lead distribution

• Online school: leads from webinar forms are shared evenly between managers. Nobody is swamped, nobody sits idle.
• Real estate: emails to the new-build mailbox go to one team, emails to the resale mailbox go to another.
• Salon or clinic: a repeat WhatsApp message goes to the administrator who already handled the client.
• B2B: large clients are routed to a key account manager by a CRM field or source.
• Sales head: an employee is on vacation — switch off their call toggle, and new leads go only to those at work.

How lead distribution without a call works

Each lead channel is an entry in “Telephony” → “Incoming settings”. For leads without a call, there are the “Lead from a site form”, “Lead from email”, “Messengers”, “API” and “Visitor identification” entries. They are handled by the “Call employees / create a lead” block; in the “Messengers” entry it is called “Lead distribution”. The block creates the lead itself and assigns the lead owner, who is the employee responsible for the client in the CRM.

Key settings of the block:

1. “Lead creation” — create a lead on every request, only on the first one, or when the ad source changes.
2. “Do not call, only create a lead” — the block calls nobody and only creates and assigns the lead.
3. “What to do with a repeat request?” — “Distribute to the lead owner” or “Distribute among the selected employees”.
4. “Distribution of new leads” — how new clients are shared.
5. “Employees to distribute to” — who takes part: individual employees or teams.

How to distribute website leads to sales reps: step by step

1. 1
   Open the entry

   “Telephony” → “Incoming settings” → “Lead from a site form”.
2. 2
   Add the block

   “+” on the entry card → “Call employees / create a lead”.
3. 3
   Turn off calling

   In “How to dial the employees”, choose “Do not call, only create a lead”.
4. 4
   Set up repeat requests

   “What to do with a repeat request?” → “Distribute to the lead owner”.
5. 5
   Choose the rule

   In “Distribution of new leads”, for example “Distribute new leads evenly among the selected employees who are switched on”.
6. 6
   Add people

   Click “+ employee” or “+ team”, tick the ones you need and click “Done”.
7. 7
   Notify the manager

   “+” under the block → “Call the client / send a message” → “Notify an employee via Telegram” → “Lead owner”. Then click “Save”.

The “Lead from email”, “API” and “Messengers” entries are set up the same way. Where such leads come from is covered in the article website form to CRM.

What distribution rules are available

• “Distribute new leads evenly among the selected employees” — in a circle, equally for everyone.
• “Distribute new leads evenly among the selected employees who are switched on” — the same, but the “In calls” toggle counts: anyone switched off gets no leads.
• “Repeat leads go to the owner of the first lead, new ones — evenly among the selected employees” — an option for the mode where a lead is created on every request.
• “Assign a new lead to the selected employee” — everything to one person, for example a senior manager.
• “Do not assign a new lead to an employee” — the lead has no owner, and managers pick leads themselves.

Email and messengers: separate rules for each mailbox and chat

In the “Lead from email” entry, click “+ mailbox group” and tick the mailboxes you need: emails to them go to a separate branch with its own team. All other emails go to the “Other mailboxes” branch. How to connect a mailbox is explained in the article email to CRM.

In the “Messengers” entry, the “Lead distribution” block handles every message from a new chat. If the client is already in the CRM, choose “Distribute to the lead owner” in “What to do with a repeat request?”. Otherwise, a client who first called and then wrote on WhatsApp may end up with another manager.

Rule-based distribution: source, page, CRM field

When the rule is more complex than “equally for all”, an auto-funnel helps. Its “Launch conditions” select leads by source, campaign, website page or CRM field. The “Lead editing” block with the “Lead owner” type offers three options in “How to assign the lead”:

• “Assign the lead to the selected employee”;
• “Spread the leads evenly across the selected employees”;
• “Spread the leads evenly across employee teams”.

Example: leads from an ad campaign for country houses go to the suburban property team, the rest go to the general department. How to build such branches is covered in the article CRM workflow automation. Leads from an AI chatbot can also go straight to the right manager: the “Change lead owner” toggle in the bot's target action.

Distribute leads by your managers' strengths too. “Funnel analytics” shows who converts leads to payment better for each source and request type. Give requests for a particular line of business to the manager who sells it best — with a launch condition by campaign, website page or CRM field. This needs no extra ad spend. How to compare managers is covered in the article sales funnel analytics.

Another example is distribution by lead quality. Leads with a large budget and an urgent task (CRM fields in “Launch conditions”) go to the sales team, while those who didn’t answer the bot’s questions go to an operator who reviews them by hand. Choose teams rather than individual people: when a manager joins or leaves, change the “Teams” field in their profile in the “Users” section, and you don’t have to touch the auto-funnels.

Read also: Automatic call distribution between managers: queue and bot, Duplicate leads in CRM: repeat leads, contacts and how to avoid copies, CRM workflow automation: conditions, waits and stage changes