How Cisco improved lead & account assignment accuracy by 150%
Highlights
- Traction Complete’s products suite helped Cisco regain control over a large volume of daily incoming leads and improved territory-based record assignment accuracy by 150%
- Complete Leads empowered the team to deduplicate and go beyond traditional lead routing including assigning contacts, accounts, and custom objects
- Complete Hierarchies saved Cisco time by allowing them to reassign territories in Salesforce with a click of a button
Overview
Cisco, founded in 1984, is a global leader in IT and networking. As a Fortune 500 company, Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other technology services worldwide.
The Challenge
Complex and manual territory management
Cisco had a large number of accounts and a territory model that grouped these accounts together based on industry, country, and other criteria. After grouping, the Sales Operations team (SOps) assigned each group of records a corresponding territory ID number and sales rep.
But whenever a sales rep joined or left the organization, Cisco had to manually update territory ownership through data loads. This process was time-consuming, error-prone, and hindered the team’s ability to keep up with Cisco’s constantly changing sales environment. The lack of automation in its territory management process also made it difficult for Cisco to maintain accurate record ownership, which risked potential misassignments.
Slow speed-to-lead
Cisco received thousands of leads a day. With such large numbers, Cisco’s previous lead routing tool struggled to process the volume. But the challenge wasn’t just about numbers — each lead required cleansing and enrichment before it could be assigned to the appropriate sales rep. The intricacy of its territory model only added to the challenge, as Cisco’s lead routing tool had to consider multiple factors before routing each lead.
Our prior tool didn’t have the functionality to handle our lead volume that we were assigning daily, and we struggled to keep an accurate database with current lead ownership.
Cameron Barnes, Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at Cisco
The lead routing tool’s limitations in handling volume and complex assignments led to a backlog of records. These delays hindered Cisco’s speed-to-lead and created bottlenecks that slowed down its entire sales process.
Limited visibility in territories
Visibility into territories and record assignments was another major pain point for Cisco. Its previous system didn’t provide an easy way to report on the accuracy of lead assignments or show what territory each record belonged to, making it challenging for its team to ensure records were correctly assigned.
Cisco also lacked the means to effectively visualize and manage its territories with out-of-the-box Salesforce. This limitation forced the team to rely on making manual changes in spreadsheets and load data into Salesforce.
Before [Traction Complete], we were just hoping that our assignments were accurate — we didn’t have the visibility we needed to be 100% sure.
Cameron Barnes, Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at Cisco
Solution
Streamlined territory management and ownership changes
Traction Complete revolutionized how Cisco’s teams manage territory ownership within Salesforce by automating and simplifying the entire process.
With Complete Hierarchies, Cisco can group accounts based on territory ID and display all related records in a single view. This setup linked every account, along with its related records — such as opportunities, leads, and contacts — under a unified structure.
Now, whenever a rep leaves or joins the organization, Cisco can simply update the ownership field for a specific territory and automatically cascade the changes down to all associated records. This capability also enables Cisco to perform bulk updates, allowing the team to reassign ownership across multiple territories simultaneously.
Accelerated lead processing
Complete Leads helped Cisco’s team efficiently handle large volumes of data entering Salesforce, eliminating concerns about backlogs or errors. As soon as a lead enters Salesforce, it is instantly matched with existing CRM data, deduplicated, enriched, and assigned to the right sales rep. This ensures that reps can achieve speed to lead.
And since Complete Leads is 100% native to Salesforce, Cisco’s data never left its environment, allowing their team to effectively manage leads without relying on external tools.
A lot less of our team’s bandwidth is focused on maintaining and double-checking the quality of our assignment routing. We are very confident in the assignments that we have in place.
Cameron Barnes, Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at Cisco
Enhanced territory insights and visibility
Beyond streamlining territory management and ownership changes, grouping accounts into custom objects based on territory ID also empowered Cisco to compare the results of automated lead assignments from Complete Leads directly against its territory model.
When Complete Leads automatically assigns a lead, it triggers Complete Hierarchies to check the territory ID associated with that lead. Complete Hierarchies then cross-referenced this ID against the criteria defined within Cisco’s territory model, such as industry, geography, and employee size. By comparing the lead’s attributes to these predefined criteria, Complete Hierarchies confirms whether the lead aligns with the appropriate territory.
If Complete Hierarchies detects any misalignment — such as a lead assigned to a territory that didn’t match its criteria — it flags the issue for review. This enables Cisco to quickly identify and correct any errors, ensuring that each lead and all of its related records are properly aligned with the correct territory.
Before Cisco implemented Traction Complete, their lead and account assignments were over 60% inaccurate. With Traction Complete, they were able to update all 2 million records to be 100% accurate.
The Final Word
Complete Leads allowed Cisco to overcome painful bottlenecks in their lead routing with faster assignments. Paired with Complete Hierarchies, the team has the flexibility to change territory owners and reassign related records. Together, Cisco was able to dramatically improve the accuracy of their lead assignments, save time, and maintain a clean database.
