Assigning new leads and response targets
How a firm assigns incoming leads to people by turn or by audience, sets a first-response target with alerts, and makes sure no lead waits too long.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A lead that belongs to everyone belongs to no one. In many firms, new enquiries land in a shared list that each person assumes someone else is watching. The partner thinks the office manager calls new leads. The office manager thinks the partner prefers to call the bigger ones personally. The lead, meanwhile, has filled in two other firms' forms and taken the first call that came.
Speed of first response is one of the few things in winning work that a firm controls completely. This article covers how Achekam can give every new connector lead an owner automatically, how a first-response target raises the alarm when a lead waits, and how to tell whether the firm is actually responding in time.
Unowned leads
The problem starts with leads that arrive without an owner. A firm can create a Zapier lead hook with its own secret key, so that Facebook or Instagram Lead Ads submissions land in its pipeline. Those connector leads arrive at any hour, often in batches after a campaign goes live, and nobody has been chosen to handle them.
Some firms have an automatic acknowledgement switched on: an e-mail written by AI from a fixed preset and sent to each lead a connector captures, at most one per address per day by default. That acknowledgement is useful, but it is not a response. The lead still needs a person.
Assigned by turn or by audience
A firm can have unowned connector leads assigned automatically, either by turn or by audience.
- By turn spreads new leads across a group of people in rotation. It suits a team where everyone handles the same kind of enquiry.
- By audience sends leads to the person who handles that kind of prospect. It suits a firm where, say, one manager looks after non-profit organisations and another after owner-managed companies.
Choose the method that matches how the firm actually works, not the one that seems fairest. A rotation that sends a school's audit enquiry to a tax specialist who has never audited a school is fair and useless.
Whichever is chosen, keep the group current. When someone goes on leave or leaves the firm, take them out of the rotation the same day, or their share of new leads will sit untouched.
First-response targets and alerts
A firm can set a first-response target that alerts a lead's owner when the lead has waited too long. A server check runs every 15 minutes by default, so a lead that passes the target is noticed promptly rather than at the next weekly meeting.
Set the target to something the firm can honestly meet. A target the team misses every day soon becomes an alert everyone ignores. Agree also what counts as a response: a phone call or a personal e-mail, not the automatic acknowledgement.
Alongside the target, a firm can send each person a daily e-mail of their due follow-ups. Assignment, the response target and the daily e-mail are all off until switched on in the Lead auto-responder & outreach settings, so a firm can introduce them one at a time.
A sensible order of introduction:
- Switch on assignment, and watch for a fortnight that leads reach the right people.
- Switch on the first-response target with a generous time, and tighten it once the team is keeping up.
- Switch on the daily follow-up e-mail, so that later steps are not forgotten either.
New-lead cards on screen
While someone has Achekam open, a newly captured lead pops up as a card with a button to open it. For a team working in the system during the day, that card is the fastest prompt of all.
It has one limit worth knowing: leads that arrived overnight are not announced on the first load. The first person in each morning should therefore check the lead list for overnight arrivals rather than waiting for cards. Overnight and weekend leads are exactly the ones a response target exists to catch.
Measuring response
A target with no follow-up check is a hope. Once a month, take a sample of new leads and compare when each arrived with when someone first made personal contact. Look at:
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| How many leads were contacted within the target? | Shows whether the target is realistic |
| Which leads waited longest, and why? | Reveals gaps: weekends, leave, unclear ownership |
| Did any lead go to the wrong person? | Tests the assignment rule |
| Did alerts lead to action? | Shows whether the alert is being heeded |
Follow-ups after the first contact need the same discipline. Staff can put dated follow-up tasks on a lead for themselves or a colleague and see what is overdue; see follow-up tasks so no lead is forgotten. To decide which of several waiting leads to call first, the AI grade is a starting point, not an instruction; see grading leads A to D with AI.
Every handover of a lead is also a handover of someone's personal details. In South Africa, the Information Regulator's page on the Protection of Personal Information Act covers registering Information Officers and their duties, along with its guidance notes and codes of conduct; Nigerian and Kenyan firms answer to their own regulators. Make sure the people in the rotation know how the firm expects leads' information to be handled.
Decide this week who owns new connector leads, write the response target down, and switch on assignment. Check the first month's sample before tightening anything.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
