If you’ve landed on this page, you have a big decision to make about your tech stack. But the good news is you’ve already taken the first step, which is to do some research.
You’re likely in one of two situations. The first? LeanData is cost-prohibitive for your organization, so you’re looking for a cheaper alternative.
The second — your spider web of logic has gotten out of control and you’re wondering if there’s a better way to route leads.
The good news is that we can help on both fronts. The less good news is I’m going to ask you to think more globally about the problems you’re trying to solve.
There are three primary use cases for LeanData:
Attribution and campaign ROI tracking
To pick the best alternative, you need to decide which of these is your primary use case or objective.
“But I want all three!” I can hear you saying across the space-time continuum that separates you and me from the time of my writing and the time of your reading.
To that, I say: You can have all three, but different solutions shine in different areas. Your best bet is to choose one primary use case and conduct your evaluation accordingly.
How to select your primary use case
This depends on the business objective you’re trying to achieve, and your business objective depends on your company’s growth stage.
See how it all fits together, like some magical revenue puzzle?
Okay, so what are the growth stages, and what are the corresponding business objectives?
Growth stages + their primary use cases
Stage #1 🐥
At stage one, you’re trying to get your sales and marketing orgs off the ground. You may have a handful of reps and a single dedicated marketer.
Your inbound lead volume is low. You’re still getting the word out about your product, and that requires a lot of SEO love and outbound effort from your sales reps.
Some (loose) attributes of stage one:
Under $1M in ARR
Fewer than 5 sales reps
At this stage, your primary business objective is to drive awareness. With a low volume of inbound and only a few reps, it may be premature to think about the LeanData use cases mentioned above.
Stage #2 🦌
In stage two, your inbound lead volume is picking up, so you need to increase your bandwidth.
This means hiring more reps, implementing a CRM, and ditching your lead routing spreadsheet.
You may be in stage two, if:
Between $1M-$5M in ARR
~5-10 sales reps
In stage two, you’re starting to build processes and adopt technologies that will set your teams up for success in the future. Having clean data and a solid foundation is crucial.
Trust me, you don’t want to try to detangle the web later. Enriching your CRM data and making sure it’s clean is a top priority, so data management capabilities are a must-have.
Stage #3 🐅
At this point, you’re chugging along on your revenue journey. You have sizable sales and SDR teams, your sales team is segmented, and there’s a lot of tech powering your inbound funnel.
Stage 3 could look like:
>$5M in ARR
>10 sales reps
Inbound lead volume is high (>100 hand-raisers per month)
Using a CRM, marketing automation platform (MAP), sales engagement platform, & more
Segmented sales team
Routing logic taking place on the back end (even if it’s just via your CRM or MAP)
At this point, your lead volume has picked up, and the most important thing is to get leads into the hands of the right rep ASAP. Failing to do so will have a devastating impact on your ability to convert them.
A quick lead response time is the name of the game here, so advanced lead routing capabilities are a must.
Stage #4 🚀
In stage four, your revenue teams are built and you’re starting to execute on the “expand” part of that land and expand strategy. 😉
You likely have a customer success (CS) team, complex lead routing scenarios, and lots of integrations piping data into your CRM.
Your attributes?
>$10M in ARR
Have a CS team
Complex routing scenarios (Geo, business size, technographics, etc.)
High inbound volume (hundreds per month) or low volume with high average contract value (ACV)
Better coordination between sales and marketing teams (ABM efforts)
Depending on your go-to-market strategy, your business objective at this stage will differ.
If you’re running a true enterprise motion, meaning your ideal customer profile (ICP) is extremely narrow and you’re only going after a handful of good-fit accounts with high ACVs, then your primary business objective should be campaign orchestration in those good-fit accounts.
With that in mind, your primary use cases will likely be attribution and ROI tracking.
In this model, it costs more to convert customers and there also tends to be a bigger emphasis on outbound sales motions. So figuring out what’s working and being able to prove ROI is the most important thing.
On the other hand, if your business has any volume component whatsoever, your primary objective should still be to convert as many inbound leads as possible.
It’s extremely expensive to run highly orchestrated campaigns against thousands of accounts when your ACV is relatively low (say in the thousands as opposed to hundreds of thousands).
Pull your target account list in your CRM. If that list numbers in the thousands, then your business has a volume component and the best return on your marketing investment is to convert existing demand.
This means prioritizing lead routing capabilities in a LeanData alternative.
Stage #1 🐥 N/A
Stage #2 🦌 Data management
Stage #3 🐅 Lead routing
Stage #4 🚀 Lead routing or
That was a lot of setup before the juicy stuff, but hopefully, you found the exercise of thinking more deeply about your primary business objective helpful.
The following sections will explore different LeanData alternatives for each primary use case.
Chili Piper — best for lead routing
Chili Piper is an inbound conversion platform that helps you book meetings, qualify, and route leads efficiently.
Relevant Chili Piper features
Book meetings from existing web forms
Route leads based on any object in Salesforce
Can handle complex routing rules and round robins
Rules-based lead routing (no spider webs here)
Chili Piper Pricing
Pricing is $20 per user per month for lead routing and $40 per user per month plus a platform fee for lead routing and booking.
Chili Piper’s lead routing solution is called Distro and web form scheduling is called Concierge.
You can see the full Chili Piper pricing breakdown here, including the Concierge + Distro bundle pricing (highly recommended).
RingLead — best for data management
RingLead is a data orchestration platform that helps you segment, enrich, and dedupe data in your CRM and marketing automation platform.
Relevant RingLead features
Lead routing (limited functionality)
RingLead does not publish pricing information publicly on its website.
6sense — best for attribution and ROI tracking 6sense
6sense is an account engagement platform that leverages intent signals and campaign orchestration to power ABM programs.
Relevant 6sense features
Engagement metrics and intent data
Account and contact scoring
Account insights for sales
6sense does not publish pricing information publicly on its website.
When evaluating LeanData alternatives, it’s important to really understand LeanData’s primary use cases and identify which of those is most important to you.
This will depend on a combination of your company’s growth stage and go-to-market strategy, but more often than not, flexible and efficient lead routing is the functionality that will help you to achieve your business objectives.
To learn more about Chili Piper’s lead routing solution, watch this short video about Distro:
Ready to talk? Get a demo.