How to Rank Accounts for Distributions and Retrievals

Balance account allocation by ordering distributions and retrievals

Ranking allows you to choose which accounts get distributed or retrieved first. In this article, we will give some considerations on how to rank accounts and show you how to set up ranking criteria.

Why Should I Use Ranking?

Ranking accounts is a good way to customize the way accounts are moved in order to fill your reps’ books with the best accounts possible. One common use is to pull back the most stale accounts from reps’ books. This is done by ranking accounts on a retrieval to pull back the accounts with the oldest activity date first. Another popular use for ranking is to distribute accounts with the highest account score to reps first.

There are many uses for ranking on distributions and retrievals that can be highly specific to your business process.

How to Rank Accounts

Ranking accounts is one of the last steps in creating a distribution or retrieval. Start by filling out the first pieces of the page to get a better idea of what rankings to implement.

Once you have your distribution or retrieval set up, head down to the Ranking Criteria section to begin setting up the account ranking.

Let’s suppose we want to distribute accounts in order by:

• Highest score first

• Highest annual revenue first

• Oldest activity date first

1. Click Add Criteria

2. Select the desired field in the Account Field section, in this case we will select a custom field called Score__c.

3. Select the order in which you want the accounts to be ordered. Since we want to distribute the highest scores first, we will select “Higher is Better”

Your ranking criteria should now look something like this

1. Let’s add another ranking criteria by clicking Add Criteria again

2. We will select AnnualRevenue for the account field

3. Since we want to distribute accounts with the highest annual revenue first, we will select “Higher is Better”

4. Let’s add our last running criteria by clicking “Add Criteria” once more

5. Select LastActivityDate for the account field

6. Since we want to distribute accounts with the oldest activity, we will select Older is Better

Now your criteria should look something like this

Now let’s suppose you want to switch the priority in the way the ranking orders the accounts. Instead of prioritizing Score__c first, you want to prioritize AnnualRevenue then Score__c then LastActivityDate.

This can be done by clicking and dragging the eight dot pattern on the left of the criteria and moving it to its respective priority. In this case we will click and drag Score__c between AnnualRevenue and LastActivityDate.

Now your criteria should look something like this

Ranking Order Behaviors

• Null / Blank Values

  • Nulls will be returned first no matter the order selected. If you want to avoid distributing accounts where the specified field is null, consider adding criteria in the distribution/retrieval criteria. This could look like AnnualRevenue`` ``Is Null`` ``False.

• Number Fields

  • Higher is Better will order the accounts is descending order where the first accounts are the highest values and decrease as you approach the last accounts

  • Lower is Better will order the accounts in ascending order where the first accounts are the lowest values and increase as you approach the last accounts.

• Date Fields

  • More Recent is Better will order the accounts in descending order where the first accounts are the most recent and become less recent as you approach the last accounts

  • Older is Better will order the accounts in ascending order where the first accounts are the oldest and become more recent as you approach the last accounts

• Text and Pick-List Fields

  • Alphabetical: A is Better will order the accounts in descending order where the first accounts start with A and approach Z as the list nears the last accounts

  • Alphabetical: Z is Better will order the accounts in ascending order where the first accounts start with Z and approach A as the list nears the last accounts

• Boolean / Checkbox Fields

  • Checked (TRUE) is Better will order accounts where the field is true first

  • Unchecked (FALSE) is Better will order accounts where the field is false first