A sales team of three shares an inbox. On a normal week it contains perhaps forty messages, of which fewer than half are people who might buy anything.
The rest are a student writing a dissertation, two people asking for work, a supplier introducing themselves, an existing customer who could not find the support page, somebody wanting free advice, and a competitor.
Each is opened, read and judged by a salesperson. That is a skilled person acting as a sorting office, and the genuine buyers wait behind the rest.
Who currently does the sorting
A salesperson, by reading everything. The most expensive possible person for the task and the one whose time has the clearest alternative use.
Who should do it
An automated first contact that identifies what the person actually wants and routes accordingly, with nothing reaching the sales team that is not a sales opportunity.
Route: the existing customer
Straight to support, immediately, rather than through a salesperson who forwards it, which is the commonest misdirection of all.
Route: the job seeker
To the careers information, with a courteous message. These people talk about how they were treated, and it costs nothing to do it well.
Route: the student or researcher
To published material with a polite explanation. Some of them become customers, and all of them remember whether they got a reply.
Route: the supplier or partner approach
To a partnerships address or a stated position. Salespeople should not be evaluating supplier pitches in a sales inbox.
Route: the free advice request
With a helpful answer where it is quick, and an honest explanation of what is chargeable where it is not, which is the ground in handling enquiries that are not a fit.
Route: the buyer who is genuinely too small
Kindly, with a suggestion of what would serve them. This category refers work and returns later far more often than most teams expect.
Route: the competitor
Politely and briefly. There is little point pretending not to notice and less point being rude about it.
What the salesperson should receive
Only qualified opportunities, with the qualifying detail already collected, so their first action is a conversation rather than an assessment.
What the decline should always contain
An answer or a direction. A reply that helps somebody go elsewhere is the cheapest reputation a business can buy.
What to measure afterwards
The proportion of inbound that reaches sales, and what happens to it. Teams are usually surprised by how much was never a sales matter at all.
Route: the press or analyst enquiry
To whoever handles it, quickly, because these are time sensitive and a salesperson sitting on one for three days has cost an opportunity that nobody will ever quantify.
Route: the partner who is also a prospect
Some enquiries are both. Establishing which intent is primary before it reaches anybody prevents the awkward conversation where a supplier pitch is answered by somebody trying to sell them something.
What this frees up
Hours a week per salesperson, spent on the enquiries that were previously queued behind a dissertation question.
Let the first contact do the sorting
An assistant that establishes what somebody actually wants, routes existing customers to support, answers the general questions, declines the rest helpfully and passes only qualified opportunities to sales removes a sorting office from three expensive diaries. The pricing volume is covered in pricing questions sales teams answer fifty times a week, and comparable triage in warranty and aftercare questions from car buyers and ai assistant venue enquiries. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under b2b.