If you’re in sales, then you know that leads are everything. Without them, you can’t make any sales, and your business will suffer. That’s why it’s so important to have a good lead scoring system in place. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to lead scoring; what works for one company might not work for another. But all businesses should follow lead scoring best practices when setting up their system.
What’s Lead Scoring?
Lead Scoring is a method used to determine the value of a lead.
A lead scoring system is used by marketing and sales to determine which leads to prioritize. The factors considered include how interested a prospect is in your product, how likely they are to buy, and how much money they’re willing to spend.
Lead Scoring is scoring by qualifying your leads into different categories based on their interaction with your company and brand. It assigns points to certain characteristics, actions, and behaviors such as demographic, website and blog engagement, and forms completed. These points are accumulated to give each prospect a score.
The lead scoring process uses these data points to assign each prospect a score.
Lead Scoring is assigning a value or score to a prospect based on certain characteristics or behaviors. This makes it easier to identify where a lead is in the buying process, what interests them, and which actions to take next.
Why you should care about lead scoring
According to studies, 25% to 30% of your data will decay yearly. And according to another, over 50% of your contacts will be outdated.
The importance of lead management cannot be understated. Timing is everything to move potential customers down the funnel, and Lead Scoring is the key to striking while the iron is hot.
Lead Scoring is the Scoring or determining of how likely a lead is to convert.
A Lead Scoring Matrix is the foundation of your lead management process. Here’s how to create it.
Why Should You Score Your Lead?
Using lead scoring, you can prioritize your sales team’s time and resources on the most qualified and likely to convert leads to clients.
There are several benefits of adding it to your qualifying process for sales.
Sales and Marketing.
Sales and Marketing should agree on which lead is the best opportunity. This will ensure both departments are working together towards the same goal.
Since sales have more control over generating leads, they’re less likely to complain.
Measure and Improve.
By tracking your lead scores, you can better understand how to improve your process. This understanding will allow you to tweak your scoring system as you learn more about what works best for your business.
Then, you can refine the scoring system as needed.
Lift sales staff trust (and drive action) in their leads.
According to research, 70% of leads never followed up are lost to competitors. By following up on your new contacts, you can improve the rank of your leads to better fit your buyer personas and, in turn, improve your overall conversion rates.
It’s one of the primary drivers of sales.
68% of effective and successful marketers have incorporated lead Scoring into their marketing strategies.
Lead Scoring Best Practices
Aberdeen Group produced a report in 2004 (Lead Scoring. The fundamentals and elements of best-in-class programs Aberdeen Group 2014), which examined what Best In Class organizations was doing that Laggards weren’t.
The chart shows that the two most important factors for Best-in-Class organizations are highlighted in the chart.
- Contact profile – demographics and firmographics; and
- Interaction with marketing content
Laggards were more likely to spend their time on other things.
- Analytical models that take into account multiple attributes
This indicates that interaction and contact profile are two of the key drivers for a high lead score process. It also indicates a focus on simplicity and implementation rather than complexity.
This is in addition to our own experience in B2B Marketing. The best practices for lead scoring are:
- Buyer Personas should drive large parts of the score. The right persona is crucial in B2B sales.
- Company Firmographics should drive the majority of the score. No matter the persona’s accuracy, the score will be low if the firm is wrong.
- Marketing content interaction can determine when the right lead has been purchased.
- Start simple, then build complexity – There are usually only a few key attributes to the score, so keep it simple and only add evidence.
- Use real-world data from past sales drive scores, not intuition and gut feeling.
Getting Started
Custom lead scoring systems are essential for identifying more lucrative sales opportunities.
Sales reps can make more use of their time by focusing on high-scoring leads that are ready to sell.
This can help sales reps increase productivity, allowing them to reach their sales goals faster.
To effectively qualify and route leads to your sales team, you need easy access to quality data. This can be organized using an efficient CRM system with effective lead management and automatic qualification features.
Choosing the best software for a lead scoring system is incredibly important. You need to ensure that the software is scalable and has automated features. This will help you automate your sales process, leading to more sales.
A powerful tool and scoring system can help you maximize sales and grow your business. To do this, invest in a CRM system that can accurately assess the quality of a lead and then implement the best practices above.
A Simple Example of Lead Scoring
Let’s imagine for a minute that you’re a plumbing company. You set up a simple process for qualifying your opportunities and scoring your leads like these:
You might set up a simple process to qualify your sales opportunities and score your leads if you’re a plumber. For example, a prospect within 20 kilometers of your base location would receive 50 points. A prospect greater than 50 kilometers from your base would receive 100 points. And so on.
A residential prospect building a new house 15 km away would score 100 points in this example. This would help you prioritize the effort you need to put in to close the sale.
Now that you can track each prospect’s activity, you can prioritize which deals you should focus on.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to score more leads and sales, following these lead Scoring best practices is a great place to start. We’ve covered everything from identifying your target audience to building a system that works for you. By taking the time to set up a good lead scoring system, you’ll be able to prioritize your leads and close more deals in no time!
