What is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is a function of your CRM and marketing automation systems. It assigns points to leads based on their behavior and characteristics and then, based on the lead’s score, alerts the salesperson when that lead is sales-ready.
How Lead Scoring Works
Lead scoring works by assigning points to leads based on their behavior and characteristics. The more points a lead has, the more likely they will convert into customers. For example, you might give a lead more points if they:
– Visited your website multiple times
– Downloaded your ebook or whitepaper
– Filled out a contact form
– Requested a demo
You can also assign points based on the lead’s characteristics, such as job title, company size, or industry.
Why Use Lead Scoring?
The moment to seize a sales opportunity varies from business to business. You may want to follow up with a lead after they download a free whitepaper, visit your pricing page, or maybe click a link in your email. But realistically, it takes a variety of touchpoints and engagement indicators with your brand to deem a lead “hot.”
Not everyone who enters your sales pipeline is ready to buy, so having your sales team pursue all leads is a hit-or-miss endeavor that often results in wasted sales resources. So when it comes to upgrading an MQL (marketing-qualified lead) to an SQL (sales-qualified lead), that ‘upgrade’ or passing of the lead to the sales team shouldn’t happen until the lead is hot. That’s where lead scoring comes in. Lead scoring provides that consistent, automated framework bridging the gap for leads to pass from marketing to sales (and sometimes back to marketing), allowing you to channel qualified leads through your sales funnels in real time.
Identify Your Hottest Prospects
Lead scoring gives you much-needed insight into which leads are worth investing sales resources in and which leads need further nurturing. Using lead scoring, you can quickly identify hot and cold leads without tedious sorting, allowing you to deliver only the hottest, most qualified prospects to your sales team.
Ranking your leads by point value automatically allows you to quickly seize the best sales opportunities. This boosts the efficiency of your sales cycle and shortens it substantially by enabling you to focus your sales efforts on only qualified leads. In addition, allocating your sales resources to the right leads in such a way results in focused sales conversations with greater purchase inclination.
Lead scoring can help you close more deals by:
– Identifying your hottest leads
– Alerting your sales reps to a lead’s activity
– Prioritizing your sales efforts
– Saving time and resources
If you’re not already using lead scoring, I encourage you to start. It’s a simple and effective way to improve your sales process by passing only quality leads to your sales team.
Lead scoring is built into most CRMs and/or marketing automation systems. For more information on getting started with lead scoring and routing, click here to set up a free consultation today.
