Introduction

Lead scoring is a tool that is used in the context of a lead qualification process to sort, identify, and prioritize leads based on a number of business criteria. The goal of lead scoring is to assign various levels of importance so that their efforts can be powered by their ROI. Lead scoring is a popular tool because it helps the business to make better and more productive decisions while identifying the most valuable leads. In this blog, we’ll cover the basics of lead scoring and its importance to the organization.

Lead Scoring 101

There are a number of different lead scoring models. They can be broken into three categories:

1) Revenue-based lead scoring

2) Lead-based scoring and

3) Performance-based lead scoring.

Revenue-based lead scoring is the most common type of lead scoring model because it measures how much money the company is making from each lead. For example, you can define that your ideal customer profile has a total revenue above $100m. In this case, your lead scoring would attribute a higher score to those leads that are companies above the $100m revenue level.

Lead-based scoring is a lead scoring system that relies on a few basic criteria to help prioritize and assess the opportunity of a potential lead. In short, you must have a certain minimum level of information about your lead to progress that lead into the “Qualified” stage. The lead scoring system is broken down into three different categories: Preliminary Lead, Prospect, and Buying Decision. The preliminary lead is the first tier in the lead scoring system and is composed of a number of criteria, eg “The lead must have a specific company contact name”, “The lead must have a company website” and so on.

Performance based lead scoring is a system that applies higher scores to those leads whose behavior is closer to that which is ideal for your business. For example, you can decide to apply a higher lead score to those prospects that respond to an email campaign in the first 24 hours, and a lower score to those that responde after one week.

How do you implement lead scoring?

Implementing lead scoring is easy.  The first step is to create a list of lead criteria that you want to use as a basis for the scoring. This part is crucial! Take your time, discuss with your colleagues, check historical data and find the key variables that determine a successful sales engagement with your prospects (ie those that generate most revenue for your business) – those are the variables that you should be measuring leads against. Examples are things like engagement, account activity, previous conversions and other business criteria.

How to measure the ROI of lead scoring?

Lead scoring is often used by companies that have a specific goal. For example, lead scoring is used by banks to identify and prioritize leads based on their likelihood of becoming a customer. In order to measure the ROI of lead scoring, it is important to consider the metrics that you will measure:

• You can measure the amount of leads that you received;
• or the amount of new customers that you have;
• or the amount of customers that have stayed on your platform;
• you can also measure the amount of money that you have saved
• and of course, the amount of money that you have made

You should also make sure that you measure the number of customers that have been referred to you.

Ultimately, it’s about understanding a) whether there is a positive ROI from your lead scoring efforts and b) to see if there’s ways that you can be more efficient with your lead generation efforts, to ensure your marketing message targets only (or realistically, mostly) those prospects that are most prone to buy from you.

Best lead scoring software

As part of your sales stack, there’s a number of great lead scoring solutions out there. Here’s my Top 3:

1. Hubspot Marketing Hub: its AI-powered lead scoring will let you qualify and distribute your leads at scale, making it a great solution for larger companies that are feeling the strain of an active and diverse pipeline. If you’re already using their CRM, then it’s a no brainer – integration is seamless and you’ll get up and running in no time.
2. Pipedrive: if you want to keep it simple, Pipedrive has one of the easiest to use user interfaces around. You’ll find it delivers on what you need without having to take a degree just to get started (as I found with Salesforce, unfortunately).
3. Zoho CRM: if what you’re looking for is a “Free Forever” plan, Zoho has got you covered. Not only is their software great – despite somewhat complex to use – but it has the ability to collate leads from various marketing disciplines and scoring them all for follow-up. A great option all-around.

Conclusion

You might be thinking that lead scoring is a new concept that is just not applicable to your business. However, we hope you will reconsider, considering the marketing procedures you are currently using may not be working for your business. We are here to tell you that lead scoring is a powerful tool that can improve your lead funnel, which will help your business grow. If you have any more questions, please contact us.

Thank you for reading, we would love to hear from you!