5 Lead Scoring Best Practices

Lead Scoring does that. It is a way of punctuating the leads according to predefined criteria. Each lead interaction is assigned a score (positive or negative depending on the action) and the higher scores show more interest and predisposition of the lead to buy.

Choose the right punctuation criteria.

Identifying the most useful and relevant scorecard criteria for the business is essential to successfully implement a Lead Scoring methodology. There are three basic types of criteria: explicit, implicit, and negative.

Explicit criteria

• Name;
• Company;
• Location;
• Activity sector;
• Function;
• Billing volume.

The implicit criteria

• Number of visits to the website;
• Content you consulted (services and products that interested the lead);
• Subscription to a newsletter;
• Visualization of a webinar;
• Visit a page with prices;
• Presence at company events.

 
Negative criteria

• The lead does not respond to marketing and sales requests;
• You want to unsubscribe from the newsletter;
• Has no decision-making power for the purchase (B2B);
• Visit the "Careers" or "Jobs" page on the website;
• The function is student.

Score accurately.

For each of the explicit and implicit criteria that you define, you must assign a score. For negative criteria, define negative numbering.

Score accurately. Do not score lightly. Set the scores accurately, being the highest for what is really relevant, which manifests actual lead interest or perfect identification with your buyer people. Opening only one email, for example, does not justify a score. On the other hand, if the lead has visited the price page several times in the last week, it expresses interest, so this interaction should correspond to a higher score.

Define the score value that determines when a lead is qualified.

Marketing and Sales teams must define the cumulative score that determines when a lead is qualified together, thus allowing the alignment between the sales needs and the marketing strategy (SMarketing). For example, teams can define that when a lead reaches 60 points out of a maximum of 100, the lead is considered qualified. Due to the sum of the scores and interactions he had with the company / brand, enough interest was shown to be relevant to the lead being worked by the Sales team.

Automated process.

Successfully implementing the Lead Scoring methodology manually is an arduous task, if not impossible, for companies with a large volume of contacts. Have you ever imagined assigning scores for each lead interaction with the website in a spreadsheet?

On a Marketing Automation platform, the score is automatically made by the system, according to the criteria you define. Thus, it is important for your team to have access to a platform with these capabilities.

Analyze and adjust as necessary.

It is difficult to improve what we can not measure. So if you're not getting the expected results, look at the defined criteria, see what's failing and where you can improve. If the Sales team is still contacting leads that are not willing to buy, and are not interested in receiving information or clarifying questions, something has gone wrong over the lead score to become qualified.

Get feedback from Sales and Marketing teams, analyze results, and review processes. If you are having good results, keep up the good work, but remember there is always way to do better.