Lead scoring attaches values to leads based on their professional information, interactions, behaviors, and engagement with your organization. The purpose isn’t to solely focus on identifying only the MQLs and forget about all the other leads, but rather identify those leads that are sales ready, and those leads that need further nurturing. Let’s review 5 lead scoring strategies that will improve your model, save your sales reps time, and increase your bottom line.
Strategy #1 - Collaboration
Form a small committee of employees from both sales and marketing to collaboratively work on creating and/or updating the lead scoring model. Gaining insights and learning what is important to both teams will assist in implementing a successful tool. The first major task of the committee will be to sit down and define all captured data fields and identify what makes an MQL and a SQL.
Strategy #2 - Assign Point Values
Utilize the committee to start building the framework of your lead scoring model. Based on all the defined criteria, the group must agree on what is most and least valuable and score the criteria accordingly. To approach this, you may want to look at past marketing campaigns and see how many actions you request of your prospect. Those key actions will likely have higher ranked values. From there, you can determine the highest possible score based on those requested actions, and then work backwards defining how many and which of those actions define a MQL. In the end, you’ll be ranking and scoring all criteria to determine when a lead should be sent to sales.
Strategy #3 - Write a service level agreement (SLA)
Define responsibilities for both the sales and marketing teams. How exactly does a lead move through the sales funnel? What steps do they take? Who is responsible for monitoring movement of leads from one step to the next? What are the timelines associated with each step? Clearly laying out the lead’s path and defining the process will create accountability and improve the success of the lead scoring model.
Strategy #4 - Test the model
Test the lead scoring model against the current sales pipeline. Once you have designed the model, you’ll want to be sure to test it before going live. This usually consists of taking a sampling of customer records, and running the lead scoring model against them. You can then compare the results of the lead scoring model to the response of the prospects. Did the leads that scored high enough to become MQL match up with the list of open opportunities in your current database? Of those that didn’t meet MQL, how many of those are still being nurtured in the sales funnel? Comparing these percentages will give you a good idea how the model will work. If you aren’t happy with the results, continue to tweak the model. But, remember nothing is ever perfect. So while testing is extremely important, don’t let your quest for perfection hold you back from making progress.
Strategy #5 - Assess and Evaluate
Lead scoring is not a set it and forget it type of program. It needs to be monitored and evaluated regularly. When first deploying the model, hold daily and/or weekly meetings with your committee to review metric reports and gather feedback. Over time, you can move to monthly or perhaps quarterly meetings and decide if any changes need to be made to the model to further improve conversion rates.
When properly implemented, lead scoring has the capability to take your business to the next level. Are you ready for it? If so, we are ready to help you. Send us an email or call us at 571-606-3106.
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