Lead Scoring is the methodology used to rank various customer attributes to determine their readiness to make a purchase. Effective lead scoring models will provide sales reps with optimal leads that are ready to take action, resulting in more closed-won business.

Creating and implementing a winning lead scoring model takes time and requires a joint effort between both the marketing and sales teams. Collaboratively these two groups must work together to define what makes a qualified lead and determine the point value assigned to the various attributes.

When designing a lead scoring model, you should consider the following top 3 lead scoring attributes:

Demographics
Questions to Consider:

  • What industry are you in?
  • What is your job title?
  • What geographic area does your business serve?
  • What is the size of your company?

Understanding who is visiting your site is important. Including the above types of questions on forms is extremely helpful in developing a lead scoring model. For example, if your business only focuses on medium to large size businesses, and a prospect is from a small business, they may receive a negative point value for that particular attribute.

Behaviors
Questions to Consider:

  • Have they visited the same product pages multiple times?
  • Have they signed up for newsletters or blog updates?
  • Have they opened emails? Clicked on links?
  • How often do they visit your site?

Customer behaviors provide an invaluable amount of insight about a client. A prospect who regularly reads emails, clicks on links, and frequently visits your website, is likely someone is seriously considering your product or services. These types of behaviors would result in a higher ranking than someone who never opened emails, and only spent a few seconds on a page.

Interests
Questions to Consider:

  • What types of content are they reading - blogs, emails, web pages?
  • What is the main focus of this content - is it about a specific pain point or process?
  • How are they finding your content: social media, web, emails?

Keeping tabs on the type of content and the subject of the content that is engaging your customers along with how they prefer to receive your content, will give you a good idea of what products they are most interested in and how to continue to engage them. Additionally, this type of information could help you create funnels the lead into a specific campaign about products within the same family of what they’ve shown interest in.

Set the Plan in Motion
As the sales and marketing teams discuss these lead scoring attributes, and share past experiences and interactions with customers, it will become clear what the most import attributes are to your particular business. From there, you can systematically break the information down into categories, deciding what is most important, and assign corresponding point values. With any new system, you must monitor it and make adjustments as you go, but the effort will most definitely be worth the reward.

If your business needs help defining lead scoring attributes, creating or implementing a lead scoring model, we want to hear from you. Email us today and let’s talk discuss your specific business needs.

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