You only have so many hours in a day, so your sales team should focus on the best leads. A core principle of effectiveness is based on the idea that there’s just not enough time to do everything that you want to, so you must prioritize your activities based on which ones will get you the most value in the least amount of time. Lead scoring is a technique born out of this principle.
In very basic terms, lead scoring is an objective system for ranking leads to determine which ones are the best to spend your limited time on.
In other words, lead scoring can help you determine which leads are hot—and which leads are not, allowing your sales and marketing teams to put their efforts into the best opportunities for revenue generation.
A robust lead scoring system might help you know which leads are most likely to result in profitable sales.
Imagine you’ve been in business for a couple of years and have generated a lot of past clients. Now you decide you want to start selling a new service to them.
Where do you start?
A simple technique for developing a Lead Scoring Model is to start with an Intuition based approach:
Ask an experienced sales rep to assign a number from 0 – 10 to a batch of leads.
After they assign the values, then go back to each lead and ask “Why did you assign this one a 6, and this lead an 8?”
The answers will be the first clues that you need to understanding your Qualification Criteria.
If the answer is something like:
“I gave this one a 8 because it is a big deal.”
You might have your first clue that Deal Size should be one of your qualification criteria.
“I gave this one a 4 because we’re not working with a key decision maker.”
You recognize that working with a Decision Maker is a key criteria.
“I gave this one a 9 because they really need our product.”
You can identify that Product Fit is one of your qualification criteria.
“I gave this one a 10 because they have budget.”
You know that Available Budget might be important.
This blog just scratches the surface of what you can do with lead scoring, but you’re well on your way to establishing a lead scoring system.
