How to Use Lead Scoring to Deliver Hot Leads to Sales
Every sales team loves prospects who are chomping at the bit to purchase their product or service. And every marketing team wants to be able to confidently deliver leads that easily turn into closed deals. Generating highly qualified leads makes everyone’s job easier.
But how do you qualify leads from your marketing efforts?
In order to quantify your marketing efforts and prove ROI, you need to be able to generate marketing-qualified leads (MQLs). MQLs are more likely to become customers based on their demographic information and their engagement with your marketing efforts. How do you know when a prospect has become an MQL? Lead scoring.
First, what is lead scoring?
Lead scoring is a methodology used to rank prospects against a scale that represents the perceived value each lead represents to your organization.
In layperson’s terms, you select a scoring threshold (let’s use 10 for the purpose of the example), and when your leads hit that score, that means they are marketing-qualified. In order to hit the threshold, leads are scored on criteria such as role, company size, and much more. They should also receive points when they interact with your content and visit your website.
Identify the criteria that makes a marketing qualified lead.
As I just mentioned, the first thing you’ll want to do when setting up the lead scoring system is to decide—with your sales team—which lead characteristics makes them qualified. By identifying this information, you can assign point values to each of these qualifications to form your lead scoring system.
As you start to determine your lead scoring system, here are some qualifications to consider, as well as any other criteria that may be important to your business.
Demographic qualifications:
- Role/job title
- Company size/number of employees
- Company type/industry
Qualifications based on activity:
- Number of web pages viewed
- Number of forms completed (content download, inquiries or requests)
- Email clicks
- Call-to-action clicks
Tip: It helps you to look at past lead activity when determining this figure, so you know what has historically led to sales conversions.
Set and assign point values.
Now that you’ve identified and agreed on which criteria make up an MQL (with your sales team), you can come up with a point system and start assigning point values to each criteria. To understand this further, here’s a helpful lead scoring spreadsheet.
Determine what score makes a lead sales-ready.
Remember, the point of lead scoring is three-fold:
- Avoid harassing leads with contact from sales before they’re ready to buy.
- Identify leads who need to be nurtured through marketing workflows.
- Maximize the efficiency of your sales team so they can easily identify leads who are sales-ready.
Once you’ve set point values for each lead qualification category, decide your scoring threshold. As a reminder, this is the score at which your lead is considered qualified.
Now it’s time to let those hot leads roll in! Do you agree with the above process? What would you include? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
If you’re looking to implement a lead scoring system at your business, contact Milwaukee marketing agency, Accelity.
