Understanding Lead Scoring to Prioritize Top Leads - business.com

Benefits of lead scoring include:

• Increased sales efficiency. Your sales team can spend more time in closing sales qualified leads (SQL).
• Lower customer acquisition costs.
• Improved conversion rates. Your sales team can speak directly to those expected to buy.
• Increased revenue.
• Collaboration between departments.
• Advanced targeting.
• Stronger relationships. Lead data can ensure a better understanding of lead connections and correlations.

Turn buyers into buyer personas using existing sales data and observations. Separate your leads into converted leads and dead leads. Then use the lead-scoring criteria to rank all your converted leads.

Main lead scoring categories:

• Demographic and firmographic (location, industry, company size, job title).
• Behavioural data. How the lead visits your website, start a free trial, etc.
• Email engagement.
• Social engagement.

Do some testing to see which criteria most likely lead to a sale. Take the lowest score of a lead that became a customer. This is your lead score threshold.

• Keep the lead scoring simple. Too many data points can make leads look too similar.
• Decide on processes. It's standard to follow up with a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and use drip email to look after the leads.
• Define a follow-up schedule. E.g. high-quality leads could receive a phone call within 24 hours.
• Connect your CRM. Automate your lead-scoring data through your DRM to notify sales and marketing teams to contact leads.
• Frequently run a lead-scoring report to see if it matches your conversions.
• Clean up data from leads that did not convert.