Sales and marketing teams often spend valuable time and energy nurturing leads that are either unqualified or unlikely to convert. Lead scoring can give your team a clear indication of the quality of a lead, so your sales team can focus on high-potential prospects while marketing can continue warming up colder leads. Effective lead scoring results in efficient resource allocation, higher conversion rates, shorter sales cycles, and a lot less frustration all around.
Most B2B companies make use of a CRM platform and collect a lot of data about prospects through lead capture forms and other tracking mechanisms. This data can be invaluable in identifying quality leads, but it needs to be refined to be useful. Lead scoring can help you make the most of your database by turning raw data into actionable insights. You can then make use of smart automation to nurture or reengage leads, assign hot leads to the right salesperson, move them through the sales pipeline and ultimately convert them into customers.
In this article, you’ll learn how to implement an effective lead scoring model by following a few simple steps. Remember to download our free lead scoring template to help make the process easier.
Why Are Lead Scoring Models Important?
A scoring model is a system that assigns a score to a lead, contact or company based on specific criteria, like what region they stay in, what their job title is and how they have engaged with your business. This score is used to rank prospects and allows you to predict outcomes such as the likelihood of a customer making a purchase, or what kind of communication your lead is most likely to engage with.
Lead scoring models are essential for leveraging data effectively and offer several key benefits:
- Focused Team Activities: Lead scoring models help your team concentrate on contacts that are most likely to engage or convert. By prioritising leads and opportunities based on their scores, businesses can allocate resources more efficiently and enhance productivity.
- Understanding Data Value: Scoring models enable businesses to comprehend the true value of their data. By quantifying the value of different data points, you can extract meaningful insights that drive strategic decisions.
- Insights Into Contact Behaviours: These models provide a deep understanding of contact behaviours. By analysing patterns and trends, businesses can tailor their approaches to meet customer preferences and improve overall engagement.
- Informed Decision-Making: With clear insights from lead scoring models, businesses can make well-informed decisions. Whether it’s refining marketing strategies or optimising operations, these models offer the information needed to stay ahead in a competitive market.
Building a Successful Lead Scoring Model
To fully leverage the power of lead scoring, you first need to ensure that you’re using a full-featured CRM with built-in automation and lead scoring capabilities. HubSpot is one of the leading platforms on the market, and a solid choice for any business looking for an all-in-one solution. Once you have the right tools, you can start building your scoring model. Creating and using a reliable lead scoring model involves several key steps:
1. Identify Your Key Data Points
Identifying key data points involves selecting the most important factors that will influence your model’s outcome. Ensure that the data you collect is relevant, reliable, and accurate, as you can only score on the data you have.
To start, develop an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) based on both firmographic and demographic data:
- Firmographic Data: Includes information about a company such as industry, company size, revenue, location, and business model.
- Demographic Data: Covers individual attributes such as age, gender, job title, education level, and personal interests.
Next, consider the different types of engagements your contacts can have with your business:
- Website Visits: Tracking pages viewed, time spent on site, and frequency of visits.
- Email Interactions: Monitoring open rates, click-through rates, and responses to campaigns.
- Social Media Engagement: Measuring likes, shares, comments, and follows.
- Purchase History: Analysing past purchases, average order value, and purchase frequency.
- Customer Support Interactions: Reviewing inquiries, resolution times, and customer satisfaction scores.
- Event Participation: Tracking attendance at webinars, trade shows, and other events.
- Content Engagement: Monitoring downloads, views, and interactions with blogs, whitepapers, and videos.
2. Determine Scoring Tiers
Consider using a tiered model in your scoring. A tiered model allows you to categorise key data points into levels of importance. For example, if your business targets companies with annual revenue between $5,000,000 and $100,000,000, you can divide this range into three groups:
- Tier 1: Companies with annual revenue of $60,000,000 – $100,000,000
- Tier 2: Companies with annual revenue of $20,000,000 – $59,999,999
- Tier 3: Companies with annual revenue of $5,000,000 – $19,999,999
Using this tiered approach, Tier 1 companies will achieve a higher score more quickly, helping your team prioritise these leads and determine the appropriate follow-up actions. This method ensures that your most promising leads receive the attention they deserve.
3. Set Scoring Values
Now you can assign a score or value to each data point. You should assign positive values to characteristics or actions belonging to high-quality leads, and negative values to factors that either disqualify a lead or indicate that they’re less promising or not ready to speak to your sales team.
Base these decisions on the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) you developed and identify which characteristics or behaviours are most valuable. For example:
- High-value actions might include making a purchase or signing up for a webinar.
- Medium-value actions might include opening an email or visiting your website.
- Low-value actions might include following you on social media or clicking a link.
- Negative scoring actions might include unsubscribing from a list.
By carefully assigning score values, you can build a lead scoring model that accurately reflects the readiness and quality of each lead, helping you align your sales and marketing teams, streamline operations and and make informed business decisions.
4. Apply Score Decay Over Time
Choose to decay scores based on the timeframe. For instance, if someone engages with you today, they receive a high score. This score decreases each week without further engagement. This allows you to see if a contact is ready to engage or make a purchase.
5. Test
Ensure the model accurately adds and subtracts scores based on lead data. Conduct tests to verify the scoring logic and make adjustments as necessary.
6. Review
Review your scoring model at least once a year to ensure it remains relevant and effective. Update it based on new data, changing business goals, and market conditions.
Taking the Next Step
To make it easier to build a lead scoring model, we’ve developed a comprehensive template. This template provides a structured framework, guiding you through each step of the process. By using our template, you can save time and effort while increasing your chances of success. Start your journey towards data-driven lead scoring.
Remember, a successful scoring model requires continuous monitoring and refinement. By embracing this approach, you can unlock the full potential of your data and drive sustainable growth for your business.
