How to start lead scoring

4 min read

Lead scoring allows you to contact and follow up on leads with confidence, prioritising those that need your attention right now, and allowing you to safely discard the ones that don’t. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by leads, lead scoring can save you and your team a lot of time and money - but how do you get started? In this blog, we will discuss the basics of lead scoring and the information you need to be able to get the process started.

What is lead scoring?

Lead scoring is the means through which marketing and sales teams rank their leads to ascertain their readiness to buy. Leads score points based on information and behaviours, and once they hit a high enough number of points they become ‘qualified’. A qualified lead is one that is in the right position to be contacted by your sales team. 

Lead scoring models can be based on information such as:

• Demographic data from individuals, such as age and gender
• Firmographic data from organisations, such as location and size
• Behavioural data, such as open and clickthrough rates

Lead scoring may not be appropriate for your business if you are already comfortably managing your current amount of daily leads, or if your sales cycle is relatively short. Lead scoring is for those who are inundated with prospects and need help securing the 10-15% that will lead to deals.

How can lead scoring help my business?

Essentially, lead scoring helps you to convert leads into customers. It does this by ensuring the following:

Consistency

Lead scoring depends on consistency and collaboration between your marketing and sales teams. Developing a lead scoring model will involve input from both teams, to determine what data is the most important to gather and analyse, and agreeing on what attributes make a qualified lead. Your lead scoring model will also need to be regularly reassessed to ensure that it is working as desired, and producing the results you want.

Saving time

One of the goals of a lead scoring model is to save you and your team valuable time. For example, one of the benefits of lead scoring is being able to divert lower-scoring leads through automated nurturing processes. This means that your sales team won’t spend time on personalised communication to these unlikely prospects, and have more time to devote to qualified leads.

Better communication with leads

Everyone knows that having the right conversations at the right time is essential when looking to convert leads into customers. Lead scoring helps you to understand when a lead is ready to be approached, or when they are still in the browsing stage and need further nurturing. This will help leads to feel understood, as opposed to pressured, and prevents potential customers from slipping through the net or turning away. 

How to start lead scoring

If you’re ready to try lead scoring, here are the basic steps to get you started. Before you begin, it is important to have calculated your current conversion rate from leads to customers.

Collect a list of valuable actions and determine which to score

Look at your existing customers, and identify the attributes that make them ideal. These qualities should be chosen based on a mix of data, as well as discussion with your sales team about who your target audience is. They can be a mix of demographical information, and valuable interactions. 

Assign points to actions

Decide how many points each of these actions is worth. For example, visiting your homepage will be worth a set amount of points, but signing up to a mailing list will be worth more - and more still if the lead is within your desired demographic. Don’t forget to include negative points. For example, subtract points if a lead has a negative interaction with your social media, or frequently only visits your careers page, as they are unlikely to want to become customers.

Determine thresholds from sending the contact to sales

Through collaboration with your sales team, determine the number of points a lead needs in order to be considered qualified, and therefore contacted. It’s important to get feedback from both your customers and your sales team to help with this step, as it is an area that will need regular monitoring and adjustments. This threshold won’t be universal, especially if you’re using multiple lead scoring models for different products. 

Continue to review to ensure your lead scoring is accurate

Be prepared to continually update your lead scoring process to ensure that it is accurate and valuable. While lead scoring is designed to remove some of the guesswork from the sales process, it will still take trial and error when first establishing your models. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking lead scoring is something you can ‘set and forget’.

Learn more about how Apteco software can help with lead scoring

If you want to take your lead scoring to the next level, or you feel that your lead scoring isn’t as effective as it could be, you may benefit from the ways in which Apteco can help you to automate and monitor your lead scoring models. Using predictive analytics will allow you to quickly apply a score across your whole database to achieve high levels of personalisation for every lead and customer. Receiving real-time data means that calibrations can be constantly being made, to ensure insights are as accurate as can be. 

Apteco can help to identify not just potential new customers, but also customers with a high lifetime value, and what their next purchase is likely to be. This can then be promoted to them, and the content they receive is adapted accordingly.

Insights like this add a richer layer to modelling and scoring, save you valuable time, and convert more leads into customers. Apteco software can integrate with your existing tools and programmes to provide you with a more detailed view of your customers and their preferences.

If you want to learn more about Apteco software and what it could do for you, why not book a demo today?