Scoring leads – all you need to know

When it comes to a successful sales process your goal should be to tell who is interested in your product or service and who won’t go through the following stages of the pipeline. Numbers speak for themselves: more than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the hardest part of their job, 30% admit it’s closing, and about 22% claim it’s qualifying. As you can see, choosing the right ones is a tough matter. One of the best ways to push the process further and solve this mystery of good prospects is lead scoring. And from this piece, you will learn more about it.

Lead scoring is a method that is designed to evaluate a lead quality using points. It is a well-known fact that each lead is different and has different needs or resources that ultimately affect decisions. The lead scoring system is based on the following attributes:

Scoring helps you sort out the group of potential customers into those who should become qualified leads. This system is very useful both in sales and marketing, e.g. with email automation. Moreover, it will help you select those people who are closest to the buyer persona model, and thus closed deals and conversion rates will soar up.

A lead scoring model guarantees that the value you allocate to each prospect is appropriate for your product and likely to convert. Below, you can find three models that are coherent with the attributes mentioned above. 

Statisticians are predicting that 376 billion emails will be sent by 2025. With such numbers, the subscription to your newsletter alone does not necessarily mean interest in your offer. What should catch your attention are open rates and CTRs. This is the key information that lets the sales team know that someone is interested. 

Therefore, in this model, it is necessary to distinguish according to the above indicators. A person who clicks a link in an email is likely closer to a decision than someone who just opened the email. Let alone a recipient who didn’t even notice the message. 

If your target group regularly uses social media, assign points based on their engagement as well. Comment, like, tag, or share, each may be a signal that the user is interested in your company. Choosing the right social media is also important. For example, in the B2B market, LinkedIn generates 3 times higher CTR than Twitter or Facebook. Nowadays, social media has great power, even for sales.

Is your product dedicated to gen Z women only? Is it only available across the US? If you have specific demographics for your customer audience, you should rely on this model foremost to focus on your target audience. 

If you want to sell in specific locations, any lead outside that area will get a negative score to make sure your sales team doesn’t go after those customers. Such aspects are also very important in B2B sales – companies target their services or products to other companies on particular markets, with this model you can assign negative points to companies outside the target or individual customers.

Based on the behavior of users on your website, you can tell a lot and allocate points accordingly. Analyze aspects such as:

Knowing such factors, you may, for example, give the highest points to those who filled in all the fields in a form, somewhat less to those who left blanks, and so on.

Lead scoring is a great help for both marketing and sales teams and is a great example of synergy. After identifying the right audience for marketing efforts and starting the lead generation process, sales reps can support leads throughout their customer journey and finally close deals. Recognizing your prospect’s needs and where they are in the sales funnel is key to a quality customer experience and high conversion rates.

Lead scoring provides insight into the sales process and allows you to determine at what stage they are – they are ready to buy, or maybe just considering the need. This assessment allows you to determine whether the customer is ready to contact you again. Hitting sales messages when customers just started exploring the market can make them feel overwhelmed and give up further search or consider your product as a solution.

When it comes to marketing, scoring leads can be helpful to measure ROI. Analyzing which channels and activities bring the best leads will help you make even better budget decisions in the future. 

Moreover, you will be able to adequately modify your content to each target audience owing to this strategy. After all, a successful campaign depends on accurate targeting; if you provide users with the information they need, you will win their trust, and they will come to you in the future. 

Quality over quantity – this statement holds true in sales as well! Granular insights in the sales funnel are a way to improve your activities. Focus on those customers who are most likely to convert into long-time customers, and take care of them.

Scoring leads is also a chance to take a step back and assess how the sales pipeline is constructed, what actions are taken at each stage, and what results are achieved. Stasis is the enemy of growth, so it’s important to evaluate what each sales rep faces daily, like a sales funnel, and improve it. This is the only way to keep up with the changing market and follow customer preferences.

Now, it is high time to take action. How to get started with lead scoring and what are the best practices? Here are a few rules to follow and some tips that may be handy during the process.

To do this, you’ll need to interview sales and marketing teams first. This is the only way you can identify key demographic and behavioral indicators. As a next step, you should create buyer personas and define the most important characteristics. The more boxes the lead checks, the higher the score should be.

Now once you know who your ideal customer is, it is time to divide points. At this stage, you should know what are the most desired actions, so start with them. Do not forget about the negative points! They are as important as positive ones. As an example, you can score:

Setting rules for stagnation is also essential. If they lose interest, they’re not a very promising prospect and should be evaluated negatively. For example, give -10 points if they haven’t taken any action for a month.

When are the leads ready to contact? Once they are marked as marketing-qualified leads. So your next step is to determine the threshold for marking a lead as MQL. As soon as it crosses this line, the sales team should receive a clear message: go for it!

Fortunately, you don’t have to calculate all these points by yourself. You can choose a CRM system to do it for you. The clue here is to choose wisely. With monday.com, your work can be done very quickly. While setting up your account choose what your interest is, i.e. sales, and you will get what you are looking for. But there are two ways to approach this. First, with monday.com work management, you can choose sales-related templates and do your own system like a puzzle; select templates and make them desired shape. Another way is to pick monday sales CRM and have it done even faster. Via this approach, your work is to personalize built-in templates and enter the data only. 

Your scoring method is entirely up to you. No matter which model you pick, monday.com has got your back. You may personalize boards by adding tags such as stars, hearts, flags, and colors, which makes using the board simpler. Furthermore, you can also change the layout of the board by selecting Kanban or Gantt to view how the leads go through the sales funnel.

The score assigned to each lead is based on various predetermined characteristics such as role, stage, company, or revenue. Each lead is suitably weighted using a preset formula to get the final score. You may simply alter these values by weight using the formula column without scripting. Moreover, sales team members can make changes at any time and set up scoring rules or assign points based on specific conditions that suit their sales approach.

Thanks to automation rules, you can set notifications to be sent as soon as a prospect is marked as MQL. This way, the sales team won’t miss any opportunity to reach a potential customer and present an offer. You can also add integrations in order to notify them via email or favorite communicator. 

Lead scoring should become your go-to tactic if you want your sales team to work efficiently and close more deals. It is also a way to get to know your target better and an opportunity to reevaluate your marketing sales actions and check which works best. 

As you read above, this strategy requires some work from both sales and marketing teams, but you can be sure it will bring you profits. Moreover, there is monday.com to help with the math and improve workflow. It can be done in a flash, thanks to all the features the system provides.