What Is Lead Scoring?

Once your business generates enough leads, lead scoring can help you prioritise the most valuable ones for your sales team to pursue.

Lead scoring is a method used by businesses to rate and rank potential customers based on their level of interest in a product or service. It helps businesses identify which leads are more likely to convert into paying customers.

If you find your sales or marketing leads disorganised or your team is overwhelmed by the number of leads, start implementing a lead-scoring process.

In this post, we’ll define lead scoring, explain how to implement it, and discuss its benefits for your business.

The Meaning Of Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is where you assign numerical values (points or scores) to each lead you generate for your business.

How Does Lead Scoring Work?

Lead scoring takes into account a variety of factors and assigns points or scores to each lead based on their behaviour, demographics, and other criteria.

These scores help businesses determine which leads are most likely to engage with their brand and make a purchase.

Here are some common factors that may be used:

Demographic information (e.g. job title, company size, industry)
Online behaviour (e.g. website visits, email opens and clicks, social media interactions)
Interaction with marketing materials (e.g. attendance at webinars or events)
Purchase history (e.g. past purchases from your business)

Once each lead is assigned a score, they can be segmented into different categories based on their level of interest and likelihood to convert.

Implementing Lead Scoring

To implement this process for your business, follow these steps:

1. Define your ideal customer profile

To define your ideal customer profiles, start by creating user personas.

User personas consist of fictional representations of your target customers, including their demographics, pain points, and motivations.

These personas will help you understand who your ideal customers are and what factors to consider in lead scoring.

Let’s give you an example:

Say you run a software company that sells a project management tool.

Your ideal customer profile could be a marketing manager at a mid-sized tech company with 5-10 years of experience and a high budget for purchasing software.

2. Determine your lead scoring criteria

Once you have defined your ideal customer profiles, you can determine the factors to include in your lead scoring system.

A lead scoring criteria can look like the following:

Job title: Marketing Manager (+10 points)
Company size: Mid-sized tech company (+5 points)
Industry: Technology (+3 points)
Website visits: 3 or more visits in the past month (+7 points)
Email opens and clicks: Opened and clicked through on at least 2 marketing emails (+8 points)
Social media interactions: Engaged with at least 5 social media posts (+6 points)
Purchase history: Has made a purchase from your company before (+20 points)

You can assign points to each criterion based on their relevance and importance in identifying a potential customer.

Make sure to also consider negative scoring criteria.

A negative scoring criteria could look like this:

Job title: Intern or entry-level position (-5 points)
Company size: Start-up with less than 10 employees (-3 points)
Industry: Non-profit organisation (-2 points)
Email unsubscribes: Unsubscribed from your email list (-10 points)

These negative scoring criteria will help you filter out leads that are not a good fit.

How do you score a lead?

If you’re not utilising a predictive lead scoring tool (a machine learning tool that identifies and scores leads based on past data), you must manually score your leads based on the above criteria.

To manually score leads, you’re going to need to do the following calculations:

Calculate the conversion rate: Convert the total number of leads into customers. This will give you a baseline conversion rate to work with.
Assign points to each lead based on the criteria above: Add or subtract points based on whether the leads meet positive or negative criteria.
Set a threshold score: Determine what score range is considered a good lead and what is considered a bad lead. Use the conversion rate as a benchmark to help you determine this threshold.
Score each lead: Calculate the total points for each lead and compare it to the threshold score. If it falls within the good lead range, then you can focus on nurturing that lead. If it falls within the bad lead range, then you can either deprioritise or completely disregard that lead.

3. Use A CRM System

After determining your lead scoring criteria and scoring your leads, it’s important to keep track of all this information in a centralised location. This is where a CRM (customer relationship management) system comes in handy.

A CRM can help you keep track of all your leads and their scores, as well as any interactions or engagements with them.

It also allows you to segment and categorise your leads based on their scores, making it easier to target and nurture them accordingly.

In addition, a CRM can provide valuable insights into your lead-generation efforts by tracking which sources produce the most high-quality leads and identifying any patterns or trends in your lead-scoring data.

Leadtrekker is an excellent CRM system in South Africa. Leadtrekker can do all of the above and more, making it a valuable tool for any business looking to improve its lead management process.

Book your free demo with Leadtrekker and experience the benefits of using a CRM system for lead scoring and management.

The Benefits of Lead Scoring

Imagine a sales team without a lead scoring process in place. They would spend their time chasing after leads that may never convert into paying customers, wasting valuable time and resources.

Scoring leads helps businesses prioritise their leads and focus on the ones with the most potential for conversion. This results in more efficient use of time and resources and better ROI (return on investment).

Start Your Lead Scoring Process Today!

What is lead scoring?

It is a process that will help your business turn potential leads into high-quality, valuable customers.

So, if your business wants to improve its lead management process and increase conversions, start implementing these steps to develop an effective lead-scoring strategy.

Remember, regularly reviewing and adjusting your lead scoring criteria is crucial for ensuring the accuracy and effectiveness of your scores. And with the help of a CRM system like Leadtrekker, you can streamline and automate this process for even better results.