The Art and Science of Lead Scoring

Imagine Sarah, the head of sales at a rapidly growing tech startup. Her team is drowning in leads — every head of sales dream!

But despite their best efforts, they can’t seem to convert them into actual customers. Frustrated and overwhelmed, Sarah knows there must be a better way to prioritize.

In this post, we’ll explore the concept of lead scoring, how it can benefit your business, and how you can implement it via Salesforce and HubSpot.

By the end, you’ll understand how to streamline your sales process and sift through the junk and turn your best prospects into loyal customers.

Contents

• What Is Lead Scoring?
• How To Score Leads
• Lead Scoring In Salesforce
• Lead Scoring In HubSpot
• Other Methods Of Lead Prioritization
• Final Thoughts

Lead scoring is the process of assigning values to leads based on their behavior and characteristics. This helps sales teams prioritize their efforts on the leads that are most likely to convert.

Benefits of a Good Lead Scoring System

Improved Efficiency: By focusing on high-scoring leads, sales teams can use their time more effectively, prioritizing those who are most likely to be the most valuable.

Better Alignment Between Sales and Marketing: Lead scoring creates a common language and criteria for evaluating leads, fostering better collaboration and understanding between the two departments.

Higher Conversion Rates: By identifying and prioritizing leads that are the most valuable and most likely to convert, businesses can vastly improve conversion rates and revenue.

Personalized Marketing Efforts: With a clear understanding of lead behavior and preferences, marketing teams can create more targeted and personalized campaigns, increasing engagement and nurturing leads more effectively.

Insightful Data Analysis: Lead scoring provides valuable insights into what makes a lead valuable, allowing businesses to refine their strategies and improve their overall sales process.

Lead scoring typically involves two main types of data: explicit and implicit.

1. Explicit Data: Information provided directly by the lead, such as demographic details, job title, company size, and industry. This data helps determine if the lead fits the profile of your ideal customer.
2. Implicit Data: Behavioral information gathered from the lead’s interactions with your business, such as website visits, email opens, content downloads, and social media engagement. This data indicates the lead’s level of interest and engagement.

A common approach to lead scoring involves assigning point values to different behaviors and characteristics.

For example, downloading a whitepaper might be worth 10 points, while attending a webinar could be worth 20 points.

Similarly, a lead from a target industry might receive more points than one from a less relevant industry.

Salesforce is a powerful CRM platform that (with a little effort) can be customized to implement an effective lead scoring system.

The following is a basic roadmap for how to implement a simple lead scoring system.

1. Define Your Scoring Criteria: Determine which behaviors and characteristics are most valuable for your business. Create a list of actions (e.g., website visits, email opens) and attributes (e.g., job title, company size) that you want to score.
2. Set Up Lead Scoring Fields: In Salesforce, create custom fields to capture the scores for different criteria. You might have fields like “Demographic Score” and “Behavioral Score.”
3. Create a Lead Scoring Formula: Use Salesforce’s formula fields to calculate the total lead score based on the individual scores. For example, create a formula field called “Total Lead Score” that sums up the values of your custom scoring fields.
4. Automate Scoring with Workflow Rules: Use Salesforce’s workflow rules to automatically update lead scores based on specific actions. For instance, you can create a rule that adds points when a lead visits a key page on your website.
5. Set Up Lead Nurturing Campaigns: Use Salesforce’s marketing automation tools to create campaigns that target leads based on their scores. For example, you can set up an email campaign for leads with high scores to provide them with more relevant content and offers.
6. Monitor and Adjust: Regularly review your lead scoring system to ensure it’s working effectively. Analyze the performance of your scored leads and adjust your criteria and point values as needed.

HubSpot is another popular CRM and marketing automation platform that offers robust lead scoring capabilities. Here’s how to implement lead scoring in HubSpot:

1. Access Lead Scoring: In your HubSpot account, navigate to “Contacts” and then “Lead Scoring.” This is where you’ll set up and manage your lead scoring criteria.
2. Define Positive Attributes: Identify the attributes and behaviors that indicate a lead is more likely to convert. These might include actions like form submissions, email clicks, and specific page views. Assign positive point values to each attribute.
3. Define Negative Attributes: Identify behaviors or characteristics that suggest a lead is less likely to convert, such as unsubscribing from emails or having a low engagement rate. Assign negative point values to these attributes.
4. Set Up Lead Scoring Properties: In HubSpot, create properties to capture your lead scores. These properties will store the cumulative scores for each lead based on the criteria you’ve defined.
5. Create Scoring Rules: Use HubSpot’s scoring rules to automate the process. For example, set a rule that adds points when a lead opens an email or visits a specific webpage. Similarly, create rules to subtract points for negative behaviors.
6. Implement Lead Nurturing Workflows: Use HubSpot’s marketing automation tools to create workflows that nurture leads based on their scores. You can segment leads into different lists and send targeted content to engage and convert them.
7. Review and Optimize: Continuously monitor the effectiveness of your lead scoring system. Use HubSpot’s analytics tools to track the performance of your scored leads and refine your scoring criteria as needed.

While lead scoring is a powerful tool, it’s not the only method for prioritizing leads. Depending on the specific needs of your business, alternatives or additions to simple lead scoring might be more effective.

Predictive Lead Scoring: Uses machine learning algorithms to analyze historical data and predict which leads are most likely to convert. This approach can be more accurate than traditional lead scoring.

Behavioral Segmentation: Groups leads based on their behavior patterns rather than assigning scores. This method can help identify specific segments of leads that require different marketing strategies.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Focuses on targeting specific high-value accounts rather than individual leads. This approach is especially effective for B2B businesses with a smaller number of potential customers.

Customer Fit Scoring: Focuses solely on the demographic and firmographic attributes of leads to determine their fit for your business, without considering their behavior. This approach can be useful for companies with a well-defined ideal customer profile.

Lead scoring is a vital component of modern sales and marketing strategies, enabling businesses to prioritize their efforts and increase efficiency.

By assigning values to leads based on their behavior and characteristics, companies can focus on those most likely to convert, resulting in higher conversion rates and more personalized marketing efforts.

Implementing lead scoring in platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot involves defining scoring criteria, setting up scoring rules, and continuously monitoring and optimizing the system.

While traditional lead scoring is effective, alternatives like predictive lead scoring, behavioral segmentation, ABM, and customer fit scoring offer different approaches to lead prioritization.

Ultimately, the key to successful lead scoring lies in understanding your leads, aligning your sales and marketing efforts, and continuously refining your strategies based on data and insights. By doing so, you can turn prospects into loyal customers and drive your business’s growth.