Here’s a scenario: Let’s say, one of your Sales Representatives is following up on five (5) different MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads), handed over by the Marketing Department, but at the end of the day he is left extremely frustrated, as none of them have converted to sales. He has basically wasted his effort and time on ‘dead end’ leads.
Among other things, including the ‘limited skill-set’ of the Sales Representative in question; one major reason for this lost opportunity could be – the leads handed over were not quite ‘sales ready’. There could essentially be a major glitch in the lead scoring system or lead qualification criteria.
What is Lead Scoring?
We know that customers of today are in control of the buying process. When they have all the information they need at their fingertips to assist them with purchasing decisions, it's only logical that marketers and salespeople pay careful attention to the prospects’ ‘digital body language’ or their ‘digital footprint’, in order to assess and qualify the ones ‘ripe’ enough to engage in a ‘purchase conversation’ with a Sales Representative.
Lead scoring is a methodology of ranking ‘leads’ based on their likelihood of buying, as they pass through various stages of the Sales Funnel - in order to determine the leads that are ‘sales qualified’, and the leads that need further ‘lead nurturing’.
A study from Lenskold Group estimates 68% of “highly effective and efficient” marketers indicate lead scoring as a top revenue contributor.
The lead scoring process involves the Marketing and Sales teams, who decide how much point value is to be assigned to the leads against various attributes and ‘buying signals’ identified through actions and behaviours, level of engagement over a period of time, prospects’ profile and demographics, etc.
As the leads pass through their ‘buyers’ journey’ their score is updated until they cross the ‘Qualified Lead’ threshold, after which they are immediately passed on to the Sales team for conversions.
Some of the best lead scoring practices you might want to adopt for better conversions are as follows:
1 Involve Sales From ‘Scratch’
It's crucial to realise that lead scoring is as important a process for the Marketing team, as it is for the Sales team. Though the Marketers may assign a score to the leads, it's your Sales Representatives who make contact with the prospects regularly, to close the deals.
The Sales team has the expertise and the breadth of knowledge to gauge whether any prospects are ‘ripe’ enough to buy the products or not. They have a knack for identifying leads that need to be prioritised, thus both teams should work together when devising the lead scoring criteria.
When a common language is established between Marketing and Sales, for discussing the quality and quantity of leads, it's easier for them to be in sync and follow a standardised approach – which minimises the risks of ‘poor qualification of leads’ and enhances the effectiveness in recognising stages where lead handoffs should occur.
2. Use Negative Scoring to Dispel The ‘False Alarms’
One aspect of lead scoring that Marketers need to be wary about is to make sure you don’t accentuate the scores of a ‘false lead’. Say a prospect at your site is collecting points regularly by visiting your Careers page and downloading a massive amount of content – but he/she may well be a ‘job seeker’, rather than a ‘hot’ lead/buyer.
Other types of false alarms are the leads who successfully convert to customers, but they keep on accumulating activities at the site throughout months or years – managing to skew your list of most eager prospects.
For these instances, a score reduction model can be put in place to help reduce bias in the system. For example, if you put in a criteria saying “score reduction of ‘X’ number after ‘X’ amount of time passes since a lead is generated”, then it should help the ‘actual’ leads to surface and clear the confusion. A similar negative scoring can be applied to leads which stay inactive for a lengthy period of time.
Another misdirected score can be obtained from ‘email opens’. Though opening emails indicates some level of engagement with your brand, it's not the best measure and could cause inflated lead scores. With emails, a more effective behaviour to practice, would be to lookout for submissions or page views generated via the email.
3. Deciphering Intent Vs Interest
While scoring your leads, make sure you separate the wheat from the chaff. It's important to differentiate between actions that signal interest and those that signal intent.
Before handing out a score, it's advisable to go through the 'buyers’ journey' and take note of what the actions translate into. For example; actions such as downloading Ebooks and blogpost views could merely be an ‘interest’ signal. The prospect seems to be interested in your business niche or topics you’re offering – but that’s how far the action goes. It doesn’t indicate they are ready to open their wallet, or have a ‘purchase' conversation.
But if you find the prospects requesting a product trial, viewing pricing page, filling out a Contact Me form, or searching by the company name – then it’s a clear indication of ‘intent’ which could translate as the prospect being ‘sales ready’ and a higher level of scoring could be assigned.
4. Building Detailed Buyer Personas
As all of your marketing or sales effort is focused to attract your ‘ideal customer’ or buyer personas’, a detailed representation of these personas is crucial in helping you assign your lead ‘grades’ against your prospects’ attributes and activities.
Lead scoring reflects on attributes such as personas, demographic or fit (information on a prospect’s role, company, industry, and revenues. Clarity on such profiles of the customer helps you determine whether the leads are ideal decision-makers or not.
To help you infer these criteria, you could answer the following questions:
- Who are you selling your product/services to?
- Which industries are interested in your product?
- What’s the size of your targeted industry or preferred location?
- Who within a company, is well placed/qualified to buy your product/services?
It's critical your qualified leads fit the description of your ideal buyer personas, as it will prevent sales team from chasing the ‘false alarms’ – for instance chasing prospects who have high scores, but they lack in ‘intent’ (like the example of a Jobseeker).
To assist you get a bird’s-eye view of how B2B marketers are using Lead Scoring, please refer to the infographic from Lead Lizard below:
Finally…
It's estimated that businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads and 47% larger purchases are made via nurtured leads than non-nurtured leads.
If you’re looking to up your game by boosting your bottom line, then marketing automation from HubSpot is worth taking a look at, as it integrates Lead Management by collecting your prospects’ contacts, automatically scores them based on their actions, behaviours and level of engagement throughout a period of time.
If you'd like more assistance with your Lead Scoring or would like to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au