The act of scoring isn’t exclusive to sports.
Think about everything you apply a rating to on the daily:
The Italian restaurant you ordered takeout from on Tuesday (5 stars)
The Nicolas Cage sequin pillow you couldn’t say no to on Amazon (4 stars)
The cutie on that online dating app who doesn’t like Nicolas Cage but can allegedly make a mean lasagne (82 percent match)
We live in a ‘rating’ society because we live in a world of information overload. There are so many options available and so little time — and attention — to spend reviewing them all.
While not a perfect system, scoring helps us focus our efforts on what matters most. It takes into account the criteria we deem favorable (see: Nicolas Cage) and filters accordingly.
This is just as true in sales prospecting as it is in purchasing from the consumer end.
If personalized customer interactions and deeper relationships are crucial in selling, you have to zero in on exactly who’s worth building said relationships with.
Hence the importance of building a successful lead scoring program as part of your martech (marketing technology) stack.
Note: Don’t just listen to us talk about your leads, see them for yourself. Start your free 14-day trial with Leadfeeder — no credit card required.
What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring is the “customer review” of sales. It’s a method to rank incoming prospects by a defined set of characteristics and online behavior.
Whether you score based on points, quadrants, or some hybrid of both, the idea is to attribute value to the contacts in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) — to build a pipeline of high-intent online leads.
Lead scoring also helps give context to the mass of visitors and activities taking place on your website. If time is one of your most valuable resources, treat it as such.
With lead scoring techniques you can make sure teams are more efficient.
Focus on those with the highest purchasing intent, as opposed to making non-qualified cold calls for the sake of hitting an arbitrary daily sales activity goal.
The importance of lead scoring
Despite all the customer information at our fingertips nowadays, 82 percent of B2B decision-makers think most sales reps are underprepared.
It’s important to develop a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile prior to prospecting.
More importantly, be willing to review and see that profile evolve as potential customers engage with your marketing and sales-based content.
If the right martech stack is your team’s foundation, lead scoring is the layer on top that optimizes how you use it.
For example, think about how much time a sales rep would have to spend to follow up with every single visitor to your website. Sales teams can’t get by solo.
Queue marketing efforts to refine interests based on engagement. In addition, use insights from a martech stack tool like Leadfeeder to make qualifying prospects on your website even easier.
Sales reps, on their own, wouldn’t be able to deliver on personalized customer expectations. At least, not when prospecting makes up only a fraction of what their job entails.
A good lead scoring program strengthens the relationship between sales and marketing teams.
It keeps target audiences top-of-mind and the efforts of both sides working in tandem — rather than at odds with each other — throughout the duration of the sales cycle.
Lead scoring for account-based marketing (ABM)
Classic demand generation lead scoring methods don’t always translate to the ABM way of doing things.
The BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) methodology, for example, is a way of gauging prospect fit that is often treated as a checklist.
All of these characteristics will factor into your ideal customer profile and personas, but they don’t tell the whole story.
Instead, teams that have adopted an ABM model should be focused on the interplay of both fit and interest.
They want to understand not only who their prospects are but what they’re engaging with.
This sets the foundation for more impactful reach-outs and follow-up communications from sales teams eager to drive real connection.
It can also turn the perception of a sales rep into that of a trusted advisor, involving them earlier on in the nurturing process to deliver top- and mid-funnel assets when relevant.
The benefits of lead scoring with Leadfeeder
To begin building a lead scoring program that makes sense for your sales and marketing teams, consider the tools you have at your disposal.
For example, if you’re using a CRM like HubSpot, you can set up lead score properties to qualify contacts automatically.
Pair this with Leadfeeder’s HubSpot integration to sync only high-intent website visitors and you will be proactively identifying the best prospects to contact.
With your CRM determining one dimension (fit) of your lead scoring program, a tool like Leadfeeder can determine the second dimension (interest).
Define the online and marketing-based actions that can help define “high interest”.
This might include actions like:
Visiting the website X number of times
Spending a certain amount of time on site
Hitting a certain number of pages-per-session
Visitors with low bounce rates
Visitors that come in through specific traffic sources
The quality score defined by Leadfeeder can help you pinpoint your most active and engaged visitors. This paired with a prospect’s fit in terms of your ideal customer profile will paint a more holistic view of purchasing intent.
The benefit here applies not only to your ability to accurately identify who you should contact but when. If you can engage a prospect with relevant content based on web pages they’ve visited within an hour of them doing so, you keep your company top-of-mind. You also play a more active role in how their experience unfolds.
Rather than waiting for the majority of prospects (60 percent) to reach out during consideration, you can get in contact on the ground floor when it makes sense.
This allows you to cater to their specific needs in an authentic way—a way that shows you’re not just asking questions to check the boxes.
You’re delivering the resources (and value) prospects need before they even realize they need them.
Final thoughts: how to develop powerful lead scoring in your martech
Developing powerful lead scoring for your sales team is a function of both the right tools and methodology.
Prospects, like the people behind them, are multi-faceted. As such, you have to be willing to define value based on more than just a sub-set of characteristics.
Once your criteria are in place, your martech stack takes the reins in identification. From there, it’s on your sales and marketing teams to take the proper actions.
Note: Don’t just listen to us talk about your leads, see them for yourself. Start your free 14-day trial with Leadfeeder — no credit card required.
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