What is Lead Scoring and Why is it Important?

If you want your sales team to consistently pitch to valuable and qualified prospects or leads that have a high potential of being converted into revenue-generated clients, then you should focus your efforts on the methodology and science of lead scoring.

Lead scoring prevents your sales team from becoming overwhelmed with unqualified leads and because of this, saves your business time, money and resources. Not all leads are created equal and as lead volume grows, your sales team should be able to efficiently prioritize which leads they should follow up with, and thanks to advanced technology and digital transformation, lead scoring has made this possible. 

Lead scoring functions to effortlessly streamline the process of ranking your leads so that your team is able to immediately identify once a lead has become sales qualified. By being able to identify which leads are ready for the “sales talk” your team will increase its success rate which means greater team morale and of course, a better bottom line.

Below, we will outline what lead scoring is, how it works and why it should play a significant role in your business plan for 2022.

What is Lead Scoring

Lead scoring can be defined as the process of assigning values to prospects, usually in the form of numerical points. This score is based on a variety of attributes including information provided by the lead, lead behaviour across multiple online touchpoints (social media, digital campaigns, website visits, etc.), and any additional data that you can collect through your lead generation process. 

By tracking your leads and monitoring their behavior, you are able to streamline the processes of identifying which leads have gone from marketing qualified to sales qualified, and with this information, you are able to guide them through the buyer's journey. 

How Lead Scoring Work

As stated above, a lead scoring model is an analytical system used to evaluate the quality of leads you have collected. Points are placed on a lead based on a variety of elements including industry, level of interest, and related qualities associated with high-value leads.

Thanks to transformational technology, automation, and audience segmentation tools that have become accessible to businesses through Customer Relationship Management platforms such as HubSpot, this methodology is easy to implement across your business and across departments.

But, how does a lead scoring model work? Below, we take a look at the elements that make up lead scoring, all of which can be managed through a CRM such as HubSpot. 

• Marketing and sales alignment: By implementing a lead scoring model you ensure your marketing and sales team work together when understanding your target market and their specific needs.
• Lead Scoring Threshold: This refers to the point value of when a prospective client is recognized as sales-ready.
• Explicit Lead Scoring: This is the assigning of points to a lead based on specific qualities such as demographics and characteristics.
• Implicit Lead Scoring: As opposed to explicit lead scoring, implicit lead scoring is points assigned to a lead based on their behaviour and engagement with your business.
• Negative Scoring: This refers to removing points from a lead score based on characteristics or behaviors that imply a lack of interest in your business.
• Score Degradation: This helps your marketing team track stagnant leads and discover whether or not a lead requires remarketing. 
• Regular Refinement: A lead scoring model is not set in stone and can be amended in real-time based on real results this means you can amend your model to suit the evolving needs of your target audience.

Every potential client is important but by implementing the above tactics you are able to effectively organize your contacts and identify ideal prospects so that you are able to fast track them through your sales pipeline. This ensures that your sales team is able to meet sales targets while your marketing team works to nurture clients as they move through the pipeline. 

The above outlines what lead scoring is and how it works - but why is lead scoring so important? Well, let's take a look at the benefits that come with this transformative automation.

Take an in-depth dive into the above tactics for your business, here. 

Why Lead Scoring is important

• Not only does lead scoring improve your bottom line, it betters alignment between your teams.
• Streamline marketing and sales time by harnessing the power of automation within your chosen CRM.
• Ensure your business is communicating with leads at the right time. Essentially, lead scoring helps you identify where a lead is within the buying cycle which allows your marketing team to create automated content to drive them toward making a decision.
• Avoid having a sales conversation too early in the buying process and avoid missing the opportunity to make a sale when a lead is ready.
• Align marketing and sales even further by establishing criteria and behavior that impact your lead scoring methodology.
• Creates a sense of accountability between marketing and sales departments as they work together to agree on when a contact meets the criteria to trigger a handoff from marketing to sales.
• Alignment ensures that your teams are more efficient with their time when it comes to connecting with potential customers which yield a consistent flow of sales revenue through your pipeline.

Essentially, the reason you should implement lead scoring for your business is that it has the power to create team alignment, save you time and resources, and better your bottom line significantly. And who doesn't want that as we head into the new year?

The Wrap Up

If you are looking to implement a strong lead scoring model for your company, the Nexa team is here to help.

At Nexa, we know that lead generation is the lifeblood of any business and we have been providing Inbound Marketing and Sales Lead Generation to a wide variety of businesses for well over a decade.  With Lead Scoring, we also help businesses to identify and prioritize prospects, which not only helps salespeople to close more deals but also increases their efficiency by reducing the time lost when following up with cold leads.

As experts in Lead Generation and Lead Scoring, we are proud to be the region’s leading and only HubSpot Diamond Agency Partner and have been recognized as thought leaders and innovators within this field. If you are looking to generate leads, we can help. Contact Nexa today and drive highly qualified sales leads for your business.