by Sarah Kelleher 
“The leads marketing sent through are terrible.” “Sales are ignoring all these great leads.” “We missed out on that opportunity.” “I feel like I’m wasting my time”.
If any of these comments ring a bell, you should be scoring your leads. Lead scoring is the process of ranking your prospects in order of sales-readiness. You do this by assigning values to prospect interactions (e.g. email clicks and form completions) and key demographics (e.g. job title or industry). A good scoring program identifies red-hot buying signals and feeds top-quality leads to sales when they’re ready to engage. Read on to find out how your business could benefit from lead scoring.
***
1. Understand your customers
In a world where buyers are increasingly savvy and ready to shop around, first understanding your customers and tailoring communications to their needs is pivotal to success. Building a picture of which demographics and behaviours are most likely to predict opportunities and purchases, you begin to identify very clearly who your hot prospects are.
2. Sales and marketing collaboration
Cross-departmental alignment at all stages of a lead scoring program is crucial for success. Both teams need to work together to build a common definition of what makes a sales-ready lead. It is essential that everyone knows what to expect and what is expected of them. Creating this alignment builds trust and allows both teams to work towards a common goal. So everyone knows every effort they make is having a positive impact.
3. Make more of every minute
Prioritisation of leads means everyone can work more efficiently. Sales teams are then able to focus more of their time on valuable leads and closing opportunities without making cold calls. With more visibility on the flow of a successful buying journey, marketing teams can create relevant content and deliver it in a timely way to nurture these prospects into high-quality, sales-ready leads.
Looking for help with Account Engagement?
Zoe Fisher Principal Marketing Automation Consultant
4. Better forecasts and targets
Scoring allows you to more accurately predict how likely it is that a lead will convert to an opportunity and that the opportunity will close. So, your pipeline can be a lot more accurate, which means better revenue forecasting and target setting. Marketing and sales teams can then focus their efforts on activities that will have the biggest impact on revenue.
5. Happy prospects make happy customers
With an accurate scoring model, leads will receive content that is most relevant to them at every stage in the buying journey. From the welcome email to product demo, scoring allows marketing to deliver prospects the information they need at the right time. So when you make that call, prospects are happy to hear from you and ready to know more. No cold calling, no irrelevant product information, just great, timely content for happy prospects.
6. Boost conversion rates and revenue
All the benefits of lead scoring ultimately help your teams improve conversion rates, close more deals and increase revenue. With stronger collaboration, more efficient resource management and a true understanding of your customers, the overall benefit is revenue.
***
So as you now know, lead scoring isn’t just about rating your contacts. It’s about getting to the heart of who your target audience is and how they interact with your brand. Once you know that, everyone can start working together more effectively to improve your conversion rates and revenue.
If you’d like to know more about how lead scoring could help your business, get in touch to discuss this in more depth with us.