Marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin. When done properly, each enables the other to grow and succeed.

 

The marketing department collects leads and passes them to sales, which in turn feeds back information on what type of leads close most effectively. This allows the marketing team to better qualify leads, increasing the sales team’s efficiency.

 

Lead scoring is an extremely impactful way for both departments to help each other boost their results.

 

Lead Scoring: How to Qualify Prospects and Boost Close Rate

 

The basic idea of lead scoring is that you assign a point value to each lead you generate. This point value is determined by the lead’s attributes and actions, and helps you prioritize leads – and close them more efficiently.

 

The more points a lead gains, the more valuable a prospect they are. Once a lead has reached a certain point threshold, you can consider them high-value, and act accordingly.

 

Creating Your Strategy

To develop an effective lead scoring strategy, you need to consider what makes an ideal lead. You can break this down into two broad categories:

• Attributes that the lead has. This includes things like being in a target industry, having a particular job role (such as being a decision maker who can pull the trigger on a purchase), and so on. Anything about the lead that makes them more likely to make a purchase counts.
• Actions the lead has taken that indicate that they’re leaning towards a sale. For example, someone who reads your product and pricing page is likely to be more interested in your product than someone who just took a quick look at your home page. Someone who’s signed up for a free demo is even more likely to be considering a purchase.

Consider your product. Is it aimed at a particular industry? Give more points to leads in that industry. Is it designed for a particular department, like a development toolkit? Assign more points to leads with developer roles.

 

Even at this strategizing stage, consult with your sales team. See if they have noticed any patterns around the leads that successfully close. Do people who have downloaded a particular content offer tend to close more reliably? Give a lead more points when they’ve hit the thank you page from that offer!

 

Every company’s lead scoring strategy will be different, of course, but there are some commonly-used tactics that serve as good starting points.

• Determine how you’re going to score actions. For example, make moderately valuable actions such as reading your product page worth 5 points. Make high-value actions, such as looking at your pricing page, worth 10 points. If a lead does something extremely valuable, like opting into a free trial of your product, make that worth 15 points.
• Do the same thing for attributes. How important is the lead’s industry, location, or job role?

This process will give you a good foundation to build on. Even very simple lead scoring like this will give you a way to prioritize the leads that are most likely to result in sales.

 

Your goal is to identify the leads that are closest to the purchasing phase and have your sales team focus on them.

 

 

Aligning Sales and Marketing

The real magic of lead scoring is that it creates a cycle of feedback and improvement between sales and marketing.

 

Marketing generates qualified leads for sales. Sales analyzes trends among leads that close. Marketing uses those trends to better qualify leads, which leads to an even more effective sales process – and more information on trends within successful closes.

 

That information is very valuable outside of the lead scoring system, as well. If you see a trend that leads who download your eBook tend to make a purchase, put together an email marketing campaign promoting that eBook – because it’s clearly an effective piece of content.

 

Sales can also help streamline the process by passing along common questions or issues that prospects talk about. If your marketing team can preemptively address these topics with posts and other content, then those common questions are already answered by the time a prospect talks to a salesperson.

 

Negative Scoring

The flip side of lead scoring is taking away points.

 

You want to give points to leads with the attributes and behavior that indicates a good potential customer. It’s just as useful to weed out the ones that look like people who typically don’t close.

 

For example, if your product is intended for B2B customers, then B2C leads are not likely to end up purchasing. Likewise, if someone has spent a lot of time on your careers page, they’re more likely interested in a job than a purchase.

 

Leads who don’t have the authority to make a purchase should also get a negative score – you want your sales team to be able to focus their time on leads that are able and likely to buy.

 

Preemptive Lead Scoring

Picture this.

 

A lead visits your site. They check out your product and pricing pages, read a blog post or two. They work for a company that checks every box on your “ideal customer” list, and they’re clearly interested in your product.

 

They’ve picked up plenty of points. They’re a fantastic lead. Or they would be, except they don’t actually fill out a form. Not only did you miss out on a high-value prospect – you don’t even know it.

 

Clickback WEB is designed to solve that problem for B2B businesses. Think of it like a lead scoring solution – which it is – except it works even when the potential lead didn’t convert.

 

Considering the average website conversion rate of around 2%, that’s pretty valuable.

 

The software identifies companies that visit your website and applies all your lead scoring rules to them. You get detailed information about these companies, including metrics like industry, revenue and size.

 

You also get accurate contact information for key contacts at those companies. You can filter by seniority and job role, for example, to easily bring forward the best, most valuable leads from your website traffic.

 

Try it for free for 14 days and see the high-value leads you don’t even know you have.