Lead Scoring has finally become a hot topic in the B2B demand generation space. It’s nice to see a growing number of prospects ask about best practices on lead scoring and lead grading. Although lead scoring has been central to the LeadGenesys lead nurturing engine since inception in 2002, we certainly don’t claim to have a monopoly on the concept. As other marketing solutions begin to offer some semblance of lead scoring, it’s important to know the essential elements of a robust solution. If you are thinking about implementing or improving lead scoring, check out our whitepaper, Best Practices for B2B Lead Grading, but at a minimum, make sure the solution can flexibly score (and translate to a grade) based on a blend of key ingredients:
Profile attributes:
These attributes include firmographic, BANT (budget, authority, need, and timing) and other qualification questions you ask throughout the marketing and sales cycle.
Activities:
Make sure the score is being impacted by all activities to include interaction with the website, physical events, direct mail and all emailing activity. Basically the entire integrated marketing mix.
Timeline:
One of the pitfalls of bumping up a lead score based on a flurry of activity is that an active lead could actually be a student doing research or a competitor that keeps checking the website. The last thing you want is to grade these leads “A” and share them with the sales team. It only takes a few of these activity-boosted “A” leads to discredit marketing sourced leads and put the entire lead scoring schema in question.
A smarter approach is to have activity thresholds trigger a notification to the appropriate sales rep who can decide whether or not to accept the lead as “sales-ready” -- which then impacts the grade. If you have to score or grade leads based on activities, make sure the score diminishes over a period of inactivity that you can stipulate.
Weighting:
Weighting is important when one or a few profile attributes are particularly more important than others. Be sure to test many different scoring scenarios before applying weighting. Again, applying weighting to an activity like the viewing of a particular website page or PDF is a risky proposition. Once a lead with low scoring profile attributes (but with a high level of activity) is delivered to sales as an “A” grade – the damage is done.
There are a number of other nuances to be considered when choosing a lead scoring solution, but one of the most important is working with a partner deeply rooted in B2B marketing best practices. Even if you choose a solution without a robust and flexible feature set, as long as you are getting sound advice based on experience, you’ll avoid the common pitfalls of lead scoring and still deliver marketing accountability and leads that are truly “sales-ready.”
