Some leads are diamonds. However, the truth is that every batch of leads is bound to have some duds. Even medium-value leads can be losers if they siphon time away from high-value leads because your team has no way to differentiate between the two. How can you tell which leads are the best in the batch?
Unfortunately, lead lists don’t rank names by value. That leaves your sales team members in a position to devote as much attention to the worst lead as they do to the best lead. Lead scoring is the answer. If you can install some simple lead scoring methods, you’ll have a much greater sales conversion rate, and much less wasted time.
What Is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is the task of assigning values to each lead that’s generated for marketing or cold calling. During this process, the marketing and sales teams assign objective rankings to leads in comparison to other leads. There are many reasons why lead scoring is important.
First, it helps teams to identify where each lead is in the buying cycle. This is where you separate your “just browsing” from your “ready to close” leads. Second, lead scoring also helps teams to assign appropriate plans for following up with differently ranked leads using different methods. While a “just browsing” lead may need more information to move forward, a “ready to close” lead may just need the right coupon offer to make the purchase.
Lead scoring also helps with prioritization. There’s no telling how often sales teams allow a hot lead to linger among a pile of lukewarm leads because they don’t have a scoring system in place for knowing the difference. Those ready-to-pluck leads may very easily be getting plucked up by competitors when every single lead is getting the same level of priority in your team’s workflow. Following up immediately on the right leads using buyer-readiness indicators is one of the best ways to boost revenue potential with cold calling.
How Are Leads Scored?
The most common method used to score leads is to assign numerical values to them. There are many different ways to score leads. Common lead-scoring metrics include:
- Professional information included within the lead.
- How a lead has engaged with a website.
- How a lead has engaged with a brand across the Internet.
- If a lead completed or downloaded any forms.
- Demographic information. This can be important for removing outliers if you’re trying to sell to a specific demographic.
- Engagement on social media.
- Email engagement and clickthrough rates (CTRs).
Of course, it’s up to your marketing and sales teams to decide which types of data matter most. The sales team that interacts with leads and customers all day long can be a great source for building a scoring system. If you have a customer profile, measuring leads up against that “perfect score” can also be useful.
What Lead Scores Ultimately Tell Us About Our Customers
At its core, a lead score measures intent to buy. We know that strong website views and downloads are often precursors to sales. At the same time, weak engagement prior to a sales call often predicts a lower chance of a sale. By scoring actions, sales teams can instantly identify high-value leads that are worth the extra time investment. Of course, leads with lower rankings don’t necessarily need to be ignored. However, a sales team can be smart by avoiding the mistake of spending time nurturing these low-likelihood leads while ignoring hot leads.
What Lead Scores Tell Us About Our Sales Strategy
One of the most important aspects of lead scoring is that it helps to eliminate the temptation to scapegoat “bad leads” as being the problems. When there’s no way to measure how good leads are, it’s easy to blame low sales rates on bad leads. It’s actually impossible to measure a sales team’s performance unless you can isolate good leads from bad leads to judge performance based on close rates for good leads.
Once you know where success rates fall with good leads, your team can begin to spot shortfalls in marketing and messaging. If a specific territory or product line isn’t gaining any traction with high-level leads, the problem isn’t the leads. It may not even be the sales approach. There may be a deeper disconnect somewhere along the line between the target consumer and the product. With lead scoring in place, your company can stop wondering if leads are the problem. This puts you in a position to finally address the root cause of poor performance by devoting the right resources to tweaking anything from the actual product or service to the messaging behind it.
The Solution
The truth is that you’ve never actually seen what your call center team can do if you haven’t been setting them up with scored leads. Let’s change that! If you’ve been using general lead lists that aren’t ranked by value, it’s time to set up lead scoring.
The first step to doing this properly is to make sure that the leads you’re using are properly validated. Keep in mind that most lead lists become outdated within a month. Luckily, Pipes.ai has developed Lead Optimizer, a free tool for lead validation that can help you prioritize your leads so your sales team can talk to more buyers and fewer dud leads. Book your demo today to see the conversion potential that call centers and brands are already using to turn leads into revenue.
