How do you know if lead scoring is beneficial for your company? In the second article of our 4-part series, I help you to decide based on 3 questions.
Pre-read for this blog post:
- Article 1 out of 4: What is lead scoring? The difference between demographic and behavioral lead scoring explained
Doesn’t it sound great? Implementing a fully automated process that helps you prioritize your incoming leads, so your sales team can allocate their resources to the leads that have the biggest change of converting? Sounds wonderful! And it’s called lead scoring. The newest buzzword on the market. (Unless you’ve been living in a cave. Just kidding!)
In the past few months many of my colleagues have been ringing me up to tap into my knowledge of lead scoring, often at their customers’ request. So, it dawned on me that lead scoring is indeed currently trending. And what I can share with my colleagues, I can also share with you.
I get it, it’s easy to get hyped if you read up on all the amazing promises offered up by lead scoring. Even more so if you’ve just heard that one of your largest competitors started has grading their leads. “If they’re doing it, we have to do it too.” I bet you already see those deals stacking up on the horizon. But before you dive in head first, hold your horses. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to evaluate whether or not your company is actually ready to implement a lead scoring framework.
There are a few easy questions you should ask yourself before deciding whether lead scoring is beneficial for you or not. I’ve listed three of them. And if the answer to all three questions is yes, please go ahead. You have my blessing.
1. Are you flooded with leads?
Yes? Good, one down, 2 to go.
No? Carry on.
If your sales team doesn’t get fed with more leads than they can handle, I’ll be honest with you: you probably don’t need to spend time on setting up a lead scoring framework. Instead, urge your marketing team to focus on bringing in more leads at the top of the funnel.
2. Does the sales team process the leads it gets from marketing?
No? Again, honesty is key. You’re probably in greater need of a root cause analysis of your lead processing processes than a lead scoring model. What’s behind the sales department’s hesitation to work closer together with marketing? Does your sales team never get a reply from the leads it reaches out to? Are your leads just not qualitative? Or is it too hard to process the data and would your sales team benefit from an in-depth training on how to actually process your leads?
Which brings me seamlessly to our last question:
3. Do you have enough data?
Sure, it’s easy to list a few key interactions your leads have with your company, but have you also considered on how you will track those interactions?
You need demographic data, company data and behavioral data on your leads before you can implement a lead scoring framework. (Each type of data is explained in greater detail here.) If you don’t have the data, or if you do, but the way you capture your data isn’t standardized, you’ll have to do some legwork before you can get started with lead scoring.
Sounds complex? Not sure where to begin? Luckily for you we’ve got your back: you can schedule a 30-min call with me to brainstorm about a few of your roadblocks.
Learn more about lead scoring in the other articles of our series:
- Article 1 out of 4: What is lead scoring? The difference between demographic and behavioral scoring explained
- Article 3 out of 4: 7 steps to create your own lead scoring model
- Article 4 out of 4: Lead scoring: best practices
