Scoring

Let’s take a closer look at one of the most important aspects of lead management, scoring. After you've captured your leads and supplemented them with as much additional information as you can. You give them a score–or rating–for how likely they are to buy your product at that point in time. Scoring is very important, it helps you focus your time on the leads that will be the most productive and which follow-up strategy to use with each lead.


When scoring several factors are taken into consideration: First, what is the quality of the data you have captured on your leads? Is the data valid and from good sources? Can you likely contact them with the information you have? And are they part of your target market?


Second, what is their behavior such as how many times have they visited your website, have they made any request for white papers, free trials, or been part of your nurturing campaign.


Third, quantity of data, or do you have enough information to contact them or enough to really make an accurate judgment of who they are and how likely they are to purchase your product.


After all of these factors are determined each lead is given a score. Several different scales can be used when scoring leads but the most common scale and the one we’ll look at today is the A-E. On this scale an A is someone that is highly likely to purchase your product, you have good contact information, shown a significant amount of interest, and they match up with your target market.


Leads receive a score of B if it is a good lead that is slightly lacking in any one category or a combination of the three areas used to score leads. They may not match your target market or may not have shown a large amount of interest, or they may have shown a lot of interest but you don't know very much about them.


Leads receiving a score of C are ok or average leads that still have a possibility of making a sale but the conversion rate is usually much lower than leads that receive a score of A or B. They are lacking significantly in one area or lacking slightly in all the areas of evaluation.


Leads scoring a D usually don't have very much information or are not really interested at the moment, these leads are entered into a lead nurturing campaign. Finally leads receiving a score of E usually are bogus or their isn't enough information to make any kind of judgment on them. So if they have enough information to be entered into a nurturing campaign they are, if not they are discarded.


Scoring can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be but it's very important that it is done to increase the efficiency of your sales force. Using lead management software can make this process very quick and painless and help you respond to your leads very quickly.