Good things don’t come easy.

You have to fight tooth and nail to reach your milestones and track your goals. 

And you need to do this efficiently. Of course, you have to ensure that don’t lose a lot while trying to achieve a lot.

This often happens when you are chasing the wrong leads. You spend a lot of time, money, and resources trying to convert those stubborn leads, and end up with nothing but disappointment.

Fret not, we have just the fix for this crisis! 

Here comes your night in shining armor: Lead scoring. 

With lead scoring, you get to rank your leads and pick the ones who can be converted into successful customers. It’s that magic trick that you have been wishing for - no more wasting time on rigid prospects who refuse to convert. 

Lead scoring gives you just the insights you need to target the right prospects, accelerate sales, and boost your ROI. Let’s look at…

How to use lead scoring to outdo your previous sales numbers

Prospects are fragile and you have to handle them carefully. You want to gently push them through the sales funnel without scaring them away by hurrying.

The lead scoring model does not just a simple ranking mechanism that helps you pick the hottest leads. It helps the sales team to spread their efforts throughout the sales process and provides the prospects with what they need to take the next step in their journey.

For example, a lead has just become aware of your brand. You give a score of 10 points to your lead based on the buyer persona. After the sales call, your sales rep identified that your product can help the lead achieve their goals. Now, you can increase the score to 25 points. And the sales rep will try to educate your lead on how the inaction is hurting them in the long run. This way the sales rep can increase or decrease their focus on the lead depending on the lead scores.

This way the lead scoring systems tell you where your prospects stand in the sales funnel and when they should be nurtured and when it’s time to take a follow-up call or whether they need a sales rep.

Now that it’s pretty clear that lead scoring is essential to the sales process. Let’s get to the part next section where you need more than a red marker to score the prospects.

Back to basics with the buyer persona

Do you really, really want to understand your ideal customer? Then before you go after your leads spend time with the buyer persona that you had created.

A buyer persona tells you about their interest, qualities, goals, frustrations, and other demographic information. It’s only semi-fictional and half of it is based on hard facts and genuine surveys.

A buyer persona helps you analyze the compatibility of a prospect with your product. And on the basis of this knowledge, you can score the prospects who are closest to your buyer persona a.k.a your ideal customer.

So you need to pay attention to the important attributes of your buyer persona. And establish a lead scoring model with the help of these attributes of a buyer persona.

Scoring the important attributes more

You can’t really give a 10 to a prospect because they live in Vegas. 

Sadly, vacations are not to be mixed with work. 

Attributes should have some value that will help you decide how many points to give away. These can be divided into two parts - demographic information and behavioural information.

The demographic information tells you about their age, locality, designation, company size, industry, sector, and all the other personal intel. And behavioural information tells you how they interact with businesses like do they attend webinars, subscribe to emails, which social media platform they use, what blogs they read, and what not.

Factoring these into your points system will help you understand which prospect is a better fit for your business and how to prioritize your prospects.

For example, you are selling coaching courses. The new hires and those looking for jobs will be especially important for you because they need the training to step up their game. An experienced professional may also need coaching but newly hired folks and job hunters need coaching more urgently. So, age, job title, industry, and whether they are looking for a job should hold more value in your lead scoring system.

Let’s take another example. You can give 5 points to a prospect who visited yours, whereas 25 points to the ones who take a step further and download white papers 

By this methodology, you can recognize and prioritize quality leads.

How much is too much

You are scoring your leads and you keep on adding points against your prospect’s profile.

+15 +10 +5 +20 +100 +10000 +1000000…

Those extra digits are the reason why you need to decide on a scoring threshold. A scoring threshold helps you determine a qualified lead that is ready to be pushed forward. This is not just a best practice but a necessary one.

After a lead reaches the scoring threshold, you should plan their graduation and send them to your sales rep. Qualifying leads with the help of a scoring threshold helps you identify sales-ready prospects ready to be assigned and prioritized.

This way, a clearly defined threshold removes ambiguity and improves the lead scoring process.

It’s time to deduct some points

There’s no place for favoritism and merit decides the score. But what is the merit in the sales processes?

Suppose a prospect has been inactive. S/he is not responding to your phone calls and the email open rate has severely decreased. We are sorry for your loss but that prospect is most likely no longer interested.

When the prospects turn cold, you deduct their points. It might hurt you more than them but negative scoring prevents inflated scores. So, it’s imperative that your lead scoring process must include negative scoring.

If you don’t add a negative score to that prospect who has not been engaging with your business, then you are producing inaccurate information for your sales team. They will end up wasting time and effort on an unfit prospect.

A negative score helps you remove the sediments from your sales funnel. The ones who have become rigid and don’t intend on moving further. This way you filter out unsuitable prospects.

Punch on gas when you see the green light

The best leads have hit the scoring threshold and let them hit the patience threshold too! Take an action the moment a is qualified to be prioritized. With the help of automation tools, you can take an action in no time.

When you integrate automation tools into your lead scoring model, the prospects are automatically routed to the next sales rep. You can take immediate actions like book demos, start messaging, take follow-up calls, and alert the marketing teams. Automation tools save time and smoothen the buyer’s journey.

Don’t let the hot leads turn cold while you are taking your sweet time to react.

Optimize your scoring methodology

“What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin

That applies to every aspect of life but let’s not digress and stick to sales. The lead scoring model has to be changed based on the success rate. And what else is the definitive metric to measure success apart from conversion rate?

When you measure your conversion rate then you can score your lead scoring model. Analyze whether the qualified leads are actually converting into successful customers. If not, then something is clearly wrong. Conversion rate helps you optimize your lead scoring strategy and check the quality of leads being passed down the sales pipeline.

Lead scoring tools help you determine the monitor the effectiveness of your scoring. You can evaluate and optimize your methodology so that lead scoring actually helps you target the right audience.

You should regularly evaluate your lead scoring process with the help of regular reviews and feedback. This way you will stay aligned with your sales goals and keep up with the changing market trends.

Don’t follow a strategy to the T

Lead scoring is not as rigid as your school’s marking scheme. You can wing it a little. ; ) 

While you are continuously optimizing your lead scoring model leave room for customization as well. Choose the strategy that leads to better lead qualification and helps you close more deals.

Depending on the line of products you are selling, you can build different lead scoring systems and devise different strategies for multiple products.

You cannot fixate on a generic lead scoring model that will lead to inaccurate and ineffective results. You will even end up passing leads to the sales rep that are not qualified yet, and they will end up spending generous amounts of time, money, and resources on leads that won’t convert.

Time to disqualify some leads

Your sales team has invested so much time in nurturing leads but if they need to be disqualified then do it fast. Don’t build an attachment to the leads who will never be yours.

Leads that have been inactive for long and are not engaging with you anymore will probably stay the same (for at least a few months down the line). Putting efforts and resources there will start eating from your profits and affect your sales forecast. Negative scores won’t do. It’s better to drop stale leads.

Let the machines take over (lead scoring for you)

In this technology-loving world, we want to automate even the process of lifting a finger (probably shouldn’t, but okay, one topic at a time). The right technology can provide us with metrics to build effective lead scoring tools and maximize sales.

CRM tools can help you track and store lead-related information. This can be used to while the scoring and qualification process. The data points help you to pass quality leads to the sales rep, increase the efficiency of your sales reps, and reduce the length of the sales cycle.

The right lead scoring tools will integrate data points across teams and score every interaction the lead has with your company. This way, you have a consolidated view of your prospect and lead scores are more holistic.

There’s more to where that will come from!

Finding the right customer is the key to increasing profits and bringing in more sales. An effective lead scoring system is integral to the sales process so that you can identify profitable sales opportunities.

Sales reps leverage the lead scores to prioritize the sales-ready leads and hit the iron while it is hot. This, in turn, increases the efficiency of the sales pipeline and help meets sales targets on time.

For a good scoring mechanism, you need the right lead scoring strategy and technology that integrates seamlessly with your technique. This way, create a highly-informed, data-driven lead scoring process with these data points.

Make sure you are using a lead scoring software that helps you optimize your lead scoring process and integrate it with the right sales intelligence platform to boost your sales quickly.  

Did somebody say the right sales intelligence platform?

The right sales intelligence software is at your service to help optimize your entire sales process for you. Wingman is an AI-driven platform that helps you achieve your sales goals. It sticks with you in real-time to optimize your lead scoring strategy and close more deals.

Wingman helps you streamline your lead scoring process by seamlessly integrating with your CRM and other business messaging platforms such as Slack. It transcribes your sales calls and analyzes them to churn out data points that help you score the leads just as they should be. We provide you with insights into your prospect’s behavior and deliver accurate sales metrics. You can use these metrics to generate quality leads, enhance your lead scoring strategy and route qualified leads to the sales reps faster -so that you don’t miss out on any opportunities.

Don’t wait for a scoring threshold to tell you that you are sales-ready. Book a demo today!

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