Leveraging a lead score is a powerful concept that has existed long before the digital age. The idea is to help you focus on the right kind of people first that are most likely to do business with you.
Lead scoring is easy:
- First you declare key behaviors or features that are meaningful to the business.
- Then, you look at a segment of your database and score them based on those behaviors or features.
You can get as simple or complex with this scoring system and lead scorecards as you want. Plus, like with most things in business, over time you will likely adjust the rules and how things are being scored.
In this blog post we are going to show how you can leverage a lead score across all major areas of the customer journey: Marketing, Sales, and Fulfillment.
You will learn:
- How to use Fulfillment lead scores to reduce churn and increase retention while also recognizing your most raving fans.
- How to use a lead score to identify your best Marketing prospects.
- How to help your Sales team focus on the hottest leads in your pipeline.
Prepare to have your mind expanded.
What Is Lead Scoring?
Simply put: lead scoring is how you measure people’s behavior across the Marketing, Sales or Fulfillment journeys of your Offer. Which means the concept of “lead scoring” is completely subjective to your business because it is measured differently for every business. And like any tool, the results are purely based on HOW you use it. What key behaviors are critical towards guiding people through your product line ascension and receiving value?
Why Should You Use Lead Scores With Your Database?
At the end of the day, lead scoring is about maximizing your efforts by knowing who to focus on. Everyone on this planet is unique. While no two people are the same they can share similar features that you would want to work with. When you are looking at a group of people it definitely helps to know where to start.
Here is a fun story from our founder Paul Sokol about lead scoring from back in his college days. Back in the early 00’s, he was going to college for electrical engineering and was recruited to sell knives halfway through his freshman year. CutCo knives if you have ever heard of them. As part of the new sales rep training, his manager had everyone in the room make a list of absolutely every person they knew. Everyone. Every single person they could think of. The goal was to have a whole page or two of names.
Then the magic of lead scoring kicked in.
From there, his manager told them to put an “M”, an “A”, and/or a “C” next to every name in that list. These letters stood for:
- M – Married
- A – Aged 25+
- C – Home owner (Casa)
Then, the instructions were to circle every “MAC customer” that fit all 3 criteria. That was the initial list of people Paul was going to call to start selling knives.
The distinction was not made at the time, but that was a lead score exercise. A simple one too because the scorecard was easy. One point for any home owner over the age of 25 that was married. If someone had 3 points they were a good candidate for contacting about a knife demonstration. They likely had the money to invest in some knives and probably do a reasonable amount of cooking in their home.
Imagine if he had tried to sell knives to his colleagues? The likelihood of a sale would be much less.
Lead scoring your database gives your team the exact same edge, no pun intended. If your business can look at a cluster of people and determine they are more likely to be better clients compared to the rest that can help your business grow & scale easier. Plus, that kind of information can help inform your Marketing and lead generation efforts to seek out more of the people that you want.
What Is A Marketing Lead Score And How Do I Set It Up?
The most common use case in business for a lead score is Marketing. This is the first part of the customer journey designed to get people into the Sales process. Hence, all your lead score rules should be around those folks who are most engaged with your Marketing efforts.
There are all sorts of behaviors you can use in your lead scorecard:
- Email clicks
- Web form & landing page submissions
- Downloading various lead magnets
- Enrolling in different free courses
- Watching certain videos or training
Most CRMs do lead scoring by assigning points to these different kinds of behaviors. Some of them will even give you the ability to organize the various scores into different buckets such as Hot, Warm and Cold. You get to determine how many points someone needs to be considered in these buckets.
The real magic is using these lead scores in your CRM to bubble up people into your formal Sales process. When it comes to Marketing Lead Scoring, you need to be clear on how engaged someone is so that you can send them to your Sales team. You may also allow your Sales team to see the various lead scorecards in your database so they can cherry pick new Leads that have not yet ascended into your Sales process.
A well-designed lead score mechanism for your Marketing tells your team and CRM how likely someone is to move ahead into the Sales journey.
How To Use Lead Scoring To Prioritize Your Sales Pipeline
The second part of the customer journey is Sales and the entire Objective of this phase is to transform the relationship into that of a paying customer. If you have a Sales team that is personally reaching out to various Contacts in your CRM database, lead scores will help them focus their efforts.
With regards to the Sales process there are plenty of behaviors that can help your lead scorecards:
- Initial Appointment Complete
- Physical Samples Mailed
- Quote Sent
- Contract Delivered
- Contract Accepted
All of these key milestones within the Sales process can be given points for the Lead Scoring algorithm. If your team members only have a few minutes to follow up with someone, their ability to discern the “hottest” prospects within their pipeline can ensure they are focusing on the right people at the right time.
A well-designed lead score system for your Sales informs your team and sales leadership for how likely someone is to become a paying customer.
How To Use Lead Scoring To Reduce Membership Cancellations
The last part of the Customer Journey is the Fulfillment phase; the Delivery of what someone has purchased.
If you have a membership portal that grants digital access to your various Offers, you can absolutely use Lead Scorecards to determine who is the most engaged (or not) within your customer base.
Using Lead Scores in this way flips the conversation. Before the Sale, the behaviors measured are all about how likely someone is to make a purchase. After the Sale, the behaviors should all be measured around how involved someone is within your community.
Once someone has paid money to be part of your membership there are tons of behaviors you can use to identify the most active (or inactive) people:
- Portal logins
- Course(s) complete
- Live calls attended
- Forum thread contributions
- Certification(s) awarded
By using Lead Scores in this way, you can more easily identify people that are not engaged with the community and a cancellation risk. Your account managers can now proactively reach out to people who are starting to get stale and disconnected from your membership. This level of care requires a serious commitment to the success of each and every member in your portal. While few businesses are willing to make this kind of investment, for the businesses that do, the return on these kinds of proactive outreach is that members stick around and keep paying longer.
A well-designed set of lead score rules for your Fulfillment can help your team be more proactive to acknowledge your highly engaged customers AND also help identify people who might be a cancellation risk.
Common Questions Most People Do Not Think To Ask About Lead Scoring
What Is The Difference Between Lead Scoring And Lead Segmentation?
Scoring is a way to segment, but segmentation is not exclusively limited to scoring. For example, you could segment 100 leads in your CRM that downloaded a lead magnet but each of those 100 people could have their own unique lead scores based on your rules. When it comes to segmentation the lead score is merely one data point that can be used to build different lists/audiences.
How Often Should I Update My Lead Scoring Rules?
As infrequently as possible. Your lead score rules should be future-proofed and as scalable as possible. When your business chooses to update the rules, that should be data-driven & based on feedback from your internal team. A critical thing to remember is that when you update your lead score rules every person in the CRM will have their score updated. Any automation around lead scoring could trigger with these score updates and result in undesired experiences.
Can I Use Lead Scoring If I Have A Small Database?
Absolutely! In fact, the smaller the database the faster you can dial in the lead score rules that work for your business.
How Many Points Should I Assign To Each Behavior?
At least 1 point otherwise there is no reason to have a lead score rule for that specific behavior. When determining how much a particular behavior contributes to the lead score, that should be considered within the full context of the lead scoring rules AND the maximum possible score. As a simple example, if the highest possible lead score is five points, the act of requesting a lead magnet might only be one point. However, if they actually download the lead magnet that might count for two points. So if someone requests AND downloads the lead magnet that would give them a score of three.