5 Best Practices for Lead Scoring

What if there were a way to categorize our website visitors based on the interest they show in our services or products? What if we could identify those who are most interested in making a purchase?

Lead Scoring does exactly that. It’s a way to score leads based on predefined criteria. Each interaction by a lead is assigned a score (positive or negative, depending on the action), and higher scores indicate greater interest and a greater likelihood that the lead is ready to buy.

A well-implemented Lead Scoring system therefore enables more efficient communication and drives more sales. It allows you to separate the wheat from the chaff (so to speak), so that the sales team can focus on those who show interest in buying, rather than those who haven’t yet shown enough interest to be classified as potential buyers—qualified leads. At the same time, we identify the precisetiming to contact the leads—to answer questions, provide information, and encourage the sale.

Choose the right scoring criteria.

Identifying the scoring criteria that are most useful and relevant to the business is essential for successfully implementing a lead scoring methodology. There are three basic types of criteria: explicit, implicit, and negative.

Explicit criteria are those that consist of information intentionally provided by visitors, such as by filling out a form, for example:

- Name;
- Company;
- Location;
- Industry;
- Job title;
- Revenue.

Implicit criteria consist of information provided by leads in an indirect manner. For example, their digital behavior—such as visiting the pricing page more than three times in the last week—may indicate that they are close to making a purchase decision. Some examples of implicit criteria:

- Number of visits to the website;
- Content they viewed (services and products that interested the lead);
- Newsletter subscription;

- Viewing a webinar;
- Visiting a pricing page;

- Attendance at company events.

Negative criteria, in turn, help filter the lead’s interest by adjusting the score based on actions that reveal little or no interest, as well as if the lead does not match the business’s buyer personas, such as:

- The lead does not respond to marketing and sales inquiries;

- The lead intends to unsubscribe from the newsletter;

- Does not have decision-making authority for the purchase (B2B);

- Visited the “Careers” or “Jobs” page on the website;

- Their status is “student.”

Assign scores accurately.

For each of the explicit and implicit criteria you define, you must assign a score. For negative criteria, assign negative scores.

Score accurately. Do not assign scores lightly. Define scores precisely, assigning the highest scores to what is truly relevant—actions that demonstrate the lead’s genuine interest or a perfect match with your buyer personas. Opening just one email, for example, does not warrant a score. On the other hand, if the lead has visited the pricing page several times in the last week, this indicates interest, so this interaction should correspond to a higher score.

Define the score threshold that determines when a lead is qualified.

The Marketing and Sales teams should jointly define the cumulative score that determines when a lead is qualified, thereby ensuring alignment between sales needs and the marketing strategy (SMarketing). For example, the teams can define that when a lead reaches 60 points out of a maximum of 100, the lead is considered qualified. Based on the sum of the score and the interactions the lead has had with the company or brand, sufficient interest has been demonstrated to make it worthwhile for the Sales team to follow up on the lead.

Automated Process.

Successfully implementing the Lead Scoring methodology manually is a daunting task—if not impossible—for companies with a large volume of contacts. Can you imagine assigning scores for each of a lead’s interactions with the website in a spreadsheet?

On an Marketing Automationplatform, scoring is done automatically by the system, according to the criteria you define. Therefore, it’s important for your team to have access to a platform with these capabilities.

Analyze and adjust as needed.

It’s hard to improve what we can’t measure. So if you’re not getting the expected results, analyze the criteria you’ve set, try to understand what’s going wrong, and identify where you can improve. If the Sales team is still reaching out to leads who aren’t ready to buy and aren’t interested in receiving information or having their questions answered, something went wrong during the lead scoring process that prevented the lead from becoming qualified.

Gather feedback from the Marketing and Sales teams, analyze the results, and review your processes. If you’re seeing good results, keep up the good work—but remember that there’s always room for improvement.

Learn more about lead scoring and how to implement this technique in your company in the “Lead Scoring Guide.” Download it for free here: