Handing off sales leads before they are ready to buy is a sure way to destroy marketing’s credibility. The last thing marketing wants to hear from sales is that the leads we’re providing aren’t worth following up. So, we can all agree that only well-qualified leads should be turned over to your sales team. But how do you know when a prospect is ready to buy?
The answer lies in tracking the prospect’s behavior using a lead scoring tool. With lead scoring, leads “earn” scores based on their engagement with your marketing activities and content. The higher the score, the more ready for a sales call. Activities and scores are determined by looking at your existing customers to identify common characteristics such as budget, size, location, and organization type. You can then assign values to each of the characteristics that make up a quality lead. You can also assign scores to web page visits, information that is downloaded, frequency of visits, and the source of the lead. Then, using information you collect about the prospect on web forms, you score the leads accordingly to their profile and engagement. The lead’s score, when paired with the lead’s status, can tell you when they are ready to be passed along to a salesperson.
Lead scoring is just one of the many tools found in most marketing automation software. And marketing automation software is now available at a variety of price points. So, marketers in businesses of all sizes can afford to use marketing automation to create a lead scoring program.
When setting up a lead scoring tool, it is important to consider that an indicator that works for one organization may not always work for another. Using a canned lead scoring method does not allow you to hone in on the interactions that are uniquely important to your business. The best marketing automation software allows you to configure the lead scoring engine based on information and activities that are important to your business, and not some out-of-the-box algorithm that makes assumptions on what might be important.
Well-qualified leads will make your management happy, as well as your sales team. Studies tell us that organizations using lead scoring experience a 77% increase in lead generation ROI. This typically is because your sales team will spend more time with actual, qualified sales-ready leads, while automated dynamic messaging continues to nurture leads that are not yet ready for that personal touch.