Why waste time on leads that are unlikely to convert to a sale (much less a long time customer)?
A better approach is to focus on those with the greatest potential, but in order to do that it is necessary to acquire information in order to make judgement on fit and readiness. What is really necessary is to score those leads so salespeople know exactly where people are in their buying journey so they can optimize productivity.
Scoring, or grading, leads enables marketers (and sales) to do more by helping to increase close rates and better allocating time and resources overall. Most of today's marketing automation solutions make it possible to grade leads, but still require marketers to set up the different factors influencing the final score. Let's take closer look at those variables and how they may indicate sales readiness.
Profile Targeting: If your company sells to the technology department, rather than the marketing team, wouldn't it make sense to score a lead higher that fits the appropriate prospect profile you're looking for? Of course it would! While there is often responsibility overlap within enterprises, understanding the target audience and their profile characteristics will make it possible to score the most appropriate leads higher if they fit the profile of a typical user.There are a number of other possible profile characteristics - from the position of the lead (a purchasing agent, support rep or the CEO), their company size, revenue, location or industry are all profile-driven data points that can be used in scoring.
Behavior Targeting: Just because a lead entered the funnel and fits the profile of an ideal customer, doesn't mean that they are ready to convert. Fortunately, by tracking buying signals it is possible to gauge interest with objective data which makes it possible to pursue leads most likely to turn into opportunities. Leads can be scored based on the number and type of email opens and clicks, the searches they conducted on your site (which gives a great sense of a users' priorities, the links they have clicked or presentations they have viewed, even what they have downloaded and the number and type of pages they visited on your website.
The trick with lead scoring is to not get overly complicated with the models being used to score. While I believe there should be at least three or four, even using one variable to score will save enterprises time and help to improve sales effectiveness and efficiency.
