Set Expectations by Scoring Your Leads

by Mike Wallen, CEO, The Lead Dogs

Companies are notorious for designing lead management systems that classify opportunities in deceptive categories such as Hot/Warm/Cold based on responses to a few questions asked. The result of a system such as this includes:

• An inability to rank and prioritize contacts in terms of importance and likelihood of turning into new business.
• A sales organization/channel disenchanted by the classification process - once they receive one lead classified as "Hot" that is not "Hot" in their minds, they are on the offensive about the system and their likelihood of following up diminishes.
• An inability to easily adjust backend processes that occur following prospect contact - if a lead is forwarded to sales, etc.

As a result, more forward-thinking marketing and sales organizations are teaming up to develop a system that removes ambiguity in classifications and replaces it with a system that grades opportunities numerically.

Lead scoring is a method of classifying a sales opportunity by assigning points to responses from qualifying questions based on the importance of each criteria (response) in determining a sales opportunity's overall value (score). When opportunity profiles are completed, response points are added to achieve an overall score for the opportunity (the Lead Score), which in turn might:

• Determine whether the lead should be forwarded to Sales or to a reseller, retained for cultivation, or discarded.
• Determine the prospect's qualification for various offers.
• An inability to easily adjust backend processes that occur following prospect contact - if a lead is forwarded to sales, etc.

The result of a lead scoring system is the ability to rank and prioritize opportunities. Equally important, it will allow you to send leads to the field using a system that is agreed to in advance and is quantitative. A sales organization receiving a lead with "52/65" (meaning a score of 52 out of a possible 65) used to classify the lead, versus "Hot", is much more in-tune with the pre-qualification process that has occurred.