Lead Scoring: Is it Working?

Welcome to the third and final installment in our lead scoring series. If you missed parts one and two, check them out:

Lead Scoring: 3 Steps to a Successful Start
Lead Scoring: Set Up Complete. Now What?



Today, we are going to put Lead Scoring on the treadmill and assess its health.

Hopefully, at this point in your Lead Scoring journey, you are seeing some benefits. You are loving the ways that Lead Scoring guides your marketing efforts and subsequently, generates more quality leads for your sales organization. If not, this post is for you. Executing innovative and relevant campaigns based on Lead Scores is fun and exciting in theory, but if there aren’t sales, have you wasted your time? Absolutely not! As the old saying goes, live and learn, my friend. You are wasting time if you’re not reading the signs and optimizing your Lead Scoring system. Remember, it’s a living, breathing thing.

Here are my recommendations for how to best assess your Lead Score system and shift, if needed, to become successful.

Monitor Your Matrix

If Lead Scoring is working, you should see a nice distribution of scores. Be sure to exclude your unreachable leads (email bounces, do not contacts, unsubscribes) and competitors as they will skew your view. It’s not uncommon to see a lot in the lower stages of Unranked and Inquiry; more opportunity for marketing to kill it. A strong scoring program will have a solid 20-30% that are a Suspect or Marketing Qualified.

Keep an eye on the numbers by score and stage. Ideally, your percentage breakdown will hold or improve, and you should see the raw count increase. As your database increases, you should see your Lead Score counts increase. If your database count is going up but you are seeing only the bottom Lead Scores increasing, then your scoring criteria needs to be adjusted or your marketing initiatives reconsidered.

Get Sales’ Feedback

Up to this point, most decisions have been very data-driven. Now we deviate. If you have followed my previous advice, you’ve already reached across the table to partner with sales. Leverage this relationship. Sales is going to know pretty early on if the leads they are getting based on Lead Score are truly quality or if they need to run a few more laps. Ask if they are having more meaningful conversations with the leads you are sending over.

Sales professionals know the difference between good and bad leads and typically, based on my experience, aren’t shy about communicating their opinion when asked, particularly if the leads are bad. Having an on-going constructive dialogue with sales will help drive decisions regarding adjustments to your Lead Scoring criteria.

Check The Numbers

It’s hard to say this “out loud”, but you’re not going to eliminate all low-quality leads. I actually don’t view this as a bad thing, as you’ve ideally identified a member of the sales organization that asks for them with the intention of doing the hard work. Knowing that, monitor the velocity of Leads to won deals. With Lead Scoring, your Marketing Qualified Leads should be closing at a significantly higher rate than those low quality leads. If not, sound the alarm!

Take The Time To Optimize

Have you received feedback or identified via data that your Lead Scoring system is not working the way you had hoped? You’re not alone. There are lots of organizations that don’t do it well the first time. However, this is why we talked about having the perspective that your Lead Scoring program should not be static. Just like you do with your marketing: test, learn and tweak.

It’s likely that the first, and possibly only, element that you will adjust is the weighting of your scores. Perhaps a Lead that reaches a lower percentage of the total possible score should be considered a higher qualified Lead than what was formerly set. Or, you can adjust the individual criteria. For example, high-value content may need a bump up, and an email open can be reduced. Caution: updates should be made slowly and tested. If you change too much, you won’t be able to accurately tell which variable either negatively or positively impacted your results. Make the adjustment, see what happens.

Schedule re-assessment and maintenance of your Lead Score system. It should be something you fit in regularly. My recommendation is monthly. You’ve invested so much time and effort already. Follow through and make all that effort worthwhile. Catching issues early will help you maintain buy-in and remain nimble in today’s rapidly-evolving business environment. Give yourself the best chance to make it successful.

This brings our Lead Scoring overview series to a close. Lead Scoring, when done well, provides marketing and sales organizations an opportunity to achieve harmony, ultimately giving the company a larger bottom line.

Keep giving away those iPads. The database needs to increase somehow. Just score and nurture so that funnel is moving and providing results. iPads aren’t cheap, you know.