Not all leads are created Equal – yet far too often we treat them that way.
Do you calculate a Lead Source Score (LSS) and use it to drive marketing spend and improved revenue outcomes?
How do you currently assess the potential quality of the new names that you tip into the top of your sales and marketing funnel BEFORE you tip them in and why is it important?
Assessment of leads ONCE you capture them has become essential for any modern sales and marketing teams looking to use technology to inform where best to spend ones time in an effort to generate more revenue. Lead scoring and lead grading achieve this.
Lead Scoring captures data relating to the activity a known (or even potentially unknown) visitor has with your organisation. They may gain points for a page visit or filling in a form amongst other things. The greater the interaction the greater the score and logically then the more attractive they are to sales.
Lead Grading is about the same visitor’s identity. A university student researching a project may be all over your web site and requesting all sorts of information but will not ever be a customer. Based on your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) a grade offers a deeper level of assessment. It may reflect their title, the size of organisation they work in or perhaps their industry.
BUT what about your Lead Source Score? Are you assessing the value of a lead BEFORE you tip it into the funnel?
There are two standout reasons why this matters and benefits that follow…
- Better budget allocation
If I understand the conversion rates of different marketing activities and the quality of leads generated I can then assess the value in repeating those activities.
Perhaps you do this already BUT are you applying it to how you enter leads into your programs?
- Faster revenue creation
If I recognise that some leads are more sales ready than others I can introduce them further down the marketing funnel and so accelerate their transition to sales or potentially skip lean nurturing all together. Failure to do this can actually erode the value of a lead.
Actually calculating and capturing the score can be done in two ways.
Firstly, if you already have lead scoring and grading in place you can decide to enter certain leads with pre defined grades and scores based on how closely aligned a lead is to your ICP.
If your ICP is a CFO of a Top 100 company then any attendee from the conference for CFO’s of top 100 companies you are sponsoring could be entered in with a grade of A (rather than waiting for them to self qualify in the future). As you had sponsored the event and they had to opt into your list via a business card draw at your stand and a conversation with one of your sales people, you may give them a score of 80 in an environment where 100 triggered further sales interaction.
This method achieves the second of the benefits identified above and assumes you already track lead source and so can report historically on conversion ratios of activities and so understand their value.
A second method is to create your own separate LSS scoring. The table below sets out a basic methodology based on research in the market on conversion of leads to revenue. You can inform a chart like this with your own findings over time if you capture the data.
Assuming you know how many new sales your organisation needs to make this year to hit its revenue targets (a big assumption) you can use the data above to decide exactly how much to invest in the activities above to capture the names you need. Once you capture those names you now have a process to understand where to inject them in your revenue funnel.
Good luck with your Lead Source Scoring.