We meet a lot of marketers who do a great job of creating activity across multiple channels. As a result of this activity, they generate interest in their company from a wide variety of prospects. However, many times, the result is that the sales team (or sometimes even the marketing team) ends up picking through the leads in an effort to pan for gold. 

In the best run marketing kitchens that we have witnessed, there is a separate funnel for marketing that only qualified leads can make it through.  These companies analyze the cost per channel and can measure which activity produces the most qualified leads, at the lowest cost.

Don’t Eat Raw Meat

Every company has prospects enter their funnel that are either not capable of buying or will need more nurturing before they are ready. For every channel and touch point, establishing lead scoring processes can ensure that the food is fully cooked, before your serve it to your sales team.

Show Favoritism

Giving preferential treatment in some situations can be viewed as unjust or even be illegal, but in Marketing & Sales, preferential treatment should be a way of life. Not prioritizing your efforts can be detrimental to the business because of the opportunity cost.

Lead scoring is the process of determining a prospect’s level of interest in your company’s product, and what your company’s level of interest should be in a prospect. Lead scoring ensures that leads are qualified before they are passed off to Sales and that the best leads, get the top priority.

6 Principles For Prepping Your Leads Before The Feast

1. Start by talking with sales to define a “qualified lead.” Brian Carroll, long time B2B Lead Generation writer, estimates that “only 5 to 15 percent of those who download white papers are truly sales-ready leads.” Commit to nurturing those who don’t qualify until they do.

2. Factor time into the equation. If a prospect hasn’t had any interaction with your company (either online or offline) for six months to a year, build in a way to degrade their score over time.

3. Measure both explicit data (what someone tells you about themselves) and implicit data (the actions that they take) in the scoring equation.

4. Integrate outside data to learn more about your prospects. If you do this, you can focus on asking questions that will advance your knowledge and not questions that can be answered through appended data from outside sources.

5. Ensure that you’re scoring at every touch point. Your customers have multiple ways to interact with you (phone, your website, webinars, etc.); look to implement your scoring at all available channels.

6. Commit to a testing strategy upfront. Analyze the results of your program regularly to identify what is working well, areas that can be improved and any necessary adaptations that are needed based on market changes.

When implementing a lead scoring program at your company, start by reviewing the historical leads with your sales team to gauge the quality. Then, together build a recipe that tastes better for everyone sitting at the table.