How To Create A Simple Lead Scoring System To Prioritize Prospects

Lead generation is one of the most important steps in any entrepreneur’s sales and marketing process. In order to get a potential client interested and eventually get them to purchase from you, you need to identify the right leads.

I’ve always found this difficult. Proper lead generation is about more than just collecting a list of names of people who might be interested. To convert leads as efficiently as possible, you need to find a way to identify individuals who are ready to buy.

The best way to do this is through lead scoring. A lead scoring system attributes a certain number of points to a lead based on the activities or actions they perform. Once a lead accumulates a designated number of points, they’re deemed “qualified,” meaning they’re ready to talk with a sales professional and maybe even make a purchase.

Creating a lead scoring system doesn’t have to be difficult. Here’s a simple process I use to help identify my strongest leads.

1. Define your customer criteria.

Your first step is to identify what makes a lead a good potential customer. Lay out the criteria that a lead must have in order to convert. For example, if you only work with customers in a specific city or region, add this to your criteria list. For B2B businesses, factors such as company size or profit may also fit.

You can also think about the factors that might disqualify a lead from working with you.

2. Identify a customer behavior process.

Next, lay out a potential road map for how your leads behave before converting into customers. For example, your leads might visit your website, subscribe to an email list and participate in a webinar. After the webinar, they might get in touch for a consultation and eventually convert into a customer.

Understanding the behavior process allows you to identify how close a lead might be to converting. You can then use this information to assign appropriate values to each step.

3. Assign point values to each action.

Once you have an idea of where certain steps fall in the conversion process, assign scores based on different actions a lead may take. I like to use a 1-10 scale for each action. Steps that newer or less qualified leads take should be a lower value, while steps closer to conversion should be high.

For example, visiting a blog post on your website might have a three-point value because this isn’t necessarily a sign the lead is ready to convert. On the other hand, contacting a sales rep might have a nine-point score.

4. Determine a minimum qualification score.

Next, set a minimum qualification score for your leads. This is the number of points a lead must accumulate before they are deemed qualified.

The easiest way to do this is to tally up the assigned point values for the actions you laid out in step two. For example, if a website visit is one point, subscribing to your email list is two, participating in a webinar is four and reaching out for a consultation is seven, your minimum qualification score would be fourteen.

5. Use a lead scoring tool.

Although it’s easy to establish a lead scoring system, it can be difficult to keep track of points for each lead manually. You’ll want to automate this process by using a lead scoring tool.

Many CRMs or marketing automation tools include lead scoring systems. Look into the tools you’re already using to see if there is an opportunity to keep track of the various steps a lead performs and assign values to each.

6. Refine and adjust your scores.

Your lead’s journey to becoming a customer will likely change over time, which means your lead scoring process does as well. Create a regular process of revisiting your lead scoring system to see if there are ways to improve.

As you get to know more about your target audience and the steps they take to learn more about you and your business, your lead scoring system will become stronger and stronger, helping you focus on the leads with the most value to you.