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Lead Scoring: Conquering Your Stack of Leads

So you have a mountain of leads? Congratulations! A common challenge clients encounter is managing the influx of leads generated by digital marketing efforts and converting them into sales. This is important for:

  • Business to Business (B2B) environments, where sales cycles can span months or years and involve numerous touchpoints and meetings.
  • Business to Consumers (B2C) or Direct to Consumer (D2C) markets, where building long-term relationships and customer loyalty is key to repeat business.

So Many Leads: What To Do Next

Your marketing efforts are generating a lot of leads. So many, in fact, that your sales team can’t keep up with all of them. You’re investing heavily in getting these leads and want to make the most of them. Additionally, you may be getting spam leads that waste your sales team’s time. So what’s the best way to organize all of these new leads? Lead scoring.

What Is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a method to rank leads based on their potential value to your business. It helps your sales team focus on the most promising leads. Marketing should be involved to understand and improve the quality of leads they generate. At Linden, we recommend using HubSpot as a CRM (customer relationship management) tool due to its easy setup, full suite of features, scalable pricing model, and large ecosystem of integrations.

Linden’s Lead Scoring Process

  1. Meet with Your Leadership, Sales, and Marketing Teams
    • Understand the current problems and see if lead scoring could be a good solution.
  2. Review Your System and Customer Relationship Management Tool
    • Make sure your system tracks all interactions (form fills, website visits, emails, sales activities).
  3. Create a Behavior Wishlist
    • List actions that show a lead is interested (e.g., visiting your website, opening emails).
  4. Review Your Data
    • Look at recent lead data to identify key behaviors.
    • Talk to your team to understand data collection and current sales processes.
  5. Analyze Your Data
    • Find important patterns in the data.
  6. Build The Lead Scoring Model
    • Create lead scoring models based on these patterns.
  7. Test and Refine The Model
    • Test and improve the model over several months.
  8. Start Using The Model
    • Use the model in your sales process.
    • Assign tasks to sales reps when leads reach certain scores.
    • Show lead scores in sales lists for easy access.

More Tips For Lead Scoring

  • Keep It Simple: “Don’t overthink it,” as our Director of Operations, Alex, advises.
  • Clean Data: Ensure your data is accurate and up-to-date.
  • Understand Limitations: Know what your system can and cannot do.
  • Test Before Full Implementation: Make sure the system works well before using it fully to maintain the team’s support of the tool.

TL;DR

Managing a surge in leads and turning them into successful sales can be a complex task. That’s where a well-implemented lead scoring system comes in. Lead scoring helps you identify and prioritize your most promising leads, ensuring that your sales team focuses their efforts where it matters most. This not only improves efficiency but also builds better relationships with potential customers, ultimately leading to more successful conversions.

By setting up lead scoring with tools like HubSpot, you can take control of your lead management process, save time, and make your marketing efforts count.

(Ready to set up lead scoring for your business? Reach out to us!)