Frequently Asked Questions

Lead Scoring is a way of ranking your customers from: most likely to buy to least likely to buy.

Yes.

We can filter out students and other unwanted personas... unless, of course, they are in fact good leads! We've worked in B2C, EdTech & MedTech where students are legitimate buyers. We'll be sure to make scoring exclusions when it makes sense to do so, but at the same time we won't miss out on market opportunities when identified.

No company has perfect data. Even in organisations with poorer data maturity we have been able to make a positive impact. Although a company with perfect data would create a better model, a company without perfect data is often in greater need of Lead Scoring to help them make better data informed decisions.

Imagine a round-robin assignment of leads. Every newly generated lead will be owned by the next available sales person. This round robin continues until the end of the day. This is random assignment, this is no Lead Scoring implemented at your company.

Now imagine a round-robin but only assigning leads that the scoring model has deemed qualified. 10x accuracy means that if every salesperson was assigned the same amount of leads using both processes they would close 10 times as many deals with the Lead Scoring process than a process without it.

This is true after the first discovery call. If a human has 2 meaningful phone calls with 2 different customers, they'll easily be able to ascertain which of the 2 is more likely to buy than the scoring model's prediction. However, before the phone discovery call the scoring model will access more datapoints than a human scanning a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) and judging only a job title, company name or whether the lead requested a quote.

Manual entered Opportunity Scores are very inefficient. They suffer from 2 big problems:

1) Sales consciously under scoring their opportunities so that they don't receive managerial blowback for not closing.

2) Sales consciously over scoring their opportunities to inflate the numbers in pipeline reporting.

For more accurate pipeline predictions the Score My Leads opportunity modelling is more accurate by 3x.

If you have capacity to reach out to everyone in your database then this could prove an effective strategy. However, if you are without capacity to call the entire database then a scoring system will empower the sales team to spend their time most productively. IE: calling those most likely to buy first and only calling those less likely to buy if there is time remaining in the working day.

No.

While we can analyse trends, we can't predict the future. Imagine 2 leads with near identical profiles and web history, the 1st becomes a paying customer and the 2nd does not. When the scoring sees them both identically it cannot foresee who buys and who doesn't. It can improve your accuracy by 10x but perfect accuracy is not possible.

Similarly to how Salesforce is a suitable tool for those who work outside of sales, Lead Scoring is suitable beyond leads. Opportunity scoring, churn scoring, account scoring, buying-group scoring, keyword scoring and event city scoring are all alternative scoring methodologies Score My Leads has implemented and an enterprise level (FTSE 350 / S&P 500). Settlement terms like Lead Scoring do not necessarily have to use the lead object.

It's quite remarkable! Countless organisations implement likelihood-to-purchase-modeling that in no way reflects the final customers who purchase. Many companies go wrong by being data-driven without understanding the 'why'. For example, they overscore customers from North America and underscore customers from Asia. North American sales reps have all their leads scored highly and have no means for prioritisation. Meanwhile, Asian sales reps have all their leads scored lowly and also have no means for prioritisation.

Alternatively, there are companies who identify the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) without knowing their database. After selecting the 3 ideal industries and 10 ideal job titles, there are fewer than 1,000 people worth contacting and less than 20 of those have ever interacted with marketing materials. Neither of these scoring methodologies proved successful and as a result the projects were deprioritised. Whilst there are countless other pitfalls out there, Score My Leads is data-driven, understands the why and will cater the scoring solution specifically for you, the customer and your database size and complexity.

We will build a reporting structure to measure the effectiveness of Lead Scoring so you can have a visualisation of the model transformation. IE, moving away from a model that was not working and progressing towards a model which is producing positive outcomes.

Yes.

Not every company has the same customer journey and therefore cookie-cutter configuration won't work. We'll ensure that your scoring model works for your company appreciating industry nuances and complexities unique to you. As a result, the success measurement will be presented using the language familiar to your organisation - if nothing appropriate exists it'll be created as new.

Yes.

Account Based Marketing can be overwhelming for salespeople with limited resources. They are tasked with keeping hundreds of business names in their head and are expected to pounce on key accounts when new leads from that organisation surface. Score My Leads takes the manual headache out of the equation. Key account stakeholders won't be missed.

The strategy is to empower sales to follow hot leads who purchase. This means sales will stop losing time on leads with no intention of buying. Lead Scoring is sales' guide book to who are the hot and who are the cold leads. You can leverage Lead Scoring to impact revenue growth by contacting the right people at the right time and closing more business.

Lead qualification varies between companies but is largely a sales person accepting a lead from marketing and then proceeding to call the lead and successfully determining them as "good". In other words moving from MQL to SQL. Lead Scoring doesn't make an SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) instead it ranks the MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) who are most likely to least likely to become not only an SQL... but a bottom-line paying customer.

No.

Lead qualification is not a service we offer. If required, we can help coordinate with trusted third-party providers who do.

Maybe, what % of your sales come from this form? If your organisation has no complaints of lead quality then there may not be immediate need to reprioritise your outreach strategy. Alternatively, do you receive feedback from the sales team that the Contact Us Form leads aren't qualified enough or don't meet the (ICP) Ideal Customer Profile? If this is the case, then, there is likely a better profile of customers sitting dormant in your database who aren't getting called but are closer to making a buying decision.

We design and deploy predictive lead scoring models across all major platforms, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, and Microsoft Dynamics. If your specific CRM or marketing automation platform isn't listed, our models are entirely tech-stack agnostic and built to integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure.

No. We work inside of the company's tech stack. Data will not be stored by Score My Leads. All leads remain the property of the company and won't be shared with a 3rd party without prior agreement.

No. A 10x Lead Score in action looks like a salesperson making a sale 1-in-200 times to 1-in-20 times. The failure rate is still 19-in-20 and still requires highly talented salespeople to get the deal across the line. The scoring mechanism is there to prevent highly talented salespeople wasting time when trying to make a sale on a lead they have a 0.1% chance with.

If you are without a mechanism to measure Lead Scoring effectiveness, the chances are the scoring methodology is sub-optimal. Our first recommendation is to build a reporting infrastructure to measure scoring effectiveness and you'll quickly be able to identify if the methodology is good or bad. If you are unsure how to do this please reach out to Lucas@ScoreMyLeads.com