5 Things to Measure for More Valuable Lead Scoring

Want to make the day of just about every salesperson at your company?

Or...are you responsible for sales at your company? If so...we're about to make your day with quite possibly the most valuable tool as it relates to determining the quality of leads; lead scoring.

Imagine a system so detailed and accurate that you can more effectively manage your leads, prioritizing who sales should be on the phone with, and who your marketing team should be engaging with.

Using the HubSpot software, users are enabled to develop a set of criteria that effectively scores all leads and gives value to the most qualified, sales ready leads. But how should you go about scoring your leads? What kind of criteria should be set forth in order to ensure you're placing value in the right actions?

We've detailed five key areas to ensure your lead scoring is not only accurate, but also placing value in all the right places.

If you're interested in learning more about lead management, check out our free ebook "How an Inbound Marketing Agency Does Lead Generation."

5 Key Considerations When Lead Scoring

1. Collect your Lead Data

First and foremost, you need to do some research and data collection. You can't expect to implement an accurate lead scoring system without knowing the behavior and actions of the leads on your website who are considered "qualified," or have even become customers.

An effective measure used here at IMPACT is to analyze the behavior of our customers and what led them to becoming one. Are there any common denominators  For instance, by using lead data we can determine that all leads who downloaded a specific ebook were more likely to become customers than those who did not.

Knowing this information is critical, as it acts as the blueprint for lead scoring. So how do you go about collecting and researching your lead data?

Using the HubSpot software, there are numerous tools that can be used to identify critical data regarding your leads, including:

• Sources – How did your visitors find you? What pages did eventual customers visit most?
• Page Performance – What pages are being visited most by eventual customers?
• Conversion Assists – What offers and pages are yielding the most leads and customers?

2. Close Percentage

Perform an analysis on your close percentage on varying criteria. For instance, what is the close rate for leads who downloaded three of your offers as opposed to only one. Is it higher?

If so, give leads that download three offers a higher point value, as its clear from your research that leads who download three offers are more valuable.

On the flip-side, what about leads who download 5+ offers? At this point, they may only be interested in gathering information, and may be harder to close. If leads who have downloaded 5+ offers have a low close percentage, you can actually deduct points in your lead scoring, ensuring that only the cream rises to the top.

Close percentage can be analyzed with all of your offers. For any reason, do some of your offers have high close rates than others? Do some of your pages have higher close rates?

3. Demographic Data

Thanks to your forms on landing pages, you can measure all the valuable demographic data in order to make more accurate lead scoring decisions.

Does the age of your visitor affect close rates? Location? Sex?

Analyze all of the demographic information as it relates to your close rates and customer acquisitions, and assign point values to the ones that have impacted your business.

4. Website Behavior

Take a look back at your customer's behavior leading up to their closing date. Using HubSpot's software, this is easy.

By tracking all of your eventual customers' actions on your website, you can draw conclusions and draw parallels between other customers in order to paint a more detailed picture of what's leading your visitors to the bottom of your sales funnel.

Certain website pages should instantly award your visitors more points. For instance, at IMPACT we value visitors who visit:

• Our consultation page
• Pricing page
• IMPACT team page

Obviously visitors who come to these pages have more than a casual interest in the brand. As a result, we award points for leads who visit these pages.

5. Nature of the Conversion

Your leads are downloading all kinds of offers from your website.

Demo requests. Consultations. Intro level ebooks.

Which of these offers – and get specific – is showing up more frequently in your customers' experience? Certain conversions are going to yield more qualified leads than others. The key is identifying these and assigning the appropriate value to your leads.

Shorten the Sales Cycle

The best thing about lead scoring? The cream rises. Only the strong survive. And every other cheesy cliché you can think of. By placing a value on certain actions and behaviors, you can more effectively organize and prioritize your leads in order to shorten your sales cycle.

Your sales team will thank you.