Lead Scoring Template: Improving Sales Efficiency

How do you prioritize the best leads?

If you have too many leads (sometimes a good problem) and need help focusing on the highest qualified leads, try lead scoring.

Lead scoring looks at the common attributes of your best leads that have converted into customers. It assigns a numerical value for each attribute of a qualified lead to calculate a perceived value. These attributes include demographic data such as job title and department, firmographic data such as company size and behavioral data such as engagement on your website.

The higher the value, the more likely they’ll convert to becoming a customer.

But how do you get started with lead scoring? And how do you figure out what attributes to assign a score?

In this blog, we’ll share a lead scoring template and review how to create a customized lead score.

What Is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a method for prioritizing prospects against a scale representing each lead’s perceived value. The lead scoring model assigns numerical points to different characteristics of leads, such as demographic data, firmographics, engagement, behaviors, and more.

• Demographic: Includes job title, location, industry, etc.
• Firmographic: 
• Behavior: Monitors email opens, clicks, and responses. Tracks website visits, content downloads, and webinar attendance.

By scoring your leads, you can recognize which ones your sales team should engage with. This helps prioritize the best leads with the highest potential to convert and become customers.

For example, if a lead has visited your pricing page multiple times, downloaded a case study, and attended a product webinar, their score would be higher than that of someone who just signed up for your newsletter.

Check out this lead scoring template to customize your own version:

6 Top Benefits Of Lead Scoring

Implementing a lead scoring model can enhance your sales and marketing efficiency. 

By assigning leads a numerical value based on their actions and engagement level, you prioritize the best-fit leads. This allows your sales team to focus solely on leads with the highest chance of conversion based on data.

1. Prioritize The Best Leads

Lead scoring helps your sales and marketing team find and prioritize the best leads.

These leads have shown signals of someone interested in buying based on their demographic and firmographic data and behavior.

This systematic approach helps your sales team prioritize the best-fit leads. It ensures that your sales efforts are focused on prospects with the highest potential for conversion.

2. Sales and marketing alignment

Sales and marketing teams work cohesively, targeting the same goals and sharing an understanding of lead quality.

An agreed-upon system and shared definitions of what a quality lead looks like can generate better leads. 

Sales teams can rest assured that the leads they receive are pre-qualified. This alignment reduces friction and enhances collaboration, driving toward common revenue goals. Plus, it helps your sales team act quickly and accelerate the speed to lead.

 3. Focus on Quality over Quantity

With lead scoring, the focus shifts from pursuing a high volume of leads to concentrating on leads more likely to convert.

Invest your energy in leads that are more likely to make a purchase rather than a high volume of uncertain prospects.

For instance, instead of sending generic emails to a large list, your team can create personalized campaigns targeted at high-scoring leads who have shown specific interests, significantly increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.

4. Improved Conversion Rates

A structured lead scoring system can help you improve conversion rates through targeted follow-ups.

By understanding what leads to follow-up priorities, your team can tailor their approaches based on detailed insights from the scoring criteria.

For example, a lead nearing a high score might need an additional push, such as a special offer or a direct call from sales, to convert. 

5. Better ROI on Marketing Efforts

Lead scoring maximizes your marketing efforts’ return on investment (ROI) by enhancing lead quality and conversion rates.

By focusing on leads that have the highest potential for conversion, your marketing budget is spent more efficiently. 

Moreover, lead-scoring data can provide valuable insights into which marketing activities are most effective at generating and advancing high-quality leads, allowing for better strategic decisions and budget allocation.

6. Better customer experience 

Lead scoring also provides a better customer experience. It helps you nurture customers with relevant content rather than a spray-and-pray approach.

For example, if someone is indicating a high lead score and showing signs that they’re in an evaluation phase, then providing case studies is a great next step.

Lead Scoring Template That You Can Use

Imagine you’re a marketer looking to qualify leads for your business. 

Here’s a simple lead scoring template of how you might score a lead.

Let’s take Jane, a visitor from your website who’s interacted with your brand in various ways:

• Website Interactions: Jane has visited your product page multiple times (5 points).
• Content Engagement: She’s downloaded a white paper (10 points) and signed up for a webinar (15 points).
• Email Engagement: Jane opens most emails (2 points each, 10 times total) but hasn’t clicked through (0 points).
• Demographics: Her job title, “Marketing Manager,” is a great fit for your service (20 points).
• Company Information: Jane works in a tech company with 200+ employees, matching your ideal customer profile (15 points).

Here’s a visual breakdown:

Interaction Type	Jane’s Action	Points Scored
Website Visits	Multiple product page visits	5
Downloads	White paper download	10
Webinar Sign-Up	Attended a webinar	15
Email Opens	Opened 10 emails	20
Job Title	Marketing Manager	20
Company Size	200+ employees	15

Total Lead Score for Jane: 85 points.

Based on this lead score, you can categorize Jane as a ‘hot lead’ and take immediate action, like reaching out with a tailored follow-up offer.

The point values will differ according to your business objectives and the sales indicators you’ve identified as significant.

How To Do Lead Scoring The Right Way

Lead scoring is essential for prioritizing prospects and aligning your sales efforts. A robust lead scoring system increases efficiency by focusing on leads most likely to convert.

1. Align With Sales on Lead Quality

Work closely with your sales team to define what constitutes a high-quality lead. Their insights will inform your scoring criteria.

• Definition of a High-Quality Lead: Criteria may include job title, company size, or specific needs that align with your product.
• Sales Alignment: Regular meetings with sales to keep the scoring model aligned with their experience and feedback.

2. Review CRM Lead Data That Have Gone Through a Sales Process

Examine your CRM data to identify which leads have successfully moved through the sales funnel.

• Demographic: Identify patterns that match the demographics of your highest converting leads.
• Behavior: Look for common characteristics of leads that converted into customers.
• Feedback Loop: Use sales feedback to refine lead scoring data points.

3. Determine Lead Behaviors and ICP Fit

Identify behaviors that signal buying intent and determine how leads compare to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

• Behavioral Indicators: Website page views, downloaded content, or webinar attendance – these are an indication of where they are in the buying journey. Decision or consideration points can be related to visiting pricing or contact us page, product, case studies, testimonials

• ICP Characteristics: Firmographics, technographics, and demographics that define the perfect customer for your product.

4. Determine attributes that reduce the lead score

Incorporate a decay score to ensure your leads are scored on current engagement, not past interactions.

• Time-Sensitive Scoring: Deduct points for inactivity over a specified period.
• Re-engagement Opportunity: Identify when to re-engage leads with targeted content.
• Firmographics: Not the right company size, geography, industry, or competition.
• Demographics: Wrong job title, seniority, or function.

5. Add an MQL Score Threshold

Establish a threshold score that a lead must reach to be considered a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).

• MQL Score: A specific point value that, when exceeded, triggers a marketing-to-sales handoff.
• Threshold Evaluation: Regularly review the threshold to ensure it aligns with the quality of leads and sales capacity.

6. Optimize and Iterate

Continuously refine your lead scoring model based on results and feedback from the sales team.

• Performance Review: Analyze which leads convert and update scoring criteria accordingly.
• A/B Testing: Test variations in your lead scoring to improve accuracy and conversion rates.
• Talk to Sales: Get feedback from the sales team on the quality of leads after implementing your lead scoring model. See if conversion rates have improved and if sales sentiment is positive.

Need Help With Lead Scoring?

If you want to get started with lead scoring or refine your current approach, schedule a free strategy session here.

Learn how we helped one client optimize their sales efficiency and improve their lead-to-opportunity conversion by 25% through optimizing their lead scoring model.

First, we’ll diagnose your current revenue process and determine your best leads. Then, we’ll give you a prioritized roadmap of the changes we can implement! If you’d like to do it yourself, use our lead scoring template!

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