Marketers are hard pressed as ever in today’s competitive business environment to increase their returns on investment (ROI) for every marketing dollar spent. Increasing the quality of the leads is one way to ensure a high conversion rate for the leads generated, increasing the efficiency of the marketing efforts and the ROI.
Lead scoring allows marketers to send higher quality leads to the sales team. According to Sirius Decisions, sales teams of organizations with best‐in‐class lead management processes accept three out of every four marketing qualified leads as work in process. This actually contrasts with the average organization where the sales teams accept just over half of all marketing qualified leads.
So how do marketers achieve best-in-class performance?
When developing a lead scoring methodology, draw up an ideal lead profile and compare the attributes of the lead generated with the attributes of ideal prospect. The next step is to assess the prospect’s level of engagement.
The sales and marketing team need to work together and develop standards as to what constitutes a sales ready lead. The marketer has to involve the sales team in both developing the lead scoring methodology and determining the score at which the prospect is ready hand over to sales.
Marketers should also recycle the leads that the sales team declares as dead or disqualified. Some leads invariably slip through the cracks for many reasons. Identifying and reviving such leads can help in improving the conversion rates and ensure that the marketing efforts do not go waste.
The whitepaper “Action Guide to Lead Management Success” provides a detailed eight-point action guide to implement and effective lead management program including how to score and recycle leads. How you can you improve your lead scoring technique?
