Your Lead Scoring System Doesn’t Make Sense

Your Lead Scoring System Doesn’t Make Sense:by Courtney Long
Lead scoring systems have many uses. They help measure how much a customer engages with your company, giving points for each click, view, and download. They also look at a prospect’s individual characteristics, like his title, company industry, and BANT-based readiness, to determine how likely he is to buy. These lead scoring systems are then used in lead nurturing programs, where Marketing nurtures leads until they are determined to be Sales-ready, when they are passed onto a rep.
But problems with these typical lead programs are three-fold:
1. They measure existing – not emerging – demand. To reduce the focus on price in a world of B2B commoditization, Marketing needs to build demand by changing customers’ mindsets. They need to build this new demand by showing their customers exactly how their current situation can be improved (even when the customer considered it just a “cost of doing business”) by using one of the products or services they offer. But most traditional lead scoring systems don’t take this emerging demand into account, and instead focus on existing demand, where a customer already knows exactly what they want and need. MLC members, you can learn more about how to build emerging demand here.
2. They incentivize Marketing to develop more content to boost prospects’ scores. Each click, download, and view gives each customer more points, which makes him closer to pass to Sales as a qualified lead. This leads Marketing to create more content that can be clicked, downloaded, and viewed, which artificially inflates the number of qualified leads.
3. Neither Sales nor Marketing has full responsibility for these prospects. Marketing often nurtures the leads until they can toss them to Sales, often at a pre-selected point value that doesn’t measure their true readiness to buy.
The effects of these flaws can be reduced by developing a lead scoring and nurturing program that measures the level to which prospects have had their mindsets disrupted. This type of lead scoring system both chases the most profitable deal types and prospects, as well as values the quality, rather than the quantity, of content consumed by the customer. Marketers can do this by giving increasing point values to content that is more disruptive, while downgrading (or even eliminating) content that merely informs.
This isn’t to say that traditional metrics aren’t important; a prospect, no matter how much he’s bought into the disruption, won’t buy unless the product is a good fit for his industry or needs, and he has the budget and authority to do so. But instead of having these metrics (along with basic content consumption) as the main indicators of readiness to buy, Marketing should use them as table stakes (e.g., anyone in X industry with Y title or more senior will be nurtured).
MLC members, learn more about the steps you need to take to improve your lead scoring system here.