Lead Generation
5 Basics of Lead Scoring
March 23rd, 2010 | By Barbra Gago: Barbra Gago (@barbragago) is the Inbound & Social Marketing Manager for Genius.com.” Lead scoring can be a very complex process, consider this article an introduction to some of the basic concepts of lead scoring, and how it is used to manage your prospective customers as they move through the funnel and their level of interest in the solutions to their problems that your company provides changes.
The main objective of lead scoring is to rank prospective customers numerically based on their level of interest in order to empower the sales department with better actionable information about theprospective customers they are, or plan to engage with.
1. What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring is a process that enables sales to identify more sales ready leads faster. It’s a qualification process of assigning a numeric value (or score) to leads to qualify or rank them according to their level of interest. Lead scoring allows sales to quickly identify promising prospects by simply checking their lead score.
2. What do I need before I start lead scoring?
It’s important that you have a universal “lead” definition that both Sales and Marketing agree on. There’s no sense in Marketing scoring leads to identify quality, if Marketing and Sales aren’t on the same page about what “quality” actually means.
3. Why should I score leads?
Assuming leads move through the funnel step-by-step, or even if they don’t you want to be able to track and adjust their lead quality as their behavior or interactions with your website and other content changes over time. With lead scoring, each action a lead takes can be counted differently, and ultimately add or subtract from their lead quality score, making them more or less promising as a prospect.
For example, when a prospect clicks through from a tweet to your blog do you want to assign them the same weight as a prospect that signs up for a recent webinar? Maybe do, maybe you don’t but either way, lead scoring will keep track of this behavior and keep score automatically.
4. What should I know?
Lead scoring is comprised of two parts: “explicit” and “implicit” information. While both types of data are equally important, implicit data tends to be more telling and thus may be worth more to the lead scorer. Explicit data is more of the “fit” of the prospect to your product, including attributes like; company, size, industry segment, job title, location, budget, authority and timing.
Implicit data on the other had is evident in the prospects digital body language; specific web pages visited, number of pages, recency of response, email activity, social media activity, or downloads of resources such as white papers or webinars.
5. What’s process like?
As each lead takes an action, their score changes (score will also change if lead is inactive). Marketing Automation can help here because it enables automatic re-scoring triggered by every action the prospect takes (that you’ve assigned a score to) otherwise you would have to do this manually.
For example, if A, B, or C defines “fit” with your buyer personas and 1, 2, 3, or 4 defines “engagement“, or digital body language, a combined score of A1 would be a prospect that has an ideal fit, and a maximum level of engagement. A prospect with a score of A4 might be the right fit, but has minimum engagement, and would be a good opportunity to funnel into a nurturing program until they have a higher engagement score. Prospects with scores more like C1 or D1 show very high engagement, but very low fit, this may be a prospect that is researching for a more senior decision maker, and worth your while to follow up with.
In the end, lead scoring can be highly effective at delivering sales with better qualified leads, but remember, if Marketing and Sales have not agreed on a “universal lead definition” true success is at risk. This process is highly effective when both Sales and Marketing have worked together to develop the definition of a qualified lead. So your first step is to start there. Find your sales counterpart, reach agreement, write it down, and begin your lead scoring project.” read more
What’s Your Goal? More Leads or Better Leads? (Silverpop)
” In the latest study from Forrester Research, “Rethinking the B2B Tech Marketing Mix in the Digital Age,” more than 50 percent of marketers surveyed said generating more leads was their top challenge. That’s not at all surprising when you consider that gathering leads is the primary focus of most B2B marketing programs, but it’s important not to sacrifice quality for quantity. Unless you develop a process for managing leads, you’ll find it difficult to impact revenues.The first step to managing leads effectively is to analyze where they come from, what it takes to keep them interested and what additional information you need to give them to make the sale. Those kinds of critical insights are what puts a lead-management program a level or two above the rest and will be more likely to drive revenue results that will please you and your CEO.
Pushing leads into the top of the sales pipeline and then just letting them sit there is not going to get the results you’re seeking. Carlos Hidalgo, president of The Annuitas Group, noted: “I remember one client who told us that the 300-plus leads we had generated over a six-week period were no good. We implemented a ‘post campaign’ research project and identified that more than half of the leads never received any kind of follow-up. Of those, 90 percent ended up buying from our client’s competitors within a 90-day period. It’s hard to argue with statistics.”
The point is, you can drag all the suspects in the world into your pipeline, but unless you take the time to weed through them in a systematic manner and identify the hot ones from the cold, you’re only wasting your time, your marketing budget and the efforts of your sales team to track down opportunities.”
Comment on What's Your Goal? More Leads or Better Leads? (Silverpop)
The 2010 New Year Checklist for Your Business, From Vertical Response
The 2010 New Year Checklist for Your Business
Every year here at VerticalResponse I make it a point to come up with a list of 10 things you need to be thinking about in the new year. They may be related to marketing, or running your business overall, and they’re usually something I relate to things I have to do in my own business.
1. Use “Cause Marketing” – This is the year that you should identify your business with a worthy cause and either donate a percentage of profits to it or contribute to it in some way. And if profits or hard cash don’t fit, consider donating employee time. Then in your email marketing campaigns, your marketing materials and sales pitches you should talk about what you’re doing and why it’s important to you. Your prospects and customers increasingly want to do business with a business that cares and has moral obligations, and they’re looking for you to let them know how you fit the bill.
2. Use Social Media with Email Marketing – Finally get your act together with social media this year. Start with Twitter and Facebook, it’s easy. Then set your goals on how many Twitter followers your business will get or how many Facebook fans you’ll attract. Make sure you tell your email marketing recipients to follow you when you send out a campaign. And don’t forget to post your links to your email campaigns in your Twitter account and Facebook pages and ask people to join your email list. All of these marketing vehicles work really well together and feed off of each other.
3. Nail Your Email Marketing – Your customers are your lifeblood in these economic times so make sure you put as much care as possible into how you communicate to them. One small yet important thing we all tend to overlook is the subject line, which is the most important part of your email. Whether you think about your subject line as the first order of business, or you write your email then come up with the subject line, take a moment and make sure it’s the right one. Here’s an idea the day before you send your campaign, take a small number of email recipients and split the list in two. Then send two different subject lines. If there is a clear winner, meaning one that has more clicks and opens, choose that one to roll out to your entire list the next day. If there isn’t a clear winner, then choose what your gut tells you to choose.
Test a different format or a different day to send your email campaign. Squeezing an extra few opens, clicks and sales can make a huge difference for your business all throughout the year.
Send regular surveys to your customers to find out how they rate your product, your company and customer service. Find out what you can be doing better, then tell your customers how you’re changing your ways in your next email newsletter because you’ve heard their message.
4. Make This the Year of Customer Service - People talk about companies that listen to them and that treat them well so you’ll want to go above and beyond with customer service this year. This is especially true since companies like Facebook and Twitter are taking off and becoming a platform for people to tell the world how they feel…about you. This might be the year you get your customer data all in one place so it’s easy to find a customer when they call. Then log all of their issues so you have it for next time. Try BigContacts, Zoho, ACT!, and Salesforce for low-priced options. Provide Support has an option for one operator for less than $10/month for a year. Also manage your incoming and outgoing customer service emails. Palo Alto Software has a great product called Email Center Pro where you can manage your incoming and outgoing emails from one central web location and it’s free for 2 users.
5. Cut Costs – Keep cutting costs because we’re still in the economic weeds. Look at your top spending categories and see if there’s money to be saved. Is your rent too high? If you’ve got a number of years left on it you might call your landlord and ask if you can renegotiate “stepped” payments. Ask for a discount this year and tell them in the future years you’re willing to pay at bit more per square foot. If you’re spending too much on shipping, start calling other providers to see if they’re competitive. Doing things like this in January will add up for the rest of the year and help you to profitability.
6. Listen to Your Customers - Listen and watch what your customers are saying about you. Sign up for Google Alerts with your company name as a keyword, but also with your competitor’s names so you can see what is being published about them as well. Sign up for a free TweetDeck account and do the same. You’ll see what people on Twitter are saying about your company, your competition and even your industry, up-to-the minute for an unlimited number of keywords. Then chime in to the conversation and address the issue or try to get a new customer. Word to the wise: make sure you’re transparent with who you are, you don’t want to “hide” as someone else, tell them you’re with your company and you want to help out or answer any questions.
7. Find New Customers, Inexpensively - Google is where people go these days to find businesses they’re looking for. So set up or build on your Google Adwords pay-per-click efforts. If you don’t know where to start with Google try Google Basics. Get started simple, choose keywords that make sense for your business and build on it from there. To find how many searches are happening on your keywords check out the Keyword Selector Tool to find out how many searches occur for your keywords. Note: although Google is the clear market leader, other search engines like Bing are gaining a bit of market share and can be less expensive. Word to the wise: take a deep breath and be patient, success doesn’t happen overnight but when you start to gain traction you’ll see that it does work and you can build on your success from there.
8. Build Your Email List - I’ve put together this blog post called 29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business. Live it, learn it, love it.
9. Hire People Who Care – If you’re lucky enough to be hiring for your business, this should be the year where you have an ample choice of people who need to work to choose from, so it’s your pick. Make sure you select people who have the same passion as you do, and people that fit into your business culture like a glove. Make sure you ask the questions that count; you want someone who can handle situations, someone who can communicate and someone who you trust. Don’t settle for second best, your customers will notice.
10. Embrace Word of Mouth – At VerticalResponse over 50% of the people who sign up for our service select “Word of Mouth” as the source for where they heard about our company. In 2010 you’ll really need to take a good look at what you’re doing to spur word of mouth. As noted here, customer service is important, the quality of your product or service is important and the entire customer experience is important in order for word of mouth to start. But there are other remarkable things you can do for your customers that can start them talking about you.There are some great ideas on the VerticalResponse Blog as well as Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing Blog to get you started.
2010 is poised to be a great year for growing your small business. Comment with your ideas for what you’ll do to get your growth on. Read Full Article Here
Comment on The 2010 New Year Checklist for Your Business, From Vertical Response
10 Most Popular BtoB Technology Marketing Stories From 2009
From Cisco’s ‘Thrive’ campaign to Building24, these were the most popular stories featured in the Inside Technology Marketing newsletter.Cisco builds ‘Thrive’ site campaign in eight weeks
Last fall, Cisco Systems’ salespeople began reporting how customers were struggling in the difficult U.S. economy. In response, Cisco’s marketing team rapidly created a program..
Cisco’s marketing chief sits down with ITM
Marilyn Mersereau, senior VP-corporate marketing at Cisco Systems, recently spoke with Inside Technology Marketing about the changing role of sales and marketing within the technology company..
Carter on IBM’s social media push
Sandy Carter, VP-IBM Software Group Channels, recently spoke to ITM about social media and how it fits into the company’s overall marketing strategy.
What is building43—and should you want one?
If social media is about starting conversations, why not hire the best conversation starter you can find?
Pursuing government tech spending in 2009
This year, technology sales as a whole may be flat—CIOs plan increases of just 0.16%, according to a recent survey by Gartner Executive Programs.
EMC’s ‘uber-integration’ database marketing
Storage vendor EMC Corp. has 3 million leads in its database. While that’s an impressive number, it can be a burden—especially because that database contains leads from several companies EMC acquired.
Novell ‘hashes’ out new campaign
One of the challenges of social media marketing is that it really shouldn’t look like marketing at all.
SAP cultivates customer communities
As the software industry has consolidated and diversified, successful companies have increasingly been those that build an ecosystem of customers and partners who support each other and share customized programs.
Community marketing with an offbeat twist
Marti Konstant’s years in technology marketing have made one thing abundantly clear to her: Engineers aren’t like the rest of us.
Why Phoenix Integration outsourced its marketing
Phoenix Integration, a maker of process integration and design optimization software, is realizing efficiencies in the down economy by outsourcing almost its entire marketing function.
Comment on 10 Most Popular BtoB Technology Marketing Stories From 2009
Tips For Effective Lead Management
For many sales people that sell general B2B equipment and services, cold calling on general businesses is where the whole sales process starts. If this is you, then you could be much more succesful by implementing a few simple lead generation rules.The fastest and easiest way to boost sales is typically in prospect identification. In other words, what aspects or “behavior” would an ideal business prospect possess?
This behavior could mean past purchasing history, their current use of products and services, or maybe their inclusion in certain niche media sources etc.. What is important is that you and your sales team are using a consistent set of rules to determine who deserves your valuable time. After all time is money, and if that’s true, which it is.. then spend a little time reading this blog post by Brian Carroll Lead Generation Check List
Free PDF Download: The Latest BtoB Sales Pipeline Strategy
This is an excellent resource for BtoB marketing and sales people looking for a boost. The free pdf. is an overview of some of the latest tips and tricks being used to grow sales and achieve higher ROI on marketing efforts. The free ebook contains three chapters:- Creating Sales Opportunities With Lead Scoring
- Content Mapped to Buying Stages -Powers Nurturing Results
- How to Optimize Lead Nurturing to Pump Up Your Sales Pipeline
This guide contains lots of great diagrams and charts to illustrate all of the major points
Click Here To Download
Comment on Free PDF Download: The Latest BtoB Sales Pipeline Strategy
World Leasing News Features Article by Founder of ProvenProspects.com
Growth Opportunities Found With Equipment Niche TargetingSince the economy turned, many equipment leasing companies have changed marketing strategies. But most companies are still trying to figure out what’s best. If you are one of these equipment leasing companies, there may be great opportunities in niche targeting. Read Full Article
1 Comment on World Leasing News Features Article by Founder of ProvenProspects.com
B2B Email Marketing Lists Comparative Analysis
An unbiased comparative analysis of BtoB email marketing list providers.- Volume- How many good contacts can I retrieve from this system?
- Completeness – can I get every field I want?
- Accuracy – is the contact information correct?).
“…This case study asked 10 well known BtoB data vendors to report how many contacts they had within 10 chosen industries (by SIC). They also asked whether they code firms with NAICS. Finally, it asked the vendors to report the number of complete contacts, “complete” meaning that the record included the full name, address, title, phone, fax and email. Download Email Marketing List Vendor Comparison
If you Want To Sell More, Think Like Michael Dell
Before Michael Dell was a computer mogul, and JIT (Just In Time) Business Genius. He was a great sales person. Dell understood that the prospects were the most important thing. That most of a companies expenses really went to filtering, and targeting the right prospects at the end of the day. Sales people, marketing, all of the main expenses of business are really just a way to get to the right prospects. This is because if the right prospects are targeted, then the sales will follow.-”At age 16, Michael Dell followed the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Principle to identify those most likely to purchase a subscription to The Houston Post (newlyweds and those who were moving into a new home), he enlisted the assistance of schoolmates to obtain the names and addresses of prime prospects from public sources, and then mailed a customized letter to them. Thousands of subscriptions were sold that year. He earned $18,000.
Who buys what I sell? Why? What is the best way to identify them? What is the best way to contact them? (Certainly not door-to-door) How can they help me to reach others who are also prospects? Obviously, $18-thousand is substantially less than $18-billion but what is most important is the fact that essentially the same strategies achieved both totals.” read more here
1 Comment on If you Want To Sell More, Think Like Michael Dell
The Best Place To Get Company Emails
A great interview with the founder of jigsaw data
