How Lead Scoring Makes Your Sales and Marketing Department More Efficient

Learn how lead scoring makes your sales and marketing department more efficient. Marketing automation has quickly became the hottest trend in B2B sales and marketing due to its ability to produce high quality leads that generate revenue while saving valuable resources like money, time, and energy. Lead scoring is an essential component of the marketing automation process. As leads are gathered and nurtured, lead scoring assesses their potential for conversion using pre-established criteria.

Lead scoring qualifies and quantifies a lead’s individual likelihood of purchasing based on their online profile. Every lead leaves a trail of evidence or insight into their character that can be beneficial to your sales and marketing team. It evaluates and prioritizes leads based on pre-determined demographic and behavioral factors that are unique to purchasing certain products or services. By profile unique to your target customers and then ranking new leads against it, marketing can determine how well each lead matches to the ideal customer profile.

Once leads are ranked, marketing will only passes on sales-ready leads for the sales team to pursue further. This way the sales department is only contacting potential consumers who are seriously interested in making a purchase. That is probably the most obvious way it will make your sales and marketing department more efficient, but it is not the only benefit.

Lead scoring quantifies each lead, plus it acts as an effective barometer to quantify current lead generation methods. For example, if your lead generation method is consistently generating low quality leads that are not ready, then you may be you are focusing on the wrong market segment. It could be that the marketing message that is being sent out is not in line with the products or services that are being offered. It also could be targeting buyers who are still in the initial stages of research. Regardless of the reason, a constant generation of low quality leads is a sign that the lead generation method and overall marketing strategy needs to be reviewed and revamped.

Lead scoring improves efficiency by providing the marketing automation department with a reliable and powerful source of feedback. By giving clear, concise and measurable information, such as what stage the current lead is at, or what are the chances this lead is ready to be converted into a customer, or even what methods of interaction that have been successful so far, lead scoring can be used to enhance lead nurturing efforts and further engage the potential consumer with additional relevant content.

Also, lead scoring works well because it brings in more loyal customers. Customers obtain during the marketing automation process are obtain by developing a strong and meaningful relationship. Leads that convert will feel a connection with the company based on appreciation for educational or helpful content. This increased loyalty will save your marketing department the time and expense of securing new customers when others fail to come back.

Marketing automation is designed by nature to improve inefficiencies and lead scoring is vital in that process. Generating sales-ready leads, evaluating current lead generation methods, providing useful information for lead nurturing, and developing more loyal consumers are all ways that lead nurturing can improve the efficiency of your sales and marketing department.