Lead Scoring Criteria

Lead scoring is the process of automatically qualifying and prioritizing leads for sales. If you own revenue generation software and haven’t developed a lead scoring program yet or you’re considering investing in a lead scoring program you’re probably wondering how to get started. First, identify your lead scoring criteria.

Businesses typically categorize lead scoring criteria into three “buckets” – demographics, behavior and qualification. Segmenting lead scoring criteria into these three areas helps businesses organize their lead scoring rules and determine the weight/value to place on each rule. Here’s a breakdown of the three lead scoring criteria buckets.

Demographic lead scoring criteria

Demographic lead scoring refers to any information about a company or a person. In the video below, Mac McConnell uses a creative way to interpret demographic lead scoring criteria as any information typically seen on a business card. Some industry experts refer to this as “firmographics”, or any company related information while demographics are information on a person. An example of lead scoring criteria in this bucket is below:

• Company name

• Revenue

• Industry

• Geography

• Name

• Title/position

Behavior lead scoring criteria

Behavior lead scoring refers to any information about an individual’s online behavior such as their interaction with marketing assets. For example, it’s possible to track the following behavioral lead scoring criteria using lead tracking technology:

• Website visits (# of pages viewed, specific pages visited – like a pricing page)

• Online registrations (document downloads, webinar requests)

• Email opens and/or links clicked in an email

• Time spent on a website

Qualification lead scoring criteria

Qualification lead scoring refers to any information about a lead which identifies whether a lead is in profile (ideal buyer) or out of profile. For example, at Lead Liaison our ideal customers are B2B companies, not B2C. To collect this information ask your sales people to log this data into your CRM. Alternatively, use progressive profiling technology to ask for this information in a web form. Progressive profiling allows marketers to ask for different qualification criteria once and only once. For example, you could ask where someone is in the buying process on their first form submission. When the visitor returns to complete a second form, progress profiling with automatically replace the question with another qualifying question. Over time you’ll build a more holistic profile of your prospect.

It’s important to place the proper “weight” on each of the three lead scoring criteria buckets. As Mac points out, people tend to provide inaccurate demographic information; however, it’s not possible to lie on behavioral information since that’s activity based.

Adding the lead score from each of the three lead scoring criteria buckets gives you a total lead score, which tells you how to prioritize leads and when to elevate attention towards particular leads.

Check out our Lead Scoring Solutions Guide for more examples of lead scoring criteria. For help prioritizing leads see this post. Please contact Lead Liaison for a free consultation to see how our revenue generation software technology can help your company score leads and implement progressive profiling to create, manage, qualify and nurture leads.

Here’s the short presentation from Mac McConnell on lead scoring criteria.

Lead Scoring Criteria, by Mac McConnell:

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We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. How does your company define lead scoring criteria?

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