How to Take Advantage of Lead Scoring for Your Business
Lead scoring can play a crucial role in your business if structured and implemented properly. It is now considered one of the best marketing assets that a business can have. Being able to follow through with leads that have a high likelihood of conversion increases the sales performance of your business. Lead scoring is not just beneficial to sales, it can also play important roles in other aspects of business operations. Here, we’ll discuss some efficient ways of taking advantage of lead scoring for your business.
What is Lead Scoring?
Knowing your business asset by heart is a key step to being able to make full use of it. There have been varying definitions of lead scoring, most of them give a vague picture if a layman were to ask what it is. In a simple and general definition, lead scoring is a way of ranking prospective buying customers based on their inclination from the interest in a product or service with the intent in making a purchase. The ranking or scoring methods of lead scoring may vary from one business to another, but the basic principle remains the same: points are assigned to different courses of action taken by the customer in the sales funnel. From this scoring system, various courses of action can also be performed by a sales representative based on how close a customer or site visitor to make a purchase.
Using Lead Scoring to Enhance Sales Performance
How a sales representative efficiently closes a sale can be enhanced through the help of lead scoring. When it comes to sales and revenue, Breadcrumbs recommends maximizing the utilization of lead scoring for this particular aspect of your business. The best thing about lead scoring is its versatility - it can be used by any type of business, regardless of size or industry. It all boils down to proper setup, according to your business operation and needs. Here, we’ll discuss more on the general principle of applying lead scoring. Basically lead scoring works in the following structure:
- Determining every possible action that can be done in your sales funnel.
- Assigning a point value for each action
- Setting a favorable or ideal point total for sales conversion and closing
- Monitoring the action progress of a lead and assigning them points
- Determining hot prospects based on the total points reached by a lead.
Lead Scoring Helps Create an Engaging Customer Experience
The next step after setting up a good lead scoring structure is selecting the proper courses of action based on the actions performed. A good rule of thumb is taking your cue from a reputable store or boutique. The salespersons in these stores are patient, considerate, and attentive to what their customers need. They do not overwhelm or pressure their customers into making a purchase. They make intelligent deductions and assumptions based on predicted sales analysis of the customer’s actions in the store. For example, a male customer browses through the jewelry section and intently looks at a pair of earrings or a necklace with an ornate feminine design. The salesperson may approach the customer and offer assistance by deducing that the customer may perhaps be looking for jewelry for someone of the opposite sex. If the customer agrees, the salesperson can then ask about the size, design and other specifications and also offer suggestions. This scenario is highly conducive to make a successful sale.
The online sales scene is no different. Just because a site visitor or potential customer is visiting your business website, doesn’t always mean they are ready to make the purchase. Online sales representatives need to dig deeper and gain insight into what the potential lead is doing. Prospects generally start out with the interest phase and then the research phase before they proceed to the decision and purchase phases. In the first two phases, it is important to know the priorities and interests of the prospects and offer relevant suggestions. Do not bombard them with detailed product information just yet, as they had not decided on making the purchase. However, this is the perfect stage to position for an effective offer, promotion, or call to action for prospective customers. Not only does this improve the chances for sales, but it also creates a good rapport with customers and gives them a satisfying service experience.
Lead Scoring Promote Marketing and Sales Harmony
It’s not just revenue-generation that lead scoring can be taken advantage of in a business. It also helps generate data-backed lead reports and helps make an effective marketing strategy for those involved in business planning and marketing. The reports can help the marketing team look at channels, programs, and campaigns that generate high-yielding leads. Also, it helps review areas that are not performing satisfactorily and need an improved approach. An objective look into the market status helps not just the marketing team, but the entire business entity in making informed decisions that are not based on sensationalized or biased data.
Having the same data source used by the sales team can help the marketing team make sales and marketing plans that are aligned with the objectives and targets of the sales team. This harmonious and unified approach can be crucial to the future investments of your business. Partnering effective revenue growth and market expansion can be a challenging feat, but the rewards are incredible, and through lead scoring, it can be achieved.
Lead Scoring Paves the Way for Lasting Customer Relationships
No matter how much you strive to reach your revenue and marketing goals, they would be hardly attainable if you can’t effectively connect with your customers. After all, they are considered as valuable assets to any business. An efficient and customer-centric lead scoring structure can help you formulate actions that are not only effective in generating conversions and closed sales, but also helps create a customer-friendly image for your business. Marketing strategies will also be focused on customers according to effective market segmentation and marketing personnel. Favorable customer reviews are effective in keeping a high customer retention rate, establishing a loyal and strong customer base, and bolstering the marketing effort of your company or business by making advocates out of consistently satisfied customers.
Lead scoring has a lot of potential uses and applications in your business. Being able to fully harness the vast benefits of lead scoring can enable businesses to achieve great feats in revenue, sales, and marketing. All it takes is the willingness to learn and apply key concepts of this scoring model and effectively integrate your own business model into the scoring system.
