Lead Scoring Demystified

In today's era, buyer behavior is changing rapidly. As a marketer, how do you ensure you're passing the most recent and engaged leads to sales, sending emails to the right prospect at the right time, and capturing the buying stage correctly?

A Lead Scoring program is the answer. Lead scoring is a ranking methodology that helps sales and marketing identify prospects at different engagement stages and the best business fit, streamlining the flow of sales-ready leads into the pipeline.

What are the different types of lead scoring?

There are two types: Explicit (Demographic) and Implicit (Behavioral).

Explicit or Demographic Scoring

Helps you find the best fit for your business — leads closest to your ideal customer persona. Use attributes like Job Title, Industry, Country, Annual Revenue, Number of Employees.

Implicit or Behavioral Scoring

Helps you determine engagement level. Consider activities like Product Page Visit, Clicked a Link in an Email, Submitted Contact Us form, Attended a Webinar, Visited Booth.

It's crucial to have both in place to determine the best bet (best fit and most engaged) for your business.

Who decides the lead scoring model?

Both Marketing and Sales should agree on the final model. Once implemented, review it regularly with before/after analysis to ensure it isn't flooding sales with unqualified leads or starving them of leads. Amend as needed and revisit.

How lead scoring helps Sales & Marketing alignment

Define a threshold and hand over leads that reach it to sales. A reasonable threshold helps sales focus time on qualified leads. In short, lead scoring helps by:

• Defining a single definition of a lead for both teams
• Simplifying the lead handover and feedback process
• Letting sales focus on the best leads and improving the relationship
• Defining an SLA for lead follow-up
• Determining where a lead sits in the lifecycle

How to define rules/criteria

Your marketing and sales data are your best bets. Collect past opportunity data (all stages) — demographic attributes and marketing activities of associated contacts — and analyze which activities convert more opportunities and what kind of people/businesses buy from you. Score accordingly. If you don't have enough data, start with a gut-feel model, let it run 3–6 months, then analyze conversions and rejections, look for patterns, and refine.