Lead management is time consuming activity and requires constant improvements of processes to gain the best conversion rate possible.
Marketers often work with large number of leads and from some point this list gets barely manageable without having strategies that make lead management more effective. One of these strategies is called lead scoring.
Well implemented lead scoring helps with:
- Focus on the Right Leads: Not all leads are created equal. Lead scoring helps you spot the ones most likely to buy, so your sales team can focus their time and energy where it counts.
- Shorten the Sales Cycle: By identifying "sales-ready" leads early, you can move them through the pipeline faster—less time chasing unqualified leads.
- Improve Sales & Marketing Alignment: Marketing generates leads, and sales wants quality ones. Lead scoring gives both teams a shared understanding of what a “good lead” looks like.
- Boost Conversion Rates: Scoring helps you know when a lead is warmed up and ready to talk. Reaching out at the right time means a higher chance of closing the deal.
Improvements in lead management
It has been evidenced by many studies (some examples here, here or here) that companies using lead scoring perform better than those that don't. And, for instance, some studies show that conversion rates can increase significantly, in some cases by as much as 77%, and revenue can see a boost, with one report mentioning an average ROI of 138% for companies using lead scoring. These findings suggest that lead scoring is a valuable practice for enhancing sales outcomes.
What is lead scoring?
So, what actualy lead scoring is? Simply said, it is the process of ranking or scoring leads based on how likely they are to become paying customers.
During lead scoring, the marketing individuals assign points to each lead depending on properties like:
- Who is the customer (e.g., job title, company size, industry)
- What the customer does (e.g., visiting your website, opening emails, downloading content)
- How engaged is the customer (e.g., replying to messages, booking a demo)
There can be numerous properties considered in lead scoring, tthe above mentioned are only most typical examples. However, based on your business, your product or service or based on type of your end-user community, you may want to consider different properties like address, age, etc.
All this properties are then converted to a lead score. If you're an expert, you may use your unique algorithms to calculate the score but in most cases simply use already validated scoring strategies, e.g. with the help of a scoring table.
Scoring table
Each marketing team or strategy may develop its own lead scoring table, based either on goals they wantt to achieve or products they are selling. However, there are some best practises how such scoring tables can look like. Take a look at the example below. Mind the fact that scoring can also be negative.
| Property | Scoring Points |
|---|---|
| Job Title: CEO | +10 |
| Visited pricing page | +15 |
| Opened marketing email | +5 |
| Requested a demo | +25 |
| Inactive for 30 days | -10 |
Where to start?
Want to develop your own lead scoring strategy? Then you should follow steps described below.
- Define Your Lead Scoring Criteria
- Demographic Fit: Assign points based on attributes like job title, company size, or industry.
- Behavioral Engagement: Allocate points for actions such as email opens, website visits, or form submissions.
- Engagement Recency: Consider implementing score decay to reduce points over time for inactivity.
- Automate Lead Scoring Updates
- Real-Time Updates: Ensure that lead scores are updated in real-time based on new interactions or changes in lead data.
- Custom Workflows: Set up workflows in your lead scoring tool to automatically adjust scores based on predefined criteria.
- Monitor and Adjust Lead Scoring Model
- Regular Reviews: Periodically assess the effectiveness of your lead scoring model and make adjustments as needed.
- Sales Team Feedback: Collaborate with your sales team to gather insights and refine the scoring criteria.
Further reading
If you are interested more, we suggest you to read:
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367962051_The_state_of_lead_scoring_models_and_their_impact_on_sales_performance/figures?lo=1
- https://martech.org/how-to-revamp-your-lead-scoring-strategy-for-2025/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378579934_Optimizing_Sales_Funnel_Efficiency_Deep_Learning_Techniques_for_Lead_Scoring
- https://en.webmecanik.com/lead-scoring-best-practices-limitations/
- https://usermotion.com/blog/lead-scoring-examples