The tip this week comes from our Client Care Specialist in the London office, Greg Staunton. Greg has a Master’s degree in Marketing and more than six years of implementing lead management solutions for high-tech clients.
Many B2B marketers know their companies could benefit from a lead scoring model, because they’ve read the case studies and seen how the program, when done right, can align sales and marketing teams and increase marketing ROI. However, many of them don’t know how to start.
Typical scenario: When marketers market to the leads they’ve garnered, they send the marketing reports to sales. Soon, a back log arises because sales teams do not have the time to go through every single contact, and review the raw data. This is meaningless. And as the quarter roles by, sales is increasingly under pressure to win deals. Feeling the pressure first hand, sales can begin to view marketing as an ineffective operation that sends them poor quality leads.
To alleviate this issue, many B2B marketers will attempt to develop a lead scoring model to determine at what stage in the buying cycle each lead is at and moving those deemed ready-to-buy to sales. The problem is many B2B marketers will read lead management best practice whitepapers and attempt to develop the final stage of a lead scoring model tied in with a nurture program first versus starting from the beginning. This usually ends up in failure.
The solution: Start off simple. Sales and Marketing must sit down together and implement a lead scoring model. The lead scoring model is based initially on BANT and demographic information provided by the prospect through lead generation. Rank leads according to how well they fit with your sweet spot. For instance: A = perfect fit, E = no fit.
The outcome: Marketing will send sales the kind of leads they’d like to receive to ensure their time isn’t wasted trying to qualify leads that should be held in a lead nurturing campaign. Once you’ve achieved a high MQL to SAL rate, you can start looking at the next phase of lead scoring, which includes scoring leads based on their behavior.
