Why a lead scoring strategy can be implemented

In my previous article, I explained how technically works a lead scoring strategy but now we will approach its implementation and benefits. To write this article I read this two different articles, Lead Scoring: Benefits and Stats and Benefits of Lead Scoring.

Given that you know how a score is given to a lead, we will try to understand what to do with this score. First of all, because every score is linked to a status henceforth you know if the visitor may be very, a bit or almost not interested in your product. The first step is to determine what actions you will figure out to execute at every stage. When it is a cold lead you may leave him visit your website, when it is a warm lead you can start to interact with him and finally when it is a hot lead you definitely need to step in and conclude the sale.

Implementation

After defining what interactions will attribute a score to your lead, you need to define what actions will be triggered by a score.

Cold lead

Your visitor seems to have a good profile , he is interacting with your website by checking different pages, maybe downloading white papers. Then you can think he is gathering information or comparing products/information. He has a small engagement and you don't need to allocate a seller to each visitor like him. An interesting action is to implement some pop-up to propose a newsletter, to follow your social networks or even a trial version of your product.

The major fact is to determine actions that don't require any human intervention, everything is automated.

Warm lead

A warm lead is someone you has a profile which match pretty well with your user persona, it may also involve someone who is coming back, opening your mail, requesting contact, etc.. This status allows you to determine hybrid actions, from reminders to direct contact. It is the step where you can decide many type of action from automated to human actions. Commonly, the actions are still automated but a bit more insistant because it needs to push the visitor to make the first step towards your company.

Hot lead

The final step is a hot lead, someone really interested by your product or company, he is one step before purchasing so if your goal is to convert visitor you need to take care of him.
The profile of this visitor is someone who is either almost your perfect user persona, either someone who interacting many times with your website or communication or asking for further information.

In this case you do not have many options, you need to convert him by stepping in with a seller. When a hot lead is detected, an alert to a seller is sent in order to ignite a human contact who will gather information about him and propose him his perfect fit.

Benefits

The automatization of this process permits many advantages, the main one is to save time. In a business, taking care of clients should be the most important issue. Unfortunately, even though internet drains an tremendous amount of leads, it also spread them between interested people and basic visitors. The lead scoring strategy gives the opportunity to a business to qualify every traffic on the website and to decide who is worth to interact with based on specific criteria. The qualifying part conducts to a nurturing strategy which is the automated part when actions are triggered only by the score in order to keep the visitor in touch with the company. It leads to the most important part when it is time to convert and the main advantage is that your sellers can dedicate their time to hot leads. Your sales team do not lose time anymore about contacting people crossing your website. Guess what? a seller with more time has better chance to identify the need of the hot lead, to adapt his sales pitch and to take care of the relationship between customer and company. 

So why not using it? First it is a strategy that costs either money to use services from an expert, either a lot of time to develop an intern solution. Secondly, you will need to determine many criteria to qualify your leads, it means knowing your customers really well and finally to have many actions to trigger when a lead levels up.

You may face difficulties but the benefits are established by almost 100% of the companies. 

Alexandre Bouché