B-to-B : You Gotta Score to Win

Lead scoring takes on new meaning in today’s competitive marketplace

Call to Consummate
Research shows inquirers require three to six "touches" on average before a sale is consummated. These touches have to be made, or the sale goes to the company that "stays in the conversation." Touches are a combination of sales calls and marketing communications. But the marketing team can't stay in touch with prospects unless it knows what to say. And it can't know what to say without asking inquirers questions and grading the responses.

Nurturing Can't Start Without Lead Scoring
You cannot feed and nurture prospects without knowing something about their needs. You must ask questions and get answers such as BANT (IBM's acronym, which represents budget, authority, need and time). If you ask questions and get answers on business reply cards, at trade shows, from your Web contact page, on telemarketing scripts, etc., you can prequalify 50 percent to 60 percent of inquirers. The remaining prospects can be called or e-mailed to determine their needs. Once you have these answers, you can grade inquirers by their responses. This does five things for marketing and sales:

• Salespeople can judge an inquiry. It allows the salesperson to judge the initial value of the prospect.

• Marketing can judge the initial value of the lead generation tactic. If you received more "A" or "hot" inquiries from one source versus another, you may want to spend more money with the hotter source.

• Helps send only sales-ready leads. The marketing team can decide whether it will send only "sales-ready" leads to the sales channel and hold back less qualified inquirers until more is known of their intents.

• Marketing can nurture. The marketing team can mount a nurturing campaign for inquirers based on their scores.

• Sales increase. Give salespeople qualified leads with a rule for 100 percent follow-up, and sales will increase. If the marketing team performs some of the follow-up duties, it will share in the glory. According to automated lead management systems firm AdTrack Corp., lead nurturing will increase sales more than 30 percent.

Lead Scoring Is Based on 'Triggers'
If you ask questions—also known as "triggers"—and grade the responses, you can build future touches based on prospects' needs and closeness to making buying decisions. For instance:

How soon will you need a solution?
[ ] 60 days or less
[ ] three-six months
[ ] seven-12 months

Depending on how this question is answered, you probably will say this is an "A" or "hot" response—or maybe a "B" ("warm") or "C" ("cool") response. But this is only one question. Combine this trigger with:

Are you budgeted?
[ ] Yes
[ ] Not yet

Depending on the answer, you still may have a hot lead, not just an inquiry, or maybe something cooler if the inquiry does not have the money to buy. Putting a numerical grade on each answer will allow you to total up the score. A score more than 90 is considered hot, 75 to 90 is warm and 56 to 75 is cool. If you use Boolean logic to grade inquiries instead of a numerical grade, you will get more finely tuned grade levels. For instance, let's add another trigger:

Are you the decision maker?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No

Looking at all of these answers, you might find that if the inquirer says he is buying in 60 days or less, but there is no budget and he doesn't have decision-making authority, the inquiry may be a B or a C grade. If the lead says he will buy in seven to 12 months, is budgeted and the decision maker, the lead probably will be an A grade.

Numerical grades are easy to assign to the answers for the questions. Boolean logic is more difficult for some systems, but it can give you a better result. For instance, a Boolean command may be: If the answer to question 1 is 1A, and the answer to question 2 is 2B, and the answer to question 3 is 3B, this is a cool or only a warm lead.

Over Time, Regrade Lead Sources
Depending on the answers and grades, you will nurture suitable inquiries with mail, e-mail and telephone calls. The process either will eliminate inquiries from the prospect pool or create sales-ready leads for the sales channel. And as actual sales results occur, the marketing team can regrade inquiry sources to spend precious lead generation money on sources that bring in sales, leaving competitors to spend money on everything else.

The message is that marketers who score win more. It makes sense when you think about it.

James W. Obermayer is the founder and executive director of the Sales Lead Management Association and the principal of Sales Leakage Consulting Inc. He can be reached at (714) 998-1737.

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