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Weeb Cnossen
I do my own stunts

Scoring like Messi

Big data can help out the little guy, too
Getting ready for Holon's Adloyada parade with a float depicting Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi (L) and Brazilian player Neymar (R) at a set design factory near Kfar Saba (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)
Getting ready for Holon's Adloyada parade with a float depicting Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi (L) and Brazilian player Neymar (R) at a set design factory near Kfar Saba (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)

How do prioritize your best leads in the funnel, and increase conversion? The answer is simple! To help SDR and Sales focus on the hottest stuff you need a proper lead scoring engine.

In the early stages of a technology startup, anything goes. Whatever new accounts you can bring, no matter how cold, you pump it into your CRM and hand it over. When research has helped you reach the ceiling and you’ve got anyone worth anything in your database, it becomes crucial to filter the good from the bad and ugly.

It is also vital to determine the threshold that all lead engagement should reach, before an alert for follow-up is sent. up the chain. You have to make certain assumptions on what minimum engagement is needed before picking up the phone and calling. The easy one is the “yes please call me to set a demo” request, to be covered in an SLA of an hour or so… but what else comes close? Is it 5 website visits in 3 days? One webinar attendance and a whitepaper download in one week?

Demographics and Behavior over Time

Scoring the behavior has multiple dimensions. First you list all possible (online) engagements and determine which touch points are more valuable than others. If “attended a webinar” is more important than “downloaded a whitepaper”, and “filled out form for gated content” beats a “website visit”, then that explains what the hierarchy of points should be.If you are not selling to Sweden (for political language reasons), then creating leads that will not be followed up is a pointless exercise. When you would like to grow faster in the USA then you do in Europe, you need those leads to float to the top. Define your table of preferred, secondary and no-go countries and regions and assign points to each. For example: USA scores 100, UK equals 50, FR scores 25 and so forth.

In the early stages you have to collect feedback concerning the ‘ripeness’ of the lead, in a closed loop with the SDRs. Let them rate the quality when they close the alert and tweak the scoring, one variable at a time, to improve accuracy.

Anything that happens online can be scored automatically. Physical events need manual intervention. You need to train your ‘manners’ to keep proper track of all important engagements at a show. Visited booth, attended demo or speaking session, ad hoc or planned meetings are all triggers for scoring that can result in alerts for follow-up after the show. Use barcode scanners and other tools to lighten the burden.

If you can bolt BI capabilities onto your engine, you may be able to uncover the top 10 lead-to-sales paths a prospect can ‘walk’. When your best converting leads have downloaded whitepaper X and seen webinar Y in the same week, you know exactly what to retarget your other prospects with and what your window of opportunity is.
That’s the moment you are onto a winner!

About the Author
For the past 15 years Weeb has led global marketing activities for a wide range of Hi-tech start-ups, creating lead-machines that exceed targets. With a passion for people, business and all things tech, he uses his toolkit to hack business growth for a living. When not at Anodot you can find him on the trails or slopes, crash-testing yet another mountain bike or a pair of skis.
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