The Pitfalls of a Poorly Managed Lead Scoring System

Author: Lorena Mosquera Category: B2B, B2C, E-commerce & Retail, Healthcare & Life Science, Industry, Marketing, Membership Marketing, Nonprofit, Technology & SAAS Date: October 11, 2023

How many of your leads convert to sales?

According to research, it could be as little as five sales for every 100 leads. One main reason for those dismal numbers is directly related to lead quality. The same study, conducted by Gleanster Research found 79% of leads will never convert (1). That equates to wasted resources, time, and money.

To combat this challenge, many business leaders incorporate lead scoring into their workflow strategy. Lead scoring is a systematic approach to assess and prioritize leads based on specific criteria and behaviors. It uses a point value for each lead based on predetermined criteria and behaviors, such as demographics, level of engagement, and interactions with marketing touch points, with weights that qualify the relative importance of the different scoring factors.

And it works! Research conducted by Aberdeen Strategy & Research Group showed that companies that utilize lead scoring in their workflow strategy have a 192% higher average lead qualification rate than those that don’t (2). However, not all lead scoring is effective, and it is critical to get it right. Many organizations struggle to implement effective lead scoring methodologies, leading to inaccurate assessments and misguided decision-making, which can ultimately prove detrimental to the business.

A 2023 study published in Information Technology and Management reported that businesses commonly encounter a range of barriers that get in the way of successful lead scoring implementation, including:

• Their method lacks a well-defined, systematic approach to scoring leads. The process of assessing, prioritizing, and scoring leads becomes overly time-consuming and cumbersome without a clear framework and methodology in place. This causes decreased productivity and efficiency in sales and marketing efforts.
• Their lead scoring workflow strategy is too simple. If your approach integrates only basic metrics, like firmographics and demographics, it may only give you a broad overview of a lead’s potential value. This means you miss out on more nuanced information about a lead’s situation and preferences. It can result in higher value leads being scored lower and, ultimately, overlooked.
• Their lead scoring fails to incorporate the buyer’s perspective. Businesses too often prioritize conversion steps in the marketing-sales funnel solely from their perspective without factoring in the buyer’s perspective across their purchase decision-making process. In doing so, they disregard valuable insights about what phase of the purchasing journey buyers are in and what their preferences are.
• Their system is not dynamic or flexible. Many businesses establish a static lead scoring system based on predetermined criteria without making accommodations for input from their sales team or ongoing, new data. Without evolving the model as business conditions change or information becomes available, many leads will be incorrectly scored or missed altogether.
• They use low-quality or old data. Lead scoring workflow strategies are often plagued by poor quality or imbalanced data – sometimes old data from previous sales cycles that’s not reflective of current market conditions. This, too, can result in leads that are incorrectly scored or disregarded (3).

Research completed by MarketingSherpa indicates that 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales, but just 27% of those leads are qualified, and only 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to the sales team (4). Adding lead scoring into your workflow strategy is a powerful tool to combat wasted time and money, but there is a right way and a wrong way to approach it. Getting it right can mean the difference between a cohesive marketing to sales process that supports sustainable revenue growth and one that is disjointed, leaving teams constantly spinning their wheels chasing after the wrong leads.

At Paradigm, the members of our workflow strategy team are experts at enhancing your business infrastructure, improving data analysis, and supporting profitable decision-making. We can help you to start building processes that result in tangible, measurable success. Schedule a strategy session with one of our experts today.

(1) https://www.cognism.com/blog/lead-scoring

(2) https://martech.org/whats-important-b2b-buyers-lead-score/

(3) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10799-023-00388-w

(4) https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30901/30-thought-provoking-lead-nurturing-stats-you-can-t-ignore.aspx