The B2B QUICK WIN Playbook
Three words – Lead Scoring Review! An optimized Lead Score process reduces the sales cycle, stops wasting valuable sales resources, and sets the stage for more stable and accurate pipeline forecasting. Further, it is the backbone of the marketing/sales relationship. Having a dialogue on what makes a lead sales-ready is mission-critical to success. If alignment is not reason enough then consider the valuable perspectives each team brings to identifying sales readiness & current interest.
Done correctly, a Lead Scoring Review makes the system significantly more efficient and also identifies the marketing assets & flows that are working well and areas to improve. An instant springboard, post review, into driving those quality leads to sales.
30-Second Synopsis
- Update what an Ideal Target looks like.
- Start by analyzing recently Won accounts. What commonalities in attributes are shared by Won accounts? What assets are most frequently touched by accounts during their purchase journey? Review findings with Sales to create a shared vision of what the Ideal Target looks like.
- Sales & Marketing agree to what defines an MQL.
- What actions & what attributes are critical, important, or nice to have. Include negative criteria that would reduce a leads score.
- Create and agree to a Sales Ready chart, like the one to the right, that combines implicit (attributes) and explicit (behavioural) traits.
- Conduct a pre-deploy analysis to quantify the immediate impact on leads currently in play in each stage of the funnel. Do they shift and, short term, is it an acceptable shift?
- Post-deploy analysis. Monitor daily (and then weekly) to ensure no stages "bulge", creating a delay in the constant stream of qualified leads sales needs.
- Review results with sales monthly for 3 months & then quarterly thereafter (depending on sales cycle) quarterly.
Done correctly, this review process not only enhances trust & cooperation with sales but creates a deeper understanding of marketing asset & flow effectiveness.
Special note! Do not fix spotted errors immediately. Allow the new Lead Scoring time to find its new "normal" before making changes to anything else. Specifically, changes made to Assets/flows before the Lead Scoring dust settles muddies the water on what change was effective. Positive asset changes can mask a negative Lead Scoring change and vice-versa. Far better to be patient and use the lull to 1) review & tighten UTM-based tracking and 2) develop materials and pre-plan asset/flow changes for implementation in 3-4 weeks' time.