On-Demand Lead Scoring Wins Sales and Marketing Game
May 15, 2008
By Paul McConville
Even after you greatly invest in driving and measuring response to your marketing, does your sales team still dispute the number of "qualified" leads your marketing team generates?
Even superstar marketers can have trouble putting this headache to rest. There is no single instant cure-all, but the relationship between your sales and marketing teams becomes much easier if you can answer these tough questions before your salespeople start talking with prospects:
• Exactly who is calling your company right now or giving you their contact information online?
• Can you actually reach the people who provide their contact info online?
• Which incoming leads should be your top priority?
• Which of your products or services is most relevant to each incoming lead?
If you don't know, then it's hard to claim that you're delivering highly qualified leads. And if you don't have the answers, then you're probably like many companies: When your targeting efforts and marketing investments pay off and consumers do reach out to you, you treat them all alike.
Taking the Lead (Scoring)
But what if you could prioritize your best leads by automatically determining which of your leads are most likely to convert, which will spend the most money, and which are most likely to become long-term loyal customers? For starters, those are the leads you'd want to handle first, right? You might also adjust your messages and offers to them. And you probably want to make sure that the best leads go to your best salespeople.
All it takes is the right knowledge at the right moment through an approach called on-demand lead scoring. When you combine your customer information with consumer data and predictive analytics, on-demand lead scoring can instantly and automatically prioritize each incoming lead to boost your sales conversions and customer value.
So where do you start? The predictive power of your lead scoring depends upon how much it is tailored to your specific business, your goals and your knowledge of your customers.
For razor-sharp insight, you can develop scores that reflect detailed household information—including demographics, lifestyle and behavioral information. Then incorporate your own data—including sales history, product and channel usage. All this will tell you which leads are most likely to convert, which will respond to certain offers or messages and which are potentially most valuable.
Mastering a New Approach
The approach is new to most companies, but some that are already successfully using on-demand lead scoring have found three key best practices.
First, you have to be able to access and leverage this insight with new prospects on demand, the same time you're interacting with new prospects. Custom-made customer insight platforms have traditionally lacked this capability. They could tell you amazing things about your existing customers, but none of this rich information was actionable in the instant new prospects called in. You couldn't predict which prospects would behave like your best customers unless you stop to ask each prospect, say, the five attitudinal survey questions you've found to be predictive. That's unrealistic, so you're essentially flying blind.
The second success factor is data quality. You wouldn't put dirty gasoline in your Rolls Royce, so why would you want dirty data in your lead-scoring solution? Your lead scoring is only as good as the information that drives it. If your scoring doesn't include verification of contact information, then you won't even know which leads can be reached, making the effort worthless. And if your scoring solution doesn't include up-to-date consumer contact information, then you're slashing your ability to assign scores to your leads.
Finally, make sure to customize your indicators. If your scores aren't customized to your business, then their predictive power will lack punch. Off-the-shelf lead scoring systems typically rely on consumer profiles that aren't even tailored to your industry, much less your company, so they provide uneven results when used to drive your real-time decisions. An online shoe store will miss some sales if it relies on the same customer profiles that an insurance company uses for its automated processes.
Putting Premise into Practice
A full-featured lead scoring system could work something like this: An auto dealer receives names and phone numbers of active car shoppers within minutes of their filling out forms on auto-related Web sites. In a split second before the dealer's sales team receives the lead, it's automatically scored based on the individual's verified contact-information, household demographics and the dealer's experience with customers fitting that demographic profile.
The sales team is now fully equipped to prioritize the leads that are most valuable to them, rushing the most promising ones—those scoring, say, in the top 20%—to the top of the queue for an immediate outbound call. The sales team begins each call with a huge head start: As each lead arrives, its score triggers a customized script featuring the most relevant message and offer. While the top leads get first attention, others are prioritized for follow-up. This on-demand lead prioritization solution helps the dealer be the first, not to mention the smartest, to approach consumers who are ready to buy.
Conclusion
The bottom line? With automatic lead scoring you can:
• Prioritize your leads and send them directly to your top sales agents for more efficient lead management;
• Focus on your best leads to grow your ideal customer base;
• Create a more relevant dialog with customers and prospects for a better customer experience; and
• Get more results from your marketing dollar.
Paul McConville is Director of Consumer-Facing Services for TARGUSinfo.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
|
|
RSS
