Have you noticed that the techniques of Inbound Marketing are being very successful in your company, but you still need to better qualify leads to sell more? Lead scoring can help in this process.
Read this text to find out what lead scoring is and how this methodology can help improve the productivity and results of your sales team.
What is lead scoring?
Know how to generate leads is one of the great weapons of Inbound Marketing. Through materials such as e-books, discount coupons, various landing pages and even other innovative content, the visitor provides their data and can be considered a lead. But will they always be qualified to be considered a sales opportunity? Obviously not.
Ideally, these leads would be much more qualified so that the sales team would not waste time with a visitor who did not have the potential to become a customer.
This is when lead scoring can be one of the marketing strategies more effective in increasing the productivity of marketing and sales teams.
Lead scoring in marketing will work as a kind of gamification of opportunities, which can be carried out based on criteria such as the lead's profile and interest in your product or services, based on actions taken during the purchasing journey.
These actions can be visiting some pages on your website, downloading rich materials or even answering questions on your landing pages.
This monitoring and analysis process will give the lead a number that represents its conversion potential, which means that this methodology creates a score to identify those who are most prepared to make a purchase.
The higher the score the lead has, the greater the chances of it becoming a customer and then it is forwarded to the sales team.
However, this does not mean that leads that are not yet so mature will be “abandoned”, they will be nurtured with materials from the automation flow to make them more “prepared” for the future purchase.
This more precise segmentation allows for more specific communication with the lead, according to their interests and profile.

What are the advantages of using lead scoring?
Do you realize that each lead can arrive at your company with a different stage of purchase maturity and is it easier to understand why qualification through lead scoring is a very strategic action?
Lead scoring allows for greater efficiency for marketing and sales teams, because when the lead arrives more ready for the sales team, there are several advantages that can be observed:
Provides clarity in prioritization
When this lead has a higher score, it becomes easier for the sales team to understand its prioritization, which will not rely solely on luck for this approach.
Lead scoring is a quantitative element that analyzes the possibility of the lead becoming a customer. This analysis, through scoring, will be more objective and faster.
Reduced customer acquisition costs
Lead scoring can help your company spend less to acquire new customers, i.e., it reduces CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).
Generates time savings and productivity
When the sales team receives a “more ready” lead from the lead scoring process, their efforts to close the deal will be reduced and, therefore, their productivity level in conversion rates will increase.
Without having to waste time with leads that are not yet at the right point, and closing sales with more qualified leads, the sales cycle time decreases and the sales team can reach targets in less time.
Generates more real sales opportunities
Lead scoring is among the salesforce best practices, that is, among the best sales practices because it presents a much more effective strategy when qualifying the lead within the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) or ideal customer.
Looking at the ICP will show you the best ways to set up your scoring criteria.
Reduces churn rates
Lead scoring provides a very clear score to find future customers who really have the right profile for your company's solutions, therefore, it also helps to reduce churn rates.
How do I create this lead scoring score?
There are some steps that can be taken towards implementing the lead scoring methodology:

How to use automation in lead scoring?
This entire process can be carried out much more easily with marketing automation tools, which will perform this segmentation with a different level of detail.
One of these automation tools is RD Station. When you access RD Station Marketing, you can access a menu that will allow you to configure your lead scoring, through your profile, create automations and use filters that will show those that are most qualified as a more strategic opportunity for your sales team.
There are several levels for qualifying lead scoring through RD Station, from the most basic to the most advanced qualifications.
Even if your company is going to use another tool, understand that this is an iterative process that requires continuous improvements: define criteria and weights, collect results, make adjustments and always refine.
And don't get hung up on the size and type of company, lead scoring is for B2B or B2C of all sizes, because, after all, what organization doesn't want to optimize its processes and increase its performance?