Lead probing and superior customer service are the foundational concepts for any business. To a great extent, the success and failure of an enterprise depend on these two concepts as well. But, identifying a lead that would convert into a customer is the real challenge.
A CRM provides for tracking, organizing and maintaining customer relationships. It is not easy to identify a lead and to decide if it can be converted. It takes hours of conversation, multiple emails and personalized texts to determine the quality of leads-a procedure that consumes time and efforts. Till recent past, turning a lead into a prospect from a particular list is a complex manual process. Slowly, with technological advancements, automation is gaining popularity to reduce this time and help to identify the lead quality. A CRM with an automated lead scoring system can help a company determine the lead quality and nurture based on the lead score. Let’s discuss in detail what a lead scoring system is all about and how it would help companies to determine the ‘hot leads’ and improve the sales velocity.
Lead Score:
Every company thrives to identify the prospects. When you don’t have a sound system of recognizing and prioritizing your leads, all your leads will be of the same quality. But, all leads can’t be the same, often, are of different nature and quality. Some might be casually trying to explore the options and few others are serious to make a purchase. If it is so, then you are missing out some prospective leads for no reason.
The sales automation software helps you to set parameters based on the activities performed by the lead like reading your email, responding to calls, looking for pricing, request for sales quotation and so on. However, you can predefine activities by defining scores as needed which automation takes care of.
For instance, you have two leads in your open bucket, upon interaction, one has asked you to send the quotation and meet him at his place and the second one has said to call back on account of his busy schedule. In this case, based on the activity, the former lead will have a higher score compared to the latter.
Lead score aggregates varied factors like the behavioral patterns, activities and engagement levels and assigns scores automatically determining the lead priority for the sales team to act. The value of the lead will not be constant and undergoes changes based on the nurturing process and the performed activities. However, you can predefine parameters to weigh the lead interest and automation will take care of it. Understanding the lead response and behavior helps to decide on which lead should you spend less time and which ones are less likely to be closed.
Benefits of Lead Scoring:
Less missed opportunities
Leads or prospects are usually lost with poor follow-up. Assigning a specific score to a lead based on the interaction or response helps to identify the earnestness of a prospect and to prioritize the lead nurturing plan accordingly.
More closures
Continued follow-up based on the lead scores with targeted nurturing aimed at the particular lead scores turns more leads into hot leads with fewer missed opportunities. More closures will be the ultimate outcome which will result in improved productivity.
Improves ROI
Sales team becomes efficient in tracking the high priority leads which will align the sales process with more closures and revenue.
The lead score system is an effective process of differentiating prospects from casual leads. It helps your sales team to focus on the closures rather doing guess works. But the efficiency depends on how well you predefine possibilities for identifying the best opportunities.
