Why lead scoring is crucial to build a sales pipeline

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For any company’s lead generation strategy the goal is obviously generating leads, however this alone does not guarantee a sustainable sales pipeline, as it will not differentiate between ready to close deals, nurturing prospects and window shopping. In fact it can cause a detrimental effect on the effectiveness of your sales team’s performance.

The solution to this is a system which can score the prospect during the sales processes. VSL has used its many years of experience of lead generation and business development to fine tune a well proven lead scoring system, which has proven to achieve robust results, time and time again.

Whether your business is new to the concept or are already familiar with the lead scoring process, below are some practical guidelines in which VSL can help you to optimise your sales efforts by using using a proven sales scoring system.

Collaboration

We always emphasise to our clients that the sales and marketing teams must collaborate throughout the lead generation process. There is often a wealth of information within the two teams as to what constitutes a sales ready or potential lead, and it’s important that both teams work together to agree on the best strategies with the leads we provide based on our lead scoring system. Once the lead scoring system is in place, we then ensure regular communication to evaluate its performance. If sales teams are still receiving leads that aren’t sales ready, then this needs to be analysed and the lead scoring system revised.

Lead scoring

We have used as a base a proven system, where leads are scored by assessing an individual’s budget, authority, need and timeline; or BANT as it’s more commonly known. Using this framework, higher scores will be attributed to individuals who have sufficient budget and authority to make the purchase, whereas lower scores will be given to those who have less immediate need, possibly due to a long timeline. One drawback of the BANT approach is that is only uses explicit information volunteered by the prospect, and this can sometimes be unreliable.

This is where implicit information on a person’s behaviour should be considered.

Implicit information is the data gathered on an individual’s interaction with a company and includes actions such as visiting the company’s exhibition stand, registering for a webinar, completing a web enquiry form or visiting a company’s website. We can then factor in and weight prospect’s behaviour. Using this information, we can then better decide which actions are key in the buying process and score the sales lead accordingly. All VSL clients will have access to our own telemarketing automation system.

With our clients we decide what activities are more important and then tailor the points to your sales cycle. You can then gauge activity levels and preferred methods of contact over a period of time and feed into your lead nurturing cycle.

Nurturing

Our lead scoring will allow you to not only establish who is ready to purchase, but also score leads as soon as they enter the sales funnel. Having a detailed picture of the buying process is a great asset for the marketing team, and presents us with a great opportunity to plan your campaigns that will nurture each segment as they travel through your sales funnel, potentially shortening the sales cycle.

Telemarketing

Telemarketing is really our core tool in building a lead generation campaign, and plays an integral role in nurturing prospects, if timed well. A good example of this is a follow-up call to a person who has recently watched a webinar to check if they have all the information they require, and to answer any questions they may have. There are plenty of other scenarios where telemarketing can play a key role in warming up prospects, and pushing them along the path to sales readiness.

For more information on how to kick start your business development and to find out more about telemarketing services from VSL, please contact us via our contact page or pick up the phone and give us a call on +44 (0)1403 788481.

Tags: Lead generation, Sales Pipeline, Telemarketing

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