What is the process at your organization for leads that come in through a Web form via your website? Do you give them to a sales rep for follow-up? And do your sales reps sometimes complain that those leads aren't qualified?

If your organization is like most, the answer is a resounding yes. But what else are you supposed to do with those leads?

In fact, quite a lot. Your marketing team can develop a lead-scoring system with the real-time input of your sales staff.

With demand-generation platforms uncovering more leads through channels such as online, blogs, webinars, and podcasts, it's easy to take the stance that all leads are created equal and simply focus on the numbers. But that approach often wastes your sales reps' time and energy, and hence your company's money.

By extending the marketing cycle further into the sales funnel, a lead-scoring methodology ensures that leads are prequalified, without wasting the time of your sales professionals—and ultimately allows your sales rep to close more business at a lower cost per lead (CPL).

What Lead Scoring Is

Lead scoring is a way to assign different scores to leads, allowing them to be sorted and prioritized. It allows the A leads to be sent directly to Sales, while routing B, C, and D leads back to Marketing to be placed in a nurturing program. It also can reduce friction between Sales and Marketing because both departments are in agreement on what constitutes a good lead.

An effective lead-scoring system starts with a discussion between Marketing and Sales to define the criteria that characterize a qualified lead. At several steps, Sales and Marketing will need to agree on these different criteria and assign weights to their relative importance—e.g., titles, budgets, and company size.

It is really the process itself, not the numbers it produces, that provides the value of lead scoring. A lead score is not a static number; it is likely to change over time as the values that go into determining the scores change.

How Lead Scoring Works

A small company that sells software, with two offices, one in the United States and the other in Asia, needs to qualify leads. Because its software isn't cheap and it is not yet global, Marketing and Sales agree that company size (as an indicator of budget) and location should be key factors in the lead-scoring system they are developing. Other crucial criteria in determining a lead's value will be job title and industry.

With these criteria defined, Sales and Marketing decides on what point values to assign to each. For example, an excellent prospect might have a job title of IT director, which gets a 5, whereas a system administrator may get a 4, and a sales engineer, who would not be considered part of the target audience, may get a -4. That's right, leads can have a negative score.

Five Data Types to Evaluate

Here is a checklist of five data types to evaluate when creating a lead-scoring system:

1. Demographic data

Basic demographic information provides a sound starting point in building a lead-scoring system. Data on name, job title, company name, and location are very common metrics.

But make sure your system is built so that a prospect gets a good score simply because he or she filled in all the fields. Advanced validation, using fuzzy logic similar to that used in credit card authentication processes, would determine that a name like "Mickey Mouse" is not valid. ("Mickey Mouse" is the name most often used to register for webinars.) The advanced validation process would also flag responses if "Mickey's" email address is a free account, or if the phone number listed on the survey just gets the caller a disconnected line.

2. Survey data

Answers to BANT-style questions (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline), combined with data about a company's size and specifics, provide essential information in scoring leads.

For example, if a prospect doesn't have a timeline to buy, then his/her score should reflect that. Does he/she have a budget? Is he/she the decision-maker?

Also make sure that your system asks for the appropriate company- and industry-specific information; the questions sales reps routinely ask in qualifying leads in person will provide guidance.

In many cases, a company's size will be relevant. Say your company sells phones. A response indicating a large number of employees would likely receive a high score because of the possibility of selling a lot of phones to that company!

3. Web-interaction history

An analysis of Web visits can give a solid indication of a prospect's interest. For instance, which pages did he/she visit? How much time was spent on each page?

If a prospect spent five seconds on a product overview page, that might equate to zero points. But if he or she spent three minutes on a customer case study, that might be worth 100 points. And if a prospect spent an hour on the careers/jobs page, that might result in a negative 100 points.

Another key metric would be how often and when a prospect visits. If someone visits the website twice a week, that might be worth 100 points. If that person spends only one minute on the homepage, that might be worth zero. And if he or she hasn't visited in the last 30 days, that might mean a deduction of 100 points.

4. Firmographics and company history

A set of the questions about the company itself can add important insight in scoring a lead. For example, how many people from the same company are visiting your website? If two or more, that might equate to a point value of 100. Does the company's name match its domain name, and can the company be found in the white pages? If not, those factors could merit a deduction in points. And, finally, is the company in your target industry segment? A yes might be worth 100 points.

5. Sales and marketing information

Determine if leads already exist in the sales system. If so, what campaigns have they participated in previously? Have they downloaded a whitepaper? Did they attend a webinar at some point?

Keeping the Lead-Scoring Engine Running Smoothly

Once all the lead-scoring criteria are defined and weighted, the fun really starts! Much like a high-performance engine, a lead-scoring machine needs maintenance and frequent adjustments. Working together, Sales and Marketing need to keep twiddling the knobs and turning the dials to make sure that leads are scored accurately—and sales reps keep closing.

Over time, what will have become a revenue engine will be running smoothly, and you'll have taken necessary steps toward Sales and Marketing alignment.