You probably use a lead-scoring system to answer a number of questions—for instance, to determine whether a lead is ready for your sales team or needs to be nurtured.

"Much of the conversation around how best to set up lead scoring," says Digital Body Language's Steven Woods, "tends to focus around the aspects of the buyer's digital body language that are most interesting." In other words, a lead's online activity—e.g., pages visited, whitepapers downloaded—often plays a central role in the final analysis.

Woods suggests that although such data provides valuable insight, a number of factors also contribute to a strong lead-scoring algorithm. Here are some questions to consider:

• What do you want to achieve? "Understanding your lead scoring outputs first is key in understanding how you want to approach the scoring of leads," he notes.
• How will the passage of time influence your scores? According to Woods, a lead score will degrade after 6 or 12 or 18 months, but not at the same rate in all areas. "For scoring interest level," he says, "this time factor is crucial, whereas for scoring on buyer role, this may not change as rapidly over time."
• What dimensions are critical? Woods points to common dimensions such as who the prospect is (title, industry, revenues) and how interested she might be (Web searches, downloads).

The Po!nt: Getting leads into the funnel takes a lot of work—with proper scoring you'll increase the chances that they also stay fresh.

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