3 Lead Scoring Problems – And How to Solve Them

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Randy Ilas, Vice President of Product Development & Marketing at Harte-Hanks, an Eloqua partner. Randy is experienced in developing insight-driven demand generation programs for the b2b technology sector.

Few marketers would argue with the premise that “less is more” when it comes to delivering the right leads to sales. Gone are the days of inundating sellers with poorly qualified leads or “prospects” with little or no interest in buying. But significant challenges still remain for most marketers in developing the right mix of leads that will generate the best results and not waste precious resources.

Here are three concerns I frequently hear from b2b marketers when it comes to scoring leads and some thoughts on how best to solve them.

Challenge #1:  Inability to score or prioritize all leads

Often marketers lack the critical data necessary to score all of their inbound leads resulting in potential missed opportunities as leads languish in nurture mode.

Solution: Create a level playing field for prioritizing and assigning incoming leads based on information available from your CRM and from secondary data sources. Focus specifically on factors that can be applied to a wide number of businesses across your target market.

Challenge #2:  Creating lead scores that have an impact

Factors like company industry (SIC) and size may not be sufficient to determine a lead’s true potential. Even behavioral data may fall short as engagement does not always indicate an active buy cycle.

Solution: Incorporate key triggers indicating a potential buy cycle to enhance and refine your lead scoring algorithm. Analyze past purchase behavior to identify those triggers that will have the greatest impact for you particular product or service.

Challenge #3:  Finding enough high quality leads to fill the sales pipeline

Maintaining the right volume of leads based on agreed-upon definitions of sales-ready is another common issue.

Solution: Consider outsourcing part of your demand generation to trusted partner to get the maximum impact from your marketing resources. Use a divide and conquer strategy versus attempting to do everything yourself.

Of course, if you want more in-depth lead scoring advice, join this free Harte-Hanks webcast with Eloqua’s Steven Woods and myself today at 1PM EST. See you there!