Do you score your leads?

I’m going to begin this blog post with a little personal history.  While I was at university I needed to find a job to help save a little extra money on the side.

The majority of my friends either worked at a bar, in a café or in retail.  Well, I ended up getting a job at a telemarketing call centre.  I have to say it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind but they were the first to get back to me, so I went in for a one day paid trial.  It was quite daunting, all automated, no dialling, five hours of non-stop random calls.  They were a holiday company selling cheap holidays over the phone, but the trick was we had to get a deposit over the phone to ensure their getaway.

Well I walked in, was handed a script for a particular resort and given a phone. I began calling and by the end of the day I hadn’t gotten a sale but was invited for another day. I ended up working there until I finished university.

I am now grateful for my time there because I actually learned a lot and my communication skills developed.

However, looking back, I wish I knew then this little tip I know now.

I never once scored or graded my leads back in that time, I just quickly wrote down notes, phone numbers any information I could get from them to help for the next time I called them.

Now, I have the ability through a marketing automation system to score my leads and this makes a vast impact.

When I was selling holidays, I would walk in and try and remember who was the hottest of the names and numbers I had scribbled down.  This not only led to a decrease in efficiency but also a loss in sales.

The ability to score leads is a little trick that the majority of small-medium sized organisations usually fail to recognise.  The customer buying process is changing, they’re now more researched, they have more options and they are now more engaged.  They don’t know it but their buying process has evolved.

Lead scoring is a tool for sales people and marketers to use in adjustment to these changes in the buying process.

Simply being able to score your leads increases efficiency throughout the sales and marketing departments.

The leads landing in your sales department’s hands are more qualified, leading to less time wastage.

Companies should ensure their leads are scored in line with their place along their buying process, their purchase readiness and overall interest in your product.  It is important to note these lead scores should be graded honestly, which means scores can decrease as well as increase.

Having a system like this within my telemarketing days would have increased my overall sales number and increased overall organisational efficiency.

So making sure leads are scored from the moment they reach your desk is a great tool to boost sales and organisational efficiency.

Categorised in: Okategoriserade

This post was written by Fleur