Learn how lead scoring can benefit your Sales and Marketing teams

A common point of contention between sales and marketing is what constitutes a lead and when a lead should be passed on.

Lead scoring capabilities (usually included in your marketing automation software) allocate a score to a prospect based on their behaviour online. How the score is calculated is entirely up to you, depending on your communication goals. Lead scoring allows businesses to differentiate between website visitors who are just kicking tires, and prospective customers who are truly interested in their offerings.

Lead scoring also means getting sales and marketing to agree on the score that classifies a prospect as a sales-ready lead. This in turn means more clearly defined processes and objectives for both teams. Marketers will know what they have to do to move a prospect sufficiently far along the sales funnel, and the sales team can be sure that the leads are sufficiently qualified for them to follow up.

 Once both teams have agreed on the lead score, a service level agreement can further improve collaboration and effectiveness between the two. For instance, the marketing team could commit to supplying a certain number of qualified leads per month, while sales agrees to follow up on leads a certain number of times within a set period.