With inbound marketing driving more leads than ever to marketing departments, finding the best leads can be a huge challenge. Automatically qualifying leads with scoring and grading can save time and resources while increasing close rates and improving sales and marketing alignment. Let’s take a look at how it works.
About. Lead Grading
Grading your inbound leads ensures that the leads being passed from marketing to sales match your company’s ideal customer profile. Leads are automatically evaluated based on a number of implicit factors and assigned a letter grade (A - F). Let's look at a few of the criteria that marketers can use to set up their lead grading system:
If you prioritize leads based on their geography, you can score each lead based on where they are located.
Ensure that you are only marketing and selling to companies that are in one of your targeted industries.
Make sure you are selling to the right person, and that that person is in a position to influence decisions.
Don’t waste time pursuing leads at companies that are too large or too small to use your product.
About. Lead Scoring
Lead scoring, when used in tandem with lead grading, can ensure that only the most qualified leads get passed from marketing to sales. A lead score, displayed as a numerical value, indicates how interested leads are in your product or service. By assigning points to the prospect actions you deem the most valuable, like visiting the pricing page or requesting a demo, you can create a score for your leads that will show how active they have been and how high their interest level is. Let’s take a look at a few actions that might affect a lead’s score:
Evaluate prospect activity with scoring.
Page Views. Add to a lead's score based on how much engagement they are showing with your website.
Site Searches. Your lead's searches on your site are telling of their priorities and interests.
Downloads. Specific downloads are good indications of the current stage of the buying cycle.
Email Clicks. Email click-throughs can be a good indication of interest from your leads.
Sound Hard? Try It Out!
Ready to start qualifying your own leads? It's as easy as selecting the criteria that matter to you, and letting automation do the rest. Try it out with the example lead below.
Tell Us About Your Ideal Lead:
What sized companies do you target?
Small Medium Large
What industry do you typically target?
Technology Service Other
What department do you sell to?
Marketing Sales Services
Who are you typically targeting?
Mid-Level Manager C-Level
Scoring & Grading. Explained
Using a blended scoring and grading model gives you a full picture of your prospects. Take a look at the leads below to see exactly what their score and grade says about them. Also, notice the stars on Jacob and Sam? That's how easy lead qualification makes it to pick out the best leads.
Learn more about Jacob
Learn more about Sarah
Learn more about Chris
Learn More. Get Your Free White Paper
If you're looking to get your hands on even more qualification information, download your free copy of our "Automate Lead Scoring and Grading" white paper. This white paper takes an in depth look at the science of lead qualification and how it can benefit your business.
Learn the basics of lead qualification in 90 seconds in this video.
Watch the Video
Need help scoring prospect activities and content? This post provides the formula.
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A helpful visual overview of all things scoring, grading, and lead qualification.
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About Pardot, a salesforce.com Company
Pardot offers a software-as-a-service marketing automation application that allows marketing and sales departments to create, deploy, and manage online marketing campaigns that increase revenue and maximize efficiency. Pardot features certified CRM integrations with salesforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and SugarCRM, empowering marketers with lead nurturing, lead scoring, and ROI reporting to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles, and demonstrate marketing accountability.