Is Lead Scoring Worth Sales’ Time?

Is Lead Scoring Worth Sales’ Time?

This was the fundamental question we discussed at the recent M2 Marketing Masterminds Live Forum “Signals in Lead Scoring”. This is an important question because often, lead scoring is done entirely on the Marketing side without really involving Sales. Or if Marketing does try to involve Sales, sometimes there is not a lot of willingness to participate.

So we were curious to get both the Sales and Marketing perspectives on this question. What did we hear?

Sales says: I want an opportunity score, not a lead score.

Our Sales guest speaker, Jody Johnson, CEO at Prospect Hunter summarized it as follows: “Sales is really dictated by a quota. Most salespeople are underneath that pressure, that quota. And really what they’re looking for is an opportunity score versus a lead score. I really don’t think that lead scoring is something that gets on their radar. I think sales is more interested in getting someone from Marketing who has some pain that they can solve. And I don’t know if having a lead score is going to drive it home enough for them.”

Essentially, Sales is saying the lead scoring really isn’t relevant to them. 

Let’s hear what Marketing’s response was.

Sales says: I want an opportunity score, not a lead score.

Marketing’s role is definitely to create opportunities for sales, but it is a process. It starts
with your MCL, then your MQL, followed by SAL and SQL. To get there, according to our Marketing guest speaker Nadia Milani, VP of Marketing at Proposify, you need to work backwards.

“Start by understanding the total revenue you want to achieve. And then, work with Sales to figure out, what does that opportunity look like? What are those pain points that we’re trying to solve and how do we get customers with those pain points? So, yes, the revenue is important, yes opportunities are definitely important. But from a marketing perspective, we have to understand how we are going to generate those leads and recognize that it is a process that relies on sending quality leads to Sales. If you care about lead quality, lead scoring is going to help you get there.”

Want to hear more of the conversation?

Check out the full recording of our Signals in Lead Scoring Forum to hear discussion around how to tell if lead scoring is working, should you show the lead score to sales, how do you decide what actions hold a higher value and more.

Keep the conversation going

Hungry for conversation around lead quality, lead scoring, revenue operations and more? Join the M² Marketing Masterminds community on LinkedIn.