How to Prioritize Your Prospects with Lead Scoring

How well do you know your target audience? Have you evaluated your customer database to the point where you can pinpoint your target demographic? With a tighter economy, it's more important than ever to make sure your marketing investment is being used wisely.

You can't risk marketing to everyone hoping something will stick somewhere along the way and you'll get new customers. Rarely is everyone in the marketplace seeking your product or service. Given that fact, you've got to make sure you can accurately pinpoint and target your marketing message to the people who will be the ones most likely to purchase your product or service.

Survival of the fittest, or natural selection, is a biological term that means, "only the fittest organisms will prevail." The same holds true with business. One aspect of natural selection is the expenditure of energy. Those animals that expend the least amount of energy to accomplish a task, like hunting, become more efficient and stronger.

An example of how this would apply to business would be targeting your existing customers for repeat business before going out "hunting" for new customers. It takes a smaller investment in marketing to target those who already know your business than it does to go out and find new prospects.

The same holds true in how you market to your prospects... people who have had some sort of contact with you in the past but have not yet made a decision to purchase from your business.

So, the first order of business is to make sure you've got a plan in place to market to existing customers. It should spell out how you will actively communicate with them either by email or mail. It's also a good idea to create a process for soliciting referrals from your existing customers. Once you've got a marketing program in place for your existing customers, you can then start to target the prospects that are in your customer database.

The best way to target the prospects in your database is with "Lead Scoring." With lead scoring, you rank prospects according to their likeliness to purchase your product or service. Lead scoring matters and it works. With lead scoring a point value is assigned to things like how the prospect heard of your company, who they are, how they are interacting with you and what their need is for your product. If done correctly, the higher the score, the further they should be in the buying process.

Here's an example:

You sell bathroom cabinets, showers, and fixtures out of a retail storefront and online. A homeowner walks in with a sketch of their dream bathroom remodel. After collecting their name and contact information, you ask about the project and walk them around your showroom. They leave without making a purchase. Does that mean they won't make a purchase and your job is done? Not at all. Here's where you begin the lead scoring process.

While their visit is fresh in your mind, enter their information into your customer relationship management program and score the visit. Walking in the door might be worth one point, having a design plan may be worth five points, and asking for a price quote might be worth another five. If they return to the store another time, that would be worth additional points. You set up your scoring system by taking a look at the typical buying process and then stick to it for every prospect that comes in the door. If you've got an online store, you can create a similar type of scoring system.

When applied consistently with each prospect, the higher the score, the further along they are in the buying process. Once you add up all the points, you will be able to approximate the level of interest someone has in buying your product or service and then prioritize which leads to pursue first and which ones to hold off on.

One final note to mention. Not everyone will fit perfectly into your lead scoring system so you need to be attentive to building relationships with all your leads. The important thing is to be consistent and to periodically evaluate the system to see if it needs to be tweaked and improved upon.