New Aberdeen Report Highlights Competitive Edge Gained By Optimizing Lead Scoring & Prioritization

A new study from Aberdeen Research found that lead scoring and prioritization play a critical role in achieving superior performance in lead to sales conversion, revenue, cost per lead, and across a plethora of other key sales and marketing metrics. Top performing organizations, or Best in Class (BIC), are 80% more likely than their peers to use lead scoring and prioritization techniques or technologies, according to the report titled Lead Prioritization and Scoring: The Path to Higher Conversion.

BIC companies achieve superior performance by executing simultaneous initiatives to enhance the organizational processes, performance metrics, resources, and technology that support these resources.
All respondents to the study cited strong desire to improve the quality of leads that are passed on to sales (78%) to increase sales effectiveness and lead-to-sales revenue.

Top Objectives of a Lead Management Strategy:
• Improve the quality of leads that are passed on to sales (78%).
• Optimize conversion or profitability from various sources of leads (64%).
• Measure marketing performance more effectively (53%).

“Lead scoring attributes should be unique to the companies selling environment regardless of maturity class,” says Ian Michiels, senior analyst with Aberdeen and author of the report. “The research outlined the average use of key attributes in scoring models, but that’s just an indication of the most widely used attributes. Best-in-Class companies understand their customers and most importantly their customers buying cycle.”

Research reveals that BIC organizations deliver superior performance in revenue, lead-to-sales conversion, and cost per lead. These three metrics are ultimately a result of improving lead qualification within the organization. Top performing organizations primarily invest resources in processes and technologies that improve lead qualification rates; this leads to a measurable improvement in lead conversion and annual revenue. However, the BIC also demonstrated superior performance in other key metrics:

• The BIC are 2.4-times more likely to develop formalized processes for all business functions to follow-up on high priority leads. This is a key component to increasing lead conversion within the pipeline.
• BIC are 80% more likely to leverage demand generation or lead management technology.

“Classifications, or scores, or weights, or however the organizations model works should be designed to first validate the opportunity (based on the explicit information provided by the prospect) and then validate the purchase potential (typically based on implicit information),” says Michiels.

Organizational Obstacles
Laggard companies are cautioned that lead management is a holistic endeavor requiring technology and process. Laggards selected automating lead management with technology as the number one strategy. However, the report states that technology is critical for support and not the primary component in organizational capabilities and processes in BIC organizations.

“Industry Average and Laggard organizations are overwhelmed with how to implement lead scoring and prioritization,” says Michiels. “What attributes do they track and score? What technology should they implement? What organizational changes do they need to make?”

In addition, Laggard companies are advised to leverage, integrate, and incorporate CRM tools in the lead scoring process. To optimize accountability and performance measurement, Laggards are advised to close the loop between marketing and sales metrics.

Leveraging the strategic value of list segmentation and targeting is another action for success. The research shows Industry Average organizations using lead management tools indicating list segmentation capabilities were initially very important in assessing lead management. However, the same organizations rate these features much lower in terms of important after leverage the technology. BIC companies, however, pinned segmentation and targeting as a key feature in lead management technologies.

“Ultimately, Best-in-Class demonstrate a relentless focus on optimizing lead qualification and lead management. Best-in-Class invest heavily in processes and technologies to streamline lead management across all business functions that interact with customers and prospects,” says Michiels.