Lead scoring is something most marketers have heard of but have never bothered to put into action–despite nearly 40% of businesses reporting higher opportunity-to-sale conversion rates.
However, most lead scoring templates fail to take both the demographics and activity data into consideration when calculating the lead score–costing you valuable sales conversions in the process.
In this article, we’ll dive deep into what lead scoring really means and how to determine your key demographics and activity that will indicate your lead is as hot as molten lava.
Not only that, but we’ll also provide a bonus lead scoring template and a handy guide for you to import directly into your own email database.
The path to better sales conversions is just a few paragraphs away–so let’s get started!
What is lead scoring?
Even if you aren’t familiar with the term ‘lead scoring’, it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Lead scoring is a process where you determine the value of a lead based on their attributes (like firmographics and demographics) and assign points to rank them from most likely to purchase to those who do not fit your ideal customer profile.
Overall the score has two main components–the Fit score and the Engagement Score. These categories both add up to your overall Lead Score. Before we dive into lead scoring templates and how to use them, we’ll start off by defining these models and how to create your own.
The Fit Model
The Fit Model ranks your lead based on their fit into your preferred demographic categories. This is some of the easiest data to use as it’s something most companies already keep track of. These can be data points like:
- Job title
- Company size
- Annual company revenue
- Number of employees
- Industry
This type of quantitative data can easily be taken from lead forms on your website and is quite easy to track. While there are tons of different demographics you can use for your lead scoring templates, it’s best to stick to the ones that are the most important for your business.
A great way to determine the best categories for your lead scoring templates would be to take inventory of your top customers and start from there. You will likely notice a pattern emerge within the industry, company size, and job title categories.
In a perfect world, your leads should have the same demographic qualities as your current customers. This would indicate that your marketing activities are aligned and targeted at those most suitable for your product or service.
After you determine which categories belong in your model, you’ll then need to decide how to weight each category individually out of a total score of 100 points.
For example, if you’ve found that nearly all of your top customers share the same job title, you might weigh that more highly than you would company size, which doesn’t have as big of an impact.
An integral part is this step is making sure you are tracking the same data for all contacts in order to score them all against the same criteria. If you’re having issues with standardizing your data, check out our article on data quality for lead scoring.
The Activity Model
The Activity Model is a bit trickier than the Fit Model but remains an important component in your overall lead score and is critical for any lead scoring templates you use.
The Activity Model ranks your lead based on engagement with you and your business. These are typical actions, such as:
- Visiting your website (or specific pages of your website)
- Downloading an eBook
- Submitting a query through your contact form
- Purchase activity
- Trial signups
- Email activity (opens, clicks, etc.)
Given that these actions can be harder to track and merge into one platform than demographics, it’s no surprise that many businesses tend to leave out this model entirely. However, in order to get the most accurate lead score possible, tracking these actions are mission-critical.
Most CRMs have a dedicated lead scoring engine you can use to help you score basic email activity like email opens or clicks. Things like product demos, phone calls, or other activities may need to be manually filled in by employees or synced through third-party integration tools like Zapier.
Just like the Fit model, you would need to choose the specific categories of activity and define which events have which weight out of a total of 100 points.
The Lead Score Matrix
The last step of the equation is the lead score–the combined result of your Fit and Engagement models.
When ranking both your Fit and Activity Models, you typically do so based on a scale of 1-100, as we’ve mentioned. By taking a look at the score of both the Fit and Activity models together, we come to something called a co-dynamic distribution.
In this example of the Breadcrumbs dashboard, A-D represents the score of our Fit model, and 1-4 represents our Activity model. A perfect lead would meet the top score criteria for both the Fit (A) and Activity (1) models.
Those leads should be prioritized and directed toward the sales team immediately. Lower scoring leads (D4, for example) should be placed on the back burner until their score indicates they are ready to convert or are showing better signs of intent.
As you can see, there is a multitude of different lead scores that can come out of tying the Fit and Activity model together in your lead scoring templates. Focusing on the ones that have a higher score will help your team prioritize the right leads–allowing the sales team to close more deals in less time than before.
A word of caution on manual lead scoring templates
While using manual lead scoring templates will give us all of the benefits we mentioned above, there is one crucial element that it can’t help you with–and that’s saving time.
The lead scoring template we provide will help you determine your ideal Fit, Activity, and lead scores, but applying that data to leads that exist in your database will likely be a time-consuming effort and require significant daily effort to maintain.
In fact, most marketers cite the complexity of setting up a lead scoring system as the main reason why they choose not to bother at all–despite 68% of marketers pointing to lead scoring as a top revenue contributor.
That’s where Breadcrumbs comes into play.
With our Revenue Acceleration engine, Breadcrumbs makes this process easier by recommending the best model based on your type of business. We’ll update your lead score daily by checking both your Fit and Activity criteria and sending that info directly to your CRM, where your sales team can be notified instantly.
The best part? Breadcrumbs is absolutely free–so you can get started today at no cost to you.
For those of you who would rather do this process manually, you can continue reading to learn how to use our manual scoring spreadsheet.
How to use Breadcrumbs’ Lead Scoring Template
Now for the most interesting part of the article–taking everything we’ve learned so far and putting it into action!
The very first thing you’ll need to do is download our lead scoring template. After that, you’re ready to continue onto the steps below.
1. Determine your Fit and Activity criteria
As we mentioned above, taking inventory of the demographics and activity of your top customers is a great way to get an idea of the categories you should be focusing on in the respective scoring models.
Once you’ve decided on the categories for the Fit and Activity model, you can start to build your lead scoring template. The first step of which is the Fit model.
Configuring your Fit model
On your spreadsheet, navigate over to a tab titled ‘Step 1 – Fit Categories’.
Let’s start out by focusing on the first column, the category column. These categories are going to be the main criteria for the Fit model, which relates to the demographic information about your leads.
We’ve already pre-selected some categories for you, but you can create your own category by typing it in the box provided. Then, select the percentage of the total score that this category represents. Remember that the most important categories should receive more weight than others.
In column C, we need to select put in our ideal values. In Layman’s terms, the ‘right answers’ that our prospective leads would answer to get a perfect score. In column D, choose what score each answer would get out of a total of 100.
Column E states the numeric value of the score and does not need to be edited.
Continue adding in your categories, weights, and value until the Total Weighting cell reaches 100%.
Configuring your Activity model
After we configure the Fit model, the next step to putting together our template is to configure the Activity model on Tab 2 – ‘Activity Events’.
We’re going to follow the same logic as we did when configuring the Fit model. In this case, we’ll be choosing types of actions in the category field instead of demographics.
In column A, choose the event types that you want to base your total score off of. Again, we’ve pre-populated some ideas for you but feel free to write in your own.
Just as in the previous steps, in column B, add in the total weight that that specific action will carry out of the total (100%).
In columns C and D, things start to change from the previous tab. Here, we want to indicate the ideal number of times this action has been performed (C) during a specific timeframe (D).
Finally, in column E, add in the scores for each value. Again, you can leave column F as is.
2. Test your scores with the Lead Scoring Modeler
After all our hard work, it’s time for the true fun to begin–looking at your lead score in action! After all, this is what using lead score templates is all about.
Navigate to the ‘Step 3 – Lead Scoring Modeler’ tab.
Here, you’ll see the list of both the Fit and Activity categories you’ve created inside the previous tabs.
At this step, you can choose from any of the matching values you entered and see what a sample score would look like in real-time. You’ll be able to see the Fit and Activity scores/grades in their respective tabs.
To the right, you’ll see the Co-Dynamic lead score populated–which, as we mentioned, is the combined score of your Fit and Activity model.
Feel free to play around with this model and adjust the previous tabs until you’re satisfied with the results. When you’re ready, grab your list of leads and data–we’re about to put some real leads to the test.
3. Fill in your lead details
The next step is for us to enter in our lead and their information into our spreadsheet and generate our scores. To do this, navigate over to the last tab called “Step 4 – Lead Scoring Contact Modeler”.
Each row represents a specific individual, and columns contain the categories and values you’ve added in your previous tabs. Here, you’ll need to enter the specifics for every contact you wish to score.
At the end of these rows, the spreadsheet will automatically calculate the Fit and Activity scores and grades for you automatically.
Once you’ve finished with this process, you’re ready to add this data into your email database.
4. Import your lead scores into your CRM
Now, the easiest (and most exciting) part–adding this new information into your CRM! Most providers support .csv file uploads, and luckily our template is easy to convert into this format. To do so, just click on File > Save Ads > Comma-separated values.
This will format the sheet into a .csv file for you to upload into your email database.
Remember, this process is entirely manual–meaning that if you want to keep your lead score up to date, you’ll need to repeat this process daily to ensure you’re striking while the iron is hot.
In this article, we’ve given you tips on how to use lead scoring templates to improve your sales conversions, and taught you a little about lead scoring in the process. We’d love to hear about any ah-ha moments or conclusions you came to about your own lead scoring process–so let us know in the comments below.
You made a lead scoring template that is very simple to use, thanks! And the article shed light on what to add to my lead scoring, in particular I’ll be implementing the activity model.
Great piece! Very clear content and actionable tips to quick start lead scoring. I loved the ability to use lead scoring templates immediately, super easy to use even if in the long run it can surely be time consuming to do it manually.
Thank you for giving us a lead scoring template that would be easy & efficient to kick off with. Great article, I feel like I understand lead scoring a bit better & I love this easy to use lead scoring template.