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Top 18 Lead Scoring Best Practices From Sales Experts

Written By

Oct 13, 2022

2 minute read

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To prioritize high-quality leads and avoid spending time on bad-fit leads that won’t end up becoming customers, you must create a solid lead scoring system. Accurately scoring newly generated leads can be tricky, but there are tactics you can use to establish a lead scoring philosophy, create a point system, and automate your lead scoring activities. We asked sales experts for lead scoring tips that you can use to qualify your leads before reaching out.

Tips for Establishing a Lead Scoring Philosophy: Read more below.
Tips for Creating a Lead Scoring Point System: Read more below.
Tips for Automating Lead Scoring With Technology: Read more below.

To learn more about scoring leads beyond these tips, check out our article on lead scoring, where you’ll find a step-by-step process for building your own lead scoring system.

Tips for Establishing a Lead Scoring Philosophy

Before setting up a point system, it’s crucial that you create a philosophy about how you and your team will handle lead scoring. Read on to see some tips from our sales experts about how they approach the art and science of lead scoring.

Tips for Creating Your Lead Scoring Point System

When lead scoring, it’s important to choose attributes and behaviors that earn or lose a lead points. Below, read about some of the actions that sales experts take and the specific factors they consider when setting up a lead scoring point system.

Kathryn Read

International Sales & Marketing Consultant

Source & analysis

Use Unique Criteria for Different Locations

“When working across a variety of markets worldwide, you need to tailor your lead scoring criteria to the markets in question. For example, I’ve used different criteria at times for Mainland China vs Vietnam, or for France vs Germany or the USA simply because there are variations in the buyers’ preferred journey. This is complex to manage within a CRM, especially as it’s not a ‘set and forget’ exercise and the customer journey evolves in different ways and at different speeds for each market. Within a large country such as the US, this can also apply to regions, as New York and California may require subtle differences in scoring.”

— Kathryn Read, Kathryn Read

Tips for Automating Lead Scoring With Technology

From lead scoring point solutions to CRM software with scoring functionality, there are many tools out there that are built to help you automate parts of your lead scoring process. Below, check out the software our sales experts use to track leads, automatically assign them points, and more.

Bottom Line: Lead Scoring Best Practices

Lead scoring is an essential aspect of lead generation and qualification. Without it, salespeople risk spending too much time talking with leads who are unlikely to buy their product or service, and you might even miss out on reaching out to the best leads in time for them to consider your business. That said, make sure to use these tips from our sales experts as you build out or tinker with your lead scoring system.

Sam Rinko

Sam is a former SaaS sales rep turned freelance writer. He spent his career selling real estate technology to C-suite executives before switching over to blogging, where he now covers sales, marketing, and small business topics. Sam specializes in lead generation, lead nurturing, and deal closing articles for Selling Signals. When he’s not researching the latest sales trends, he’s either penning short stories, hiking, or reading in NYC’s Washington Square Park.