As a salesperson, how many times have you regretted wasting hours behind an unsuccessful client? “If only somehow I could root them out in the initial stage!” Given today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business landscape, lead generation plays only a minor role in the sales equation. The real test for your skills (and patience) comes with lead qualification. And ultimately converting them into valuable customers. This is exactly where lead scoring comes to your aid.

What exactly is lead scoring? In essence, it is a lead qualification strategy that helps businesses prioritize and focus their efforts on leads that are more likely to engage and convert. A study reveals lead scoring can improve your lead generation ROI by over 77%. Plus, it will save your sales teams up to 20 hours per work week! 

If you are part of a sales team, this blog will help you get an overview of lead scoring, particularly within the context of HubSpot. This is your ultimate guide to exploring the significance of lead scoring in HubSpot and the factors that influence it. You will also learn advanced techniques for effective scoring, and even predictive lead scoring.

What is lead scoring and why is it used 

Imagine having your CRM system blowing up with hundreds of leads from the latest ad campaign. While the marketing team might be rejoicing, salespeople like you are already worried about drowning in a sea of leads — manually choosing which ones to prioritize. It is a daunting task to go through all the leads and identify which ones are genuinely interested, which ones are just window-shopping, and which ones will never convert.

Lead scoring automates this entire process. It makes lead management more efficient and conversion rates more impressive. It is a systematic method that will effectively bring down your workload, by assigning a numerical value or “score”, to each lead. The score will ascertain their likelihood of becoming a customer. 

This process allows any business to allocate resources more effectively. It helps you focus on leads that exhibit higher likeliness to make a purchase. Essentially, lead scoring ensures that no potential customer slips through the cracks. 

In this regard, it is important to take a look at the powerful suite of lead scoring templates and tools offered by HubSpot. HubSpot's comprehensive CRM platform collects and centralizes a wealth of lead data. For businesses, this can serve as the key to create accurate lead scoring models. In the later part of this blog, we will explain how to set up lead scoring in HubSpot. But, before that, let’s find out:

How does lead scoring work?

Let’s simplify the lead scoring process with a few examples. Using the data at your disposal, you should be able to score a lead based on their interactions with your sales/marketing interfaces. Some common examples of interactions for lead scoring would be:

• Request for a demo

• Downloading an ebook or similar resources

• Signing up for the newsletter

• Opening emails (Clicking on the email links should contribute to a higher score)

• Registering for a webinar 

Lead scoring comes into play after inbound lead qualification. Here, you can rank your sales/marketing qualified leads based on their fit with the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), behavior, sales readiness etc. In an ideal scenario, a good lead scoring system can even help a salesperson immediately tell a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) from a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

If you’re doing lead scoring with HubSpot, you can base it on a number of models. Typically, it resembles a point system where a lead yields the maximum score if all the scoring attributes are valid. A reduced score usually results from negative scoring from disengagements — like unsubscribing from emails. 

Factors that influence Lead Scoring on HubSpot

A study by LeadSquared shows 75% of businesses globally have seen a significant increase in conversion rates by using the lead scoring process. 

Sales folks love HubSpot as it facilitates the identification of high-potential leads. It does so by analyzing attributes such as lead demographics, behavior, engagement history, and interactions with marketing materials. HubSpot's automation capabilities allow for the automatic assignment of lead scores based on predefined criteria. This ensures consistency and efficiency in the lead scoring process.

However, before we get into the how, it is important to understand the why and what — that is, the different factors that influence the lead scoring process.

Demographics 

This comprises information about the lead's identity. It might include their job title, industry, location, company size, and much more. Demographic data provides insights into whether a lead fits your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Firmographics 

Firmographic data refers to information on the lead's organization or company. This includes details like the company revenue, industry, growth rate, and technological infrastructure.

Behavioral

Behavioral data refers to the actions taken by your leads while interacting with your brand. This tracks website visits, email opens, content downloads, webinar registrations etc. The more engaged a lead is, the higher their score.

Taking Your HubSpot Lead Scoring to the Next Level

Almost all businesses today use HubSpot’s lead scoring setup for their sales qualification process. As a matter of fact, a global survey by HubSpot reveals that over 80% of B2B businesses have incorporated the use of lead scoring in their sales funnels. 

But acing the lead scoring game is more about how you do it rather than just doing it. By refining attribute relevance, incorporating behavioral cues, and iteratively optimizing scoring criteria, you can take the lead scoring process to a whole new level.

Negative scoring happens to be one of the best ways to start. While assigning positive scores for desirable actions is common, negative scoring is just as important. For instance, if a lead does not have any revisit history on your website or repeatedly indicates disinterest, their score should decrease. Negative scoring helps in weeding out leads that might be more of a nuisance than an opportunity.

Some commonly ignored parameters for negative scoring can include:

• Generic email IDs or visibly fake details provided in signup forms

• Blink and miss duration of website visit

• Not opening emails

• Designation that doesn’t match with the usual decision maker profiles

• Any indication of the lead being a part of your competitor business

• Repeat sign ups

Recency (Time-Based) Degradation

Not all leads maintain the same level of interest over time. Implementing recency degradation ensures that older interactions get less weightage in the lead's overall score.

In manual lead scoring, recency degradation is used to prevent giving too much weight to past interactions. That might not accurately reflect a lead's current level of interest or engagement. For example, a lead that visited your website yesterday is more likely to be interested than a lead that visited three months ago.

To implement recency degradation effectively, you have to assign higher points or scores to recent actions or engagements. Then you can gradually reduce their impact as time passes. For instance, you can assign a lead 10 points for visiting your website today, but decrease that to 7 points if they visited a week ago and down to 3 points if it was a month ago.

Regular Refinement

Your initial lead scoring template might not be perfect. It's crucial to regularly assess and refine your scoring criteria based on the actual conversion rates of the leads.

Any organization’s lead scoring model should focus on “design it and refine it” rather than “set it and forget it.”  Data collected over time should help you fine-tune your model over time, ensuring it aligns with real-world outcomes.

For example, if many leads are getting qualified but only a handful get converted, your scoring might be too lenient. Also, if the sales revenue from certain buyer personas change, it might be time for a re-evaluation.

Wondering when you need to tweak your lead scoring? Watch out for a drop in your MQL-to-conversion rate. If that happens, it probably means your ideal customer profile has shifted, signaling a need to fine-tune your lead scoring model. 

With a HubSpot lead scoring setup, you can enjoy a dynamic approach that adapts over time, as the platform continuously refines the scoring model as it learns from new data.

Predictive Lead Scoring: A Step Towards The Future of Sales 

Predictive lead scoring usually employs Machine Learning on huge datasets to 'predict' lead scores for your business. It is not based on your data specifically, but how other leads performed for businesses that closely resemble yours. It relies on the performance of analogous leads in other businesses rather than your unique data.

There will never come a time where your business has enough data to apply predictive models. Nevertheless, using predictive scoring can be useful in understanding and setting benchmarks. They're good to help you understand what a business like yours should expect, and should be used in only that respect. 

HubSpot’s integration of machine learning and predictive analytics can further bolster the accuracy of your predictive lead scoring. HubSpot’s lead scoring app can analyze vast datasets to identify patterns and behaviors that correlate with successful conversions.

Setting up Lead Scoring on HubSpot: A Step-by-Step Guide

We have already emphasized upon the effectiveness and accuracy of HubSpot lead scoring. All that remains is to learn how to set things up.

The leading CRM platform empowers businesses to implement robust lead scoring strategies. Here's a quick guide on how to set up lead scoring in HubSpot in just 3 steps:

Step 1: Define your Ideal Customer Profile

For every business, ICP is developed through structured analysis of the company’s most valuable customers. It is usually based on qualitative, quantitative and predictive data collected from key stakeholders. 

• The right way to go about creating your ICP would be to analyze your existing clients, and identify the recurring features. 

• Speaking to individual sales reps will also help in this regard, ensuring that you have the sales team’s valuable input to create your ICP. 
  
  

Remember, the more accurate your ICP, the better your lead scoring model will be. 

On HubSpot, you can rank your lead based on their FIT with your ICP. 

If Fit matches, the next step would be to assign scores based on ACTIVITY, like engagement with your business at different touchpoints.  

Step 2: Set your criteria for lead scores

HubSpot’s lead scoring tool assigns positive scores or plus points for every criteria met. 

Alternately, points are removed for every negative attribute, when the lead fails to match a preset criteria. Hence it is important to have a ready set of criteria before you hop on to any lead scoring template on HubSpot.

The final score output will be the culmination of all the criteria you have added into the scoring tool. You can find two types of scoring criteria on HubSpot:

• HubSpot default score properties (available for free + subscription plans)

• HubSpot custom score properties (available for Professional & Enterprise plans)
  
  
  

Step 3: Implement the lead scoring in HubSpot

The real work happens after you have obtained a score for a particular lead on HubSpot. 

• Begin by generating a lead scoring guideline. Once logged in to your HubSpot account, click the settings icon on the right side of the navigation bar. 

  
  

• Proceed to the Properties section. Input the "HubSpot score" or seek a custom score property using the search function, then select the relevant property name.

  
  

• For configuring your criteria, choose "Add new set" next to Positive Attributes (to assign points) or Negative Attributes (to deduct points). To add extra criteria to an existing set, click "AND". Fulfilling all criteria is necessary for the attribute to apply. To generate a fresh set of attributes, select "Add new set" again.

  
  

• You can modify the number of points added or subtracted in your lead scoring matrix once a lead satisfies the attribute criteria. Click the "edit" symbol and input the updated score.

  
  

• If required, click "Test contact" to assess your score property (recommended). To inspect the score of a specific record, locate and choose their contact name.

  
  

Note: In HubSpot, lead scoring should be set up in such a way that a negative engagement (like an unsubscribe) is easily detectable. For example, if all positive attributes add up to a 100, an unsubscribe should be -150. This will help in weeding out the weak leads easily. 

Lead scoring with HubSpot is a foolproof strategy that optimizes sales lead management and increases the chances of conversion. It plays a pivotal role in the sales process by enabling teams to prioritize and focus their efforts on leads with the highest potential. Aside from enhancing efficiency, it also aligns your marketing and sales efforts. This way, you can maximize available resources for more targeted and successful customer engagements. 

In the end, lead scoring isn't just about chasing leads; it's about pursuing the right leads with precision. The ultimate goal of lead scoring is to boost your conversion rates and fostering lasting customer relationships.