A Guide to Creating Your First Lead Scoring Model

Welcome to the world of lead scoring!

As a small business owner, you understand the value of every lead. But how do you identify the most promising ones? 

Every lead isn’t of equal value. Some leads are a better fit and have higher chances of converting than others. That's where lead scoring comes in. 

In this article, we'll walk you through a simple process of creating your first scoring model, empowering you to prioritize leads effectively and drive better results. Creating your first scoring model can take as little time as 5 minutes. Read on to learn how!

What is Lead Scoring?

Before diving into the creation process, let's first understand what lead scoring is all about. At its core, lead scoring is a methodology that helps businesses evaluate the quality and potential of leads based on predefined criteria. 

By assigning scores to different attributes, businesses can focus their efforts on leads that are more likely to convert into customers. Typical lead scoring models assign "points" to individual leads based on factors like company size, revenue, industry, if they've shown intent to buy, etc. The higher the points, the more likely they are to convert into customers.

With lead scoring, you remove the manual vetting of which high-potential leads to tackle next (which is prone to human error), and instead, you use a data-driven methodology that can be easily optimized to drive better results.

The Value of Lead Scoring

Improve lead prioritization & prospecting efficiency

By assigning scores to leads based on predefined criteria, you can focus your time, resources, and efforts on the most promising leads. This leads to better allocation of resources and increased efficiency in your sales and marketing activities.

Make marketing & sales an allied revenue duo

With a clear understanding of lead quality, both sales and marketing teams can work together to target high-scoring leads more effectively. Marketing can tailor campaigns and content to match the needs and interests of specific lead segments, while sales can focus their efforts on leads with the highest scores, resulting in improved conversion rates and higher revenue generation.

Increase conversion rates & revenue

Lead scoring helps you identify leads that exhibit characteristics or behaviors indicative of strong buying intent. This enables you to personalize your outreach and engage with leads in a more targeted and meaningful way. As a result, your conversion rates improve, leading to a higher return on investment (ROI) for your sales and marketing efforts.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your First Scoring Model

Step 1: Define your criteria

To start, identify the criteria that matter most to your business. Consider factors such as demographics, firmographics, and behavior-based indicators. What characteristics align with your ideal customer profile? Defining these criteria will form the foundation of your scoring model.

Here are a few commonly used demographic and firmographic attributes on contacts or companies:

• Job titles or departments

• Location

• Industries 

• Number of employees 

• Revenue

• Technologies used

And here are a few commonly used behavioral attributes that are relatively easy to collect (depending on the tools you use):

• Opened or clicked an email

• Expressed buying intent by researching online for your service

• Filled out a form on your website

• Registered or attended your webinar

Start by simply selecting a few of the criteria above and add more as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Your first scoring model can be very simple and still make a huge impact on how you prioritize your leads.

Step 2: Weight your attributes

Not all criteria carry the same weight in determining lead quality. Assign appropriate weightings to each criterion based on their relative importance to your business. 

There are two ways you can think about assigning weightings: 

1. Scale (ex. not important, somewhat important, neutral, important, or very important)

2. Numerical (ex. 0-20 where 20 is the max.)

If this is your first time setting up a scoring model, the scale might be the easier approach. However, either way will still tally up scoring points between 0-100 where the higher number indicates better customer fit than a lower number.  

For example:

• Each attribute can be weighted differently – a lead's level of engagement like attending a webinar might be more significant than their job title. 

• The options within an attribute can be weighted differently – a VP or Director might be more significant than a manager job title. 

Step 3: Gather and integrate data

To effectively score leads, you need reliable data. Collect and integrate data from various sources, such as your CRM, website analytics, marketing automation systems, and sales intelligence platforms like Apollo.

Apollo has over 65+ data attributes on contacts and accounts, where we most likely cover all the demographic and firmographic data that you need for your scoring model. We also have behavioral data like buying intent and if you use Apollo sequences, we’ll have data on email opens and clicks.

Whatever data sources you’ll use for scoring, make sure it’s accurate, up-to-date, and clean to avoid any misleading scores.

Step 4: Build your scoring model

Now it's time to build your scoring model! 

And look no further than Apollo Scores — simple, fast, transparent, scoring on every lead in the Apollo database right where you and your team prospect.

If you’re a long-time customer, you might be aware of our feature called scoring engine. Scoring engine is now Scores – and it’s gotten a tremendous facelift!  

Here’s how to set up your first score. 

• Login into Apollo and go to Settings > Scores

• Select your target type: People or Companies

• Add the criteria & weightings: 

  • Persona (ex. sales leadership)

  • Location (ex. US)

  • # Employees by department (ex. at least 5)

  • Contact Engagement - # of times opened (ex. at least 10)

• Render distribution and see how many of your saved contacts match the criteria as excellent, good, fair, or not a fit.

  • While in the score settings, we run the distributions against your saved contacts. You can actually see the scoring model applied for both net new and saved contacts when prospecting in the Apollo search! 

  • When filtering by scores in Apollo search, you can find the exact score number from 0-100 for each individual contact & account. 

  • You also have the flexibility to define the threshold for each tranche and at what number between 0-100 would make a lead “excellent, good, fair, or not a fit”.

It took me about 5 minutes to create a new people score, and I’m quickly and easily able to learn which contacts in my database are prime opportunities.

Step 5: Test and refine

Once your scoring model is set up, it's time to put it to the test. Start by applying the model to a sample set of leads and analyze the results. 

You and your team can easily go to the Apollo search and use the Scores filter to find contacts or companies that match excellent or good. 

Hover your mouse over “excellent” and get full transparency into the score details to understand why they make an excellent fit. The next step is to personalize your outreach based on the data insights provided. 

For example, you could try sending a personalized email that says “Hey, we’ve seen that you’ve been opening our emails a few times, and would love to chat about what caught your eye!”

Continuously refine and optimize your model based on real-world feedback and outcomes. Remember, lead scoring is an iterative process, and it will evolve as you gain more insights.

Unlock New Opportunities with Apollo Scores 

Using Apollo scores for effective lead management looks like: 

• Prioritizing best-fit prospects with quick and easy scoring models

• Prospecting efficiently with a scores filter in the Apollo search

• Personalizing outreach with full transparency into score details

• Syncing over scores to Salesforce & Hubspot CRM  

The scores generated by your model provide valuable insights into lead quality. Leverage this information to tailor your outreach and engagement strategies. High-scoring leads deserve more attention, personalized messaging, and targeted offers. 

By aligning your efforts with lead scores, you can enhance efficiency, improve conversion rates, and drive revenue growth.

Congratulations! You're now equipped with the knowledge to create your first lead-scoring model.

Remember, lead scoring is not a one-time task but an ongoing process. Embrace the power of lead scoring, and unlock the potential for greater success!