How to Setup Lead Scoring in Salesforce
April 22, 2024
There’s a reason why Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system on the market. In fact, there are several reasons, from the program’s user-friendly interface to its incredible scalability, just to name a few.
But you're missing out if you’re not lead scoring in Salesforce.
So, what is lead scoring? Salesforce’s lead scoring capability makes it possible (and easy) for your sales reps to rank and prioritize potential customers. This, in turn, helps your teams determine which prospects to target.
Lead scoring in Salesforce allows you to streamline customer outreach and customize your strategy to suit your business best.
What Is Lead Scoring?
The lead scoring process involves assigning points to each of your sales prospects based on their quality and potential to convert. Lead scoring models will add or subtract points from a customer’s profile based on specific characteristics, such as demographic information and behavioral data.
Put simply, lead scoring helps streamline lead generations, qualify leads for the next step in the sales process, and boost your overall lead quality.
With a predictive lead scoring system, you can highlight valuable leads that offer a high return on your time investment while filtering out prospects that are unlikely to respond or engage.
Factors to Consider When Creating a Lead Scoring System
Developing a custom lead scoring model involves identifying two key factors: The characteristics you want to track and their weight within your system.
The relevance of each criterion to a customer’s purchasing decisions should directly correlate to its weight in your model.
Setting Objectives and Goals
Clarifying your priorities before implementing lead scoring in your CRM ensures you’ll cultivate an effective prospect prioritization system.
How to Determine Your Lead Scoring Objectives
The basis of your lead scoring model hinges on one key question—what type of conversions are your sales reps prioritizing?
Once you identify the lead behavior you’re trying to promote, review your customer data points to find attributes that correlate.
Promoting Sales and Marketing Alignment Through Lead Scoring
When both sales and marketing teams work with the same customer lead scores, they can ensure their outreach efforts are harmonious. As a result, seeking feedback from both sales and marketing team members is critical when formulating your lead scoring model.
Your marketers can curate marketing campaigns for leads in different segments and opportunity stages, and your sales reps will better understand the types of leads emerging from the pipeline.
Creating a Lead Scoring Model in Salesforce
Setting up a lead scoring model in Salesforce is a straightforward process that aligns your sales and marketing teams while supporting your bottom line. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
Introduction to Salesforce's Lead Scoring Capabilities
Salesforce uses Einstein, its AI assistant, to automatically generate a custom lead-scoring model based on your organization’s data. You can proceed with its automated insights or create custom segments and conditions for your leads.
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Lead Scoring Model
Follow these steps to design a Salesforce lead scoring model that you can use to drive revenue and deepen your customer engagement:
- Open the Salesforce platform and select “Setup.”
- Click “Einstein Lead Scoring” under the “Einstein Sales” category, then toggle on Einstein Lead Scoring.
- Proceed with the default settings to use Einstein’s predictive model, or create your own settings.
- To customize your model, choose a conversion milestone, then click “Save & Next.”
- If you want to score specific segments, click “Segments of Leads,” then name the segments and define your criteria.
- Navigate to “Included Fields” to choose which lead fields or customer characteristics you want Einstein to use in its model.
- Review your settings, then click “Score Leads.”
Now, your lead scoring data will appear conveniently alongside your prospect information.
Testing and Refining Your Lead Scoring Model
After launching your lead scoring model, gauge its effectiveness by seeking feedback from your sales team and reviewing your lead score distribution and the conversion rates of your leads based on their category.
If low-scoring leads are converting and high-scoring prospects aren’t, you may need to dive deeper into your marketing and sales data and adjust your scoring rules.
Measuring the Impact of Lead Scoring
Continue to measure the impact of your lead scoring model by tracking key metrics and drawing connections between your lead scoring system and your company’s overall performance.
Key Performance Indicators to Track
You can develop a well-rounded understanding of your lead scoring system by monitoring KPIs such as:
- Conversion rate
- Cost per lead
- Response time
- Average lead score
- Average lead value
- Customer lifetime value
Analyzing the Impact on Conversion Rates, Sales, and Revenue
After launching your lead scoring system, pay close attention to changes in your sales metrics. Compare your sales data to historical data from before you implemented lead scoring to get a balanced view of which changes came from your lead scoring system.
Optimize Engagement With Better Lead Scoring
With lead scoring, Salesforce makes it easy to hone in on leads that will likely bring the most value to your organization. With qualified leads in your sales funnel, you can develop a targeted sales strategy that keeps the right customers in your pipeline.
How Operatus Can Help
Unlock extensive Salesforce expertise by collaborating with Operatus. As part of our RevOps as a service offering, we can implement a customized lead scoring system in your Salesforce CRM to optimize your lead generation model and drive conversions.
Reach out to the Operatus team today to learn more about getting started with lead scoring and other valuable Salesforce features.
