Utilizing HubSpot for Effective Lead Scoring and Prioritization

All sales begin with leads, but not all leads turn into sales. For businesses with limited staff and resources, it’s essential to prioritize leads so that the most promising receive the most attention. Of the options available, HubSpot’s lead scoring is highly capable and user-friendly. Here’s how to use HubSpot to improve your businesses’ lead scoring and prioritization.

Understanding Lead Scoring

Lead scoring ranks prospects against, and according to a scale that indicates their perceived value to the organization (company or nonprofit). The goal is to maximize return on investment for marketing and sales.

In other words, lead scoring acknowledges that not all your CRM leads are equal. This method directs the most effort toward the most promising leads.

Traditional methods of lead scoring often involve manual processes and intuition-based decision-making, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. The limitations of these methods underscore the need for a more structured and data-driven approach.

HubSpot's Lead Scoring System

HubSpot brings predictive methods to lead scoring, offering comprehensive features that are easy to use -- and proactively rank leads according to your criteria.

HubSpot uses a numerical system to score leads, basing their scores on criteria that you input. There are three main domains of criteria that you might use:

• Fit: Data such as revenue/income, title, industry, etc. This can be demographic or firmographic (personal or corporate) in nature.
• Activity: Data related to what steps a lead has taken, such as page visits, email open rate, trial sign-ups, direct inquiries, etc.
• Time: How recent and how frequently the lead takes actions included in activity data.

Within these categories, there’s no shortage of what inputs you base scoring on. Scoring can be affected positively (increased number) or negatively (decreased number).

For example, you might give a lead who uses a free trial a +20 point increase in HubSpot’s system. They might receive +5 if the trial was recent, and then lose the 5 points if nothing happens within three months of the trial. Leads with income/revenue below a threshold could be assessed -10 points, or whatever you choose.

Setting Up Lead Scoring in HubSpot

Being user-friendly, setting up lead scoring in HubSpot is quick and easy. Follow these steps once logged into your account:

• Click the Settings icon (in the navigation bar)
• Click “Properties” (in the left sidebar)
• Select “Contact properties” for “select and object” (near the top)
• Select “Likelihood to close” under properties (on right side)

HubSpot’s lead scoring will show candidates prioritized by how likely the clients are to close. This is an automatically generated number based on HubSpot’s criteria.

The automatic number predicts how likely it is that a client will close within 90 days. For instance, a score of 31 means that the software thinks that the client has a 31% chance of closing within 3 months.

For more custom scoring, you can manually set up criteria and their impact. To manually create a criteria:

• Click the Settings icon (in the navigation bar)
• Click “Data management” (in the left sidebar)
• Search “HubSpot Score” (on the right side)
• Click on the property that’s returned
• Click “+Add criteria” (near the bottom)
• Follow the prompts to add your criteria

You’ll see an option to add positive or negative criteria on the screen that has “+ Add criteria.”

• Accessing the Tool: Navigate to HubSpot’s lead scoring tool within the platform.
• Criteria Selection: Choose criteria that best represent your ideal customer profile. Consider factors like job title, location, engagement with marketing materials, and website behavior.
• Weighting: Assign appropriate weights to different criteria. More critical factors should have higher weights to reflect their importance in scoring.

Best Practices for Lead Scoring with HubSpot

HubSpot has powerful software for lead scoring, but any system is only as good as the inputs it’s given. To get the most out of HubSpot, follow these best practices:

• Set up manual criteria specific to your industry and business
• Work with sales and marketing to determine criteria
• Make sure to include both positive and negative attributes
• Include recency and frequency in your weightings
• Keep the criteria used to only the most important
• Define clear levels, at which points sales is to take certain steps
• Monitor and adjust your criteria as appropriate

Prioritizing Leads with HubSpot

HubSpot’s lead prioritization takes CRM to the next level, showing salespersons where their efforts are best spent. With the lead scoring set up, sales can be more efficient, more effective, and more motivated by an increased closing rate.

Integrating Lead Scoring into Sales Strategy

It must be integrated into whatever sales strategy your business uses to maximize the potential of lead scoring. It’s a great way to align sales and marketing and identify how hard to pursue each customer. Together, marketing, sales, and lead scoring are recipes for success.

Utilizing a sophisticated tool like HubSpot for lead scoring and prioritization can take your business’s sales to the next level. For help with this, or more insights and solutions using HubSpot, contact us at The Gist.