Every good sales rep or marketer knows not every lead is a quality lead. Without some sort of qualification process in place, both teams waste valuable time on the wrong opportunities. Moving the best-fitting leads through your MQL/SQL processes means first understanding the actions and attributes that define your ideal buyer persona. What are these people looking for? What do they care about? Why are they seeking you out in the first place? HubSpot knows how effective lead scoring can be, so they’ve enabled HubSpot Score to make it easy and intuitive to track lead behaviors and measure interest. Today, we’ll discuss HubSpot Score and the best practices to use it effectively.

What is Lead Scoring?

First, let’s make sure we have a shared definition of lead scoring. When thinking of the sales process, we often think about how long it takes a lead to move through the funnel and become a customer. Part of that journey involves specific steps the lead may take, like filling out a form on the website or clicking a Web ad. But actions aren’t the only qualifier. Attributes of the lead such as their job title, their industry, and their company size all come into play as well. Each business is looking for a specific combination of these factors to anticipate when a lead may be the right fit for their product or service.

Lead scoring is the methodology used to rank prospects by their perceived value to the business. The system is designed to assign a score to each lead based on their behaviors or individual attributes. Leads are often scored numerically, but can be scored with letter grades (A, B, C, D) or terms (hot vs. cold) as well. HubSpot focuses its lead scoring methodology on numeric values.

Lead scoring pinpoints the behaviors and attributes that the business believes will result in a sale and ranks which leads should be prioritized based on these factors.

Building an Effective Lead Scoring Model with HubSpot Score

HubSpot users can identify their most valuable leads using the lead scoring tools it provides in HubSpot Score. But, for a lead scoring system to work, your sales and marketing team must first define a realistic model to base your scoring from and continually refer to. HubSpot Score is a lead-scoring tool that allows users to set positive and negative attributes or criteria to test whether leads or current customers are interested in a product or service.

HubSpot has a set of default contact properties that can be used to evaluate your records using lead scoring.

Positive Attributes

Positive attributes are actions that your sales and marketing teams view as a ‘good sign’ of interest. An example of a positive attribute is when a lead (or even a current customer) clicks on your last marketing email and receives 4 points for that action. When a record meets the criteria, those points are automatically added into their record. However, once they no longer meeting that specific attribute, points are automatically deducted from their record.

Best practice: When creating a lead scoring model, it is best practice to realistically assign the values. Manually create a list of criteria that would indicate that someone is interested in your product or service. Once you have made a list of attributes, identify if any of these attributes can be combined into sets (see below). Lastly, choose numeric values and connect them back to each attribute or set of attributes based on how important the attribute is to making a sale. For example, filling out a services request form should carry more points than liking a social media post. Maybe filling out the form counts for 15 points and liking the social post counts for 5. Remember, the higher the attribute value is, the more ‘interested’ the lead or customer is in your product or service.

Sets

Sets are a grouping of similar attributes - positive or negative - that help define the lead score. As mentioned in the example above, demographic data can be considered a “set” of attributes because all of the factors around age, gender, race, etc. fit into a similar category.

When editing your attributes in HubSpot by clicking [AND], you are creating a set that will refer back to ALL the criteria you are requiring to assign the lead.  that set value.

Negative Attributes

While positive attributes are values that are most likely to turn leads/prospects into customers, negative attributes are values that indicate interest away from your product or service. For example, if someone unsubscribes from all your one-on-one emails, that may indicate diminished interest. Perhaps you would assign -15 points for that action.

Like positive attributes, when a record meets the criteria, they will receive a score, only this time the points are removed from their HubSpot Score. If they no longer meet the criteria, then the amount they lost will be credited back to the record.

Know that each record starts with a value of 0. If a record meets a negative attribute, its score will be negative. You can never reset a score per say, HubSpot will always update the score automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Lead Scoring Worth it?

Absolutely! Using HubSpot Score, your sales and marketing teams can accurately identify the leads and customers that are most interested in your product or service. When a lead earns a score, that means they have met a set attribute. The more you fine tune your lead scoring, the more streamlined your sales and marketing processes will become. You’ll be able to segment better, predict needs proactively, and maintain better customer relationships for the long term

Can I enroll HubSpot Scores in a workflow?

Once your sales and marketing teams identify your ideal attributes, you can enroll individuals into a workflow and automate your marketing and sales process based on a ‘target score’. Obviously, your target score is something that you define internally, however once you have declared that score, you can automatically enroll the record into a workflow to move them from an MQL to an SQL.

Can I create a custom score properties?

Yes, you can create custom score properties. In fact, many companies may use HubSpot Score to create multiple unique criteria. Although, it is important to be aware that there is a limit of custom scoring properties you can create based on your subscription. You also can create a custom scoring property to define a list of attributes for different regions your company operates in.

To learn more about how HubSpot Score can benefit your team, contact us here!