Lead scoring assign points to contacts in your CRM based on actions those leads take. Your CRM should store both demographic and activity lead scores for each contact, so your marketing and sales teams can use that information.

Updating your CRM with lead scoring data

Create a custom data field to store demographic and activity lead scores. Those fields update when you update the CRM with new data or your contacts take actions, such as reading an email or watching a video.

Be sure you’re familiar with your CRM’s ability to sync those user fields with their lead scores. Different CRMs update at different frequencies. Keep that in mind when selecting a CRM vendor.

Here’s an example of how you can automate the connection of lead scoring to your custom data fields in your CRM.

CRM automated assignment
Automated assignment of lead scores to user fields.

Triggering hot and cold lead scoring automation

You want to set up automation based on the points your leads and clients accumulate. There are two ways to trigger automation based on lead scoring.

Setting up hot automation

Hot lead scoring happens when a contact generates a minimum number of points in a fixed time period. If a lead is very active in a day, you want to know about it right away so that your sales team can follow up, or your marketing team can send something to spur an action. For example, “if one of Austin’s leads generates more than 20 points in a day, activate workflow X.”

hot automation CRM
A hot automation rule for a group of sales leads.

Setting up cold automation

Cold lead scoring is useful when you have a smaller client base that you stay in regular contact with. If you want to ensure your company communicates with your clients every quarter, for example, you could set it up so that if there aren’t at least two points of activity generated every 90 days, the “salesperson follow-up” workflow is activated.

cold automation CRM
A cold automation rule for existing clients who aren’t active.

Filtering automation by group and setting workflow limits

You may want to set up different workflows depending on which group someone is in. You may also want to prevent workflows from triggering too often, to keep your contacts and your own team from getting overwhelmed. It’s important to make sure you have a complete picture of all the automation you define for your entire organization.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Lars Helgeson is a pioneer in sales and marketing technology. His CRM platform for small to mid-size businesses, GreenRope, was built from scratch and has grown to include over 3,000 clients in more than 40 countries since its inception in 2011. He is a frequent speaker for small membership organizations and conferences.

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