In sales, not all leads are created equal. Some are ready to take the next step, while others need more nurturing. This is where lead scoring comes into play—it’s a method that helps you rank your leads based on their likelihood to convert so that your sales team focuses on the most promising opportunities.
Pipedrive, a cloud-based CRM, streamlines this process by automatically scoring leads based on their interactions with your business. Its user-friendly interface and customizable features make managing your pipeline a breeze.
With tools like customizable fields, activity tracking, and automation, Pipedrive allows you to tailor your lead scoring criteria, track engagement, and update scores in real time.
In this blog, we’ll explore how lead scoring can enhance your sales process and guide you through setting up an automated lead scoring system using Pipedrive.
What is Pipedrive?
Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM tool specifically built for sales teams. It helps businesses organize leads, manage deals, and track sales activities through an easy-to-use, visual sales pipeline. This lets teams see exactly where each deal stands, simplifying the sales process.
What is Pipedrive Lead Scoring and How Does it Work?
Pipedrive comes with a variety of features designed to enhance your sales efficiency, including email tracking, lead generation tools, reporting tools, and powerful integrations with other business platforms.
One of its standout offerings is the lead scoring software, which plays a key role in helping your sales team stay focused on the right opportunities.
But first, what is lead scoring?
Getting sales right means understanding that each lead moves at their own pace. This is where lead qualification and lead scoring come into play. Lead qualification helps you determine which leads are worth pursuing based on their potential to become customers.
Lead scoring helps qualify leads by assigning a numerical value to each lead based on their actions and engagement with your business.
Lead scoring in Pipedrive works by tracking key activities like emails, calls, meetings, and website interactions. You can set up custom criteria that determine how a lead is scored, such as job title, industry, or level of engagement.
Pipedrive’s automation tools update these scores in real time, giving you a clear and up-to-date picture of which leads are ready to move forward and which ones need more nurturing.
How Does Lead Scoring Help?
Let’s take a closer look at why a quality lead-scoring process needs to be a part of your sales process:
Impact on Sales Efficiency and Outcomes
Lead scoring allows your sales team to focus on high-potential leads, which means less time wasted on cold prospects and more time spent on those ready to convert. This boosts both productivity and results.
Improving Qualification and Close Rates
By helping you qualify leads more accurately, lead scoring improves your chances of closing deals.
Balancing Sales Efforts with Automation
Lead scoring helps you balance manual sales efforts with automation. It ensures your team spends time on high-potential leads while inbound marketing continues to bring in new prospects, creating a smooth, efficient process.
Predicting Future Sales Performance
Lead scoring not only helps with current prospects but also gives you insights into future sales performance. By analyzing lead scores over time, you can predict trends and adjust your strategy for better long-term results.
Better Follow-up
When you’re dealing with a large volume of leads, it’s easy for your team to get overwhelmed and lose track of which leads need the most attention. This can result in high-quality leads landing in the hands of your competitors.
Lead scoring helps prevent this by giving your team a clear view of which leads to prioritize. High-scoring leads may require immediate follow-up, ensuring they don’t lose interest, while lower-scoring leads can be nurtured over time. This tailored approach allows your team to stay organized, follow up effectively, and close more deals.
Prioritizing Leads for Better ROI
If you know where each lead stands in your sales funnel, you can prioritize them more easily. Lead scoring gives your sales team the visibility to focus on the right leads at the right time.
This saves time and can help you improve your ROI by ensuring your team spends more effort on quality leads that are more likely to convert.
Before setting up your lead scoring system, it’s important to make sure your Pipedrive account is set up for success.
Preparing Your Pipedrive Account for Lead Scoring
Before getting into the step-by-step guide for setting up lead scoring, let’s explore two powerful Pipedrive features that can enhance your lead scoring process.
1. Use Smart Contact Data for Effortless Lead Research
With clear lead details, your salesperson can work more easily, and Pipedrive has a feature for that!
Pipedrive’s Smart Contact Data feature automatically pulls key information about your leads from online sources like Google, LinkedIn, and public web listings.
Once you enter a lead’s email address, the feature instantly auto-fills in details that can give you a clearer picture of your prospects. It helps you quickly compare leads against your ideal customer profile, identifying which ones are more promising and need immediate attention. This can be particularly useful for pre-qualifying leads.
Why it’s great for lead scoring:
- Save time: No more manual searching for lead information.
- Make better decisions: Use real data to decide which leads to focus on.
- Maintain consistency: Keep a single source of truth across all data sources
2. Set Up Custom Fields
Pipedrive lets you customize your sales pipeline, allowing you to capture the most relevant information about your leads.
By creating custom fields, you can store specific details like job titles, interests, cities, or any other data important to your sales process. Then, you can use this information to personalize your communication and follow-ups, making your efforts more effective.
Using these features, you’ll have solid, up-to-date information about your leads to help with your scoring system.
How to Set Up Lead Scoring in Pipedrive?
Setting up lead scoring in Pipedrive is a straightforward process, and here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started.
Identify Key Actions and Behaviors
First, think about what actions show that a lead is interested in your product or service. These might include:
- Visiting your pricing page
- Downloading a whitepaper
- Attending a webinar
- Opening marketing emails
- Engaging with your social media posts
Make a list of these actions. They’ll form the basis of your scoring system.
Assign Point Values to Criteria
Once you’ve identified key actions, assign specific point values to each. For example, requesting a product demo could earn 20 points, as it indicates a strong intent to purchase, while opening an email might earn 5 points, as it indicates a comparatively lower intent.
This helps you rank your leads based on their engagement.
Remember, you can always adjust these values later as you learn what works best for your business.
Navigate to Pipedrive Settings
Log into your Pipedrive account and follow these steps:
- Click on your profile picture in the top right corner
- Select ‘Company settings’
- In the left sidebar, find and click on ‘Lead Scoring.’
Add Criteria and Point Values
In the Lead Scoring section:
- Click ‘Add new rule.’
- Choose the type of action (e.g., ‘Email opened,’ ‘Web form submitted’)
- Set the number of points for that action.
- Click ‘Save.’
Repeat this process for all the criteria you identified in step 1.
Test and Refine the Scoring Model
Once your lead scoring system is set up, test it out! Regularly refine your scoring model to ensure it accurately reflects your lead’s likelihood to convert.
Note: Pipedrive’s lead scoring system is adaptable, allowing you to add time decay—meaning a lead’s score decreases over time if there’s no engagement. This keeps your focus on active leads and prevents outdated ones from cluttering your pipeline.
Remember, lead scoring is not a set-it-and-forget-it tool. It requires regular fine-tuning to stay effective.
Optimizing Your Lead Scoring Process
After setting up your basic lead scoring system, you can take it to the next level by using Pipedrive’s advanced features and best practices:
Harness the Power of Automation
Pipedrive offers various automation tools to streamline your lead-scoring process. You can automate several routine and admin tasks:
- Set up automatic follow-up reminders to ensure no lead falls through the cracks.
- Create personalized email sequences based on lead scores.
- Automate administrative tasks like deal and task creation, updating lead information, or moving leads between stages.
- Use automation to assign leads to the right person or team based on score or other criteria.
Automation can save time and ensure consistent follow-up, allowing your team to focus on high-yield activities.
Enhance Functionality with Integrations
Pipedrive’s vast app marketplace offers powerful integrations to boost your lead-scoring capabilities. You can use tools like:
- Web Visitors for website activity tracking
- GetQuanty for AI-powered multi-channel lead scoring.
- TimelinesAI for seamless WhatsApp communication tracking and lead engagement insights
- Adinton for alerting when hot leads revisit your website
- LeadBooster for qualifying leads automatically using chatbots and web forms
Continuously Improve Your Scoring Model
- Regularly analyze your wins, losses, and recycled leads. Look for patterns in the scores of successful conversions.
- Adjust the lead scoring process based on feedback to keep it aligned with real-world results.
- Involve your sales teams in the process to gather insights and continuously improve the model.
What are Some Best Practices for Effective Lead Scoring?
Here are some best practices for lead scoring:
Align with Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Ensure your lead scoring criteria reflect your business goals and are aligned with your ideal customer’s traits, such as industry, company size, or job title.
Use a Mix of Explicit and Implicit Data
Combine explicit data (such as a lead’s location or job role) with implicit data (like their engagement level or website activity) to get a complete picture of lead potential.
Sync Lead Scores in Real Time
Ensure that lead scores are updated instantly in Pipedrive. This helps your team avoid spending time on cold, passive leads and instead focus on those who are actively engaging with your business.
Account for Different Buying Journeys
Recognize that leads may have different paths to conversion. Tailor your lead scoring system to account for different customer journeys, such as longer decision-making processes in B2B sales.
Refine, Refine, and Refine
The best models are not static—they evolve based on feedback from your sales team, market conditions, and changes in customer behavior. Establish regular meetings to discuss wins, losses, and areas for improvement. Continually tweak your scoring criteria to reflect the latest trends in your lead conversions.
Conclusion
Implementing and optimizing lead scoring with Pipedrive can be a game-changer for your sales team. By using real-time data, automation, and custom criteria, you can ensure that you’re not just finding leads – you’re finding the right leads for your company.
