This may be a thorny one and everyone will have an opinion... so hear me out.
Scoring is used to separate "good/ready" prospects from those that are not ready for follow-up so that we can have the Sales team focus their limited time on those prospects most likely to be fruitful ventures.
Obviously "good/ready" isn't an exact definition that is easily measured and identified. We are balancing quality level and volume/flow with the definition of a "Qualified Prospect". Too strict a definition and while the prospects will be highly qualified they will be few and far between. This reduces marketing contribution to creating pipeline and puts more pressure on the sales team to do more of their own Outreach. If the definition of "Qualified" is too loose, then the quality of the prospects will vary greatly and the "bad" prospects will cause the sales team to mistrust scoring. We must set the expectation on quality based on the volume/flow of leads we want to supply to the sales team.
In a survey of Marketing and Sales Ops professional on what to show the Sales team following up with Qualified prospects, the results were as follows:
65% - Show only a label of Qualified / Not Qualified
5% - Show a Rating of Quality (A/B/C, Hot/Warm/Cold, etc)
30% - Show a Rating and a numeric Score
(How would you have voted?)
I was a little surprised by the results, I thought I would be in the minority on this one. The Thinking here is we want the sales team to give all these “Qualified Prospects” the same regiment of communications and attention. B rating prospects should convert at a lower rate than A rating Prospects. However, if “B” rating Prospects are getting less attention than “A” rating Prospects, this starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy just due to the lower level of engagement. Numeric scores are even more granular and imply a precision that the model may not have at its current level of maturity. That is, should 1 pt or 5 pts have a material change in follow-up practices? Likely no… Having all “Qualified Prospects” be treated the same will help us identify market changes and scoring model changes.
It looks like the majority of survey respondents agree with the recommendation to have one label for one level of follow-up. Then let the conversion data tell you how to adjust your model.
Aside
If the sales team needs to make up the rest of the pipeline... wouldn't it be better to call on the prospect from marketing that are "less ready / good fits" rather than cold calls? Probably... but these should be identified differently than "Qualified Prospects". We should agree when these should be prioritized (i.e. after all "Qualified Prospects" are exhausted) and how much attention (will they get the same full regiment of communications or a smaller set?). By separating these out separately we can examine what happens to them as compared to "Qualified Prospects" and if a new model is needed to include more of these in the "Qualified Prospects" group.
