TMCnews Featured Article

Business people have been trying to improve the selling process for millennia. No doubt Roman olive oil sellers and Viking animal pelt peddlers had methods to improve sales leads, perfect their pitch, overcome customer objections and upsell an existing customer.

Today, of course, we have better technology. Lead management solutions, customer relationship management (CRM) software, predictive dialers and other technologies help sales teams make more targeted calls faster and to the right people, thereby improving the chances of a sale. But all these technologies are decades old, at this point.

As organizations are seeing a squeeze on their profit margins thanks to the continued global economic slowdown, the technologies and processes of 10 years ago simply aren’t good enough anymore. Organizations are using a combination of technologies and processes to try and “get an edge” over the competition when it comes to selling.  One of these methods is “lead scoring,” a way of identifying customer interest on an intensity scale in order to allow sales teams to focus on the leads most likely to result in a sale.

A recent survey conducted by Web content solutions provider Kentico Software studied the impact of lead scoring, and found that the benefits are real and tangible. Forty-two percent of companies using lead scoring in conjunction with their lead generation program reported measurable ROI, 38 percent saw increased conversion rates, 31 percent saw increased sale productivity and 27 percent reported shortened sales cycles.

Petr Passinger, Senior Business Analyst at Kentico, noted that of the companies showing success with a lead scoring solution, a high percentage of them are using the technique as part of an integrated online marketing solution.

"For best results, it's critical that lead scoring be used with other marketing activities, such as marketing automation, and with a targeted number of carefully vetted and constantly evaluated rules,” said Passinger in a statement.

When used in conjunction with a lead management solution that includes predictive dialer capabilities, sales teams can make better use of their leads, contacting the most valuable of them in a more timely manner, which greatly boosts the chances of a sale. Ensuring that the system is properly integrated with an effective CRM solution will provide a company with advantages that can overcome the competitions’ efforts by leaps and bounds.