Multidimensional Lead Scoring — What’s All the Buzz About?
Posted by Tim Wilson - Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 09:01 pmAs I’m thinking about how to categorize this post, I’m realizing that, despite the fact that it includes scatter plots, it’s a bit off topic for the sort of things I generally put in this blog.
But, back in December, in an afternoon of frenzied, yet focussed, exposition, I dashed out a 15-page pager on the topic of multidimensional lead scoring. That’s right. 15 pages. But with lots of pictures! It laid out, as clearly as possible, the rationale and “how to” for something we’ve been working on in the R&D labs at Bulldog Solutions for quite some time. It’s something we actually use ourselves…but we hadn’t taken the time to sit down and try to explain it clearly. Of the 8 scatter plots, here’s one that comes mid-way through the explanation and sort of tells the whole story:
The main point of going to a lead score that has two dimensions is to recognize that there are multiple unique facets of your ideal lead. It’s not just whether he/she is the perfect “profile” — a director-level decision maker with budget authority at a company that is $100 million or greater in the medical device industry (for instance) — but it’s also important to determine if they have a clue who you are and have any interest in talking to you! That’s where the “engagement level” comes in.
Your best leads fall in the top right area of the scatter plot — you want to talk to them, and they seem interested in talking to you. That’s it in a nutshell. The paper goes into more step-by-step detail as to what that really means, how to implement it, and what to watch out for. There’s a longer introduction/overview (no registration required) on the Bulldog Solutions web site. To get the full paper, you have to register (or, shucks, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send it to you directly). An unnamed source (no, not a relative or a current co-worker!) made the following comment about the paper:
Really like the way you structured the approach to the topic and broke it down into steps that are easily internalized as well as actionable and measurable. As always, I am in awe of your writing skills, which made for a enjoyable read. But most of all it provoked some new thoughts on a topic that had fallen of my radar…
That was pretty high praise from an experienced B2B marketer who is a notoriously straight shooter (painfully so, at times).
Now, as I was working on the paper, with Twitter running on my second screen…and jumping over to Facebook periodically…and checking out the various blogs I subscribe to…
I couldn’t help but think about how “B2B lead scoring” fits in with “social media.” Actually, this was more than idle distraction — I’m also working on a project that brings those two concepts together for our own internal operations. On the one hand, “lead scoring” still feels a bit old school. I mean, we’re focussed on watching what people are doing and, basically, pouncing on them with a rabid salesperson when our processes spit out that they’ll be easy prey. Right? Well, not really. By introducting the “engagement level” dimension, we’re actually saying, “We’re happy to keep feeding you useful information. We’re actually motivated to nurture you without a hard sell…until you start poking around on our site and showing that you think we’ve got some credibility.” And, ideally, we’ll also try to snoop out where in the buying process you are and not reach out to you personally until you’re in the middle to later stages.
I guess I see multidimensional lead scoring as a bridge between the past — Marketing gets the leads and tosses them over to Sales to call ‘em up and sell — and the future — hyper-interconnectivity and information sharing among peer groups, where the company’s only option is to have a great product and support their community of potential users with high quality information through whatever channel the users want to consume it and engage with it.
What do you think? Does this make sense, or am I fooling myself?
Three things I know: 1) My wife got the raw end of the deal when she married me, 2) I blog because it keeps my e-mails shorter, and 3) If you have the urge to talk about data usage in business, I'll do so until long after that desire has passed (for you). If you want to know more, check out my
January 31st, 2008 at 9:50 PM
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
February 11th, 2008 at 9:20 PM
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