When Lead Scoring Becomes Bad Medicine

Marketing metrics are important to me, but a recent blog post entitled, “Medical Symptoms and B2B Marketing Processes” from Steve Woods of Eloqua on one particular metric hit a nerve with me.  Steve states, “The natural flow of scoring leads, qualifying them, and then handing them off to sales is disrupted when a sales team is allowed to grab the best leads from the funnel regardless of where the scoring system has placed them.” This idea is pestering me like a buzzing insect that I can’t seem to get rid of.

For the record, I have no doubt that Steve is a brilliant and knowledgeable guy and I follow both his tweets and his blog.  But this post bothered me, mostly because I’ve heard the same discussion amongst some of my team members.  The embedded logic in his post, and in the minds of some of my team, is that leads are to be protected from the scary people in Sales until such time as Marketing deems that they can handle the interaction.  In fact, I’ve even heard it suggested that allowing Sales to interact with leads before they have met the appropriate scoring threshold will interfere with Marketing’s ability to measure and refine the scoring process.

I won’t disagree with the statement, but I will vehemently disagree with the thinking.  What is the point of demand generation? It’s not to maximize the number of leads.  It’s not to improve on the qualification process.  It is simply to generate revenue.  This is the only relevant metric that will show up on your company’s annual report, and while it’s not the only one that marketers need to track, it is the one that we must keep in mind in everything we do.

I absolutely agree with the idea and practice of lead scoring, but my fundamental disagreement with Steve’s statement is on how you use the lead scores.  I’ve worked for B2B software companies for 14 years now, and I actually have a healthy respect for sales reps and account managers.  I know that they are intelligent enough to back off when prospects aren’t ready to buy, and shrewd enough to spend their time and energy only on those leads that give them a chance to earn a commission in the near future.  Because of this respect, I don’t feel a need to protect prospects from sales – in fact quite the opposite.  So long as the interaction is professional, every customer I’ve ever met actually appreciates that we take the time to call them and ask, “how can we help you?”.  The bottom line for me is that I don’t believe in using lead scoring to help marketing to filter lead information from sales.

What I do believe in is using lead scoring to drive marketing interactions with the prospects.  We should absolutely be nurturing leads to help advance leads in the sales process with marketing “touches”, and that’s where Eloqua can help tremendously.  Tracking what prospects are interested in, offering them additional (relevant) content, and ensuring that we are educating them on our unique selling propositions in a way that is aligned to their current knowledge and level of interest is how I would propose we take utilize lead scoring.  Using it to become the “lead police” is not.

-Ted