Glossary
Lead scoring
Also called prospect scoring
Assigning each prospect a number that represents how well they match your Ideal Customer Profile, so a list can be worked in order of fit rather than in the order it arrived.
Scoring is often described as predicting who will buy. It is more useful to think of it as ordering. A model does not need to know the outcome; it needs to produce a better order than the one the list came in, which is usually alphabetical or arbitrary.
The practical consequence is that a scoring model succeeds when the people using it stop overriding it, not when it hits an accuracy target.
Scores are only trusted when the reasoning behind them is visible. A number with no explanation attached gets routed around quietly, and usually within a quarter.
More terms
- Lead qualificationDeciding whether a prospect is worth a salesperson’s time before anyone spends it.
- Outbound prospectingContacting potential customers who have not approached you first, usually through email, LinkedIn or the phone, after deciding from research that they are likely to be a fit..
- Buying signalAn observable event suggesting a company may be in the market now: a funding round, a job posting, a leadership hire, a new office, a public project announcement, or a technology change..
Start here
Definitions are the easy part
Applying them to 1,500 rows at once is the part that takes a team all week. Bring one export and see what a scored, ranked queue looks like on your own list.
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