Lead scoring - how to decide which contacts to work first

Not every contact is worth the same. Lead scoring ranks leads by fit and intent so reps call the ready ones first. We walk through a simple model and how to feed it with data from taps.

After a good event you have a hundred contacts in your system. The trouble is they aren't all equally valuable, and a rep's time stays the same. Lead scoring is a method that assigns points to contacts and tells you who to call first. It's a simple idea that genuinely shortens the path to a sale.

Two dimensions you have to combine

A good model doesn't collapse everything into a single number. It assesses two things separately:

Fit - who the contact is: title, company, industry, size.
Intent - what they did: visited the profile, downloaded the offer, came to the booth, left their details.

It's worth adding negative points too - signals that a contact probably won't buy, so they don't clutter the priority list.

A simple model in six steps

Define your ideal customer profile from closed-won deals.
Pick a handful of fit and intent criteria.
Assign weights and set thresholds (e.g. "hot" from X points).
Agree the thresholds together with sales.
Implement the scoring in your CRM.
Recalibrate quarterly based on results.

Lead scoring is an informal contract between marketing and sales: agreement on which contact truly deserves a call.

Where the scoring data comes from

A model is only as good as the data feeding it. A contact from an ElitesCards card tap arrives already described: who they are, which company, which event, what actions they took. That's a ready set of fit and intent signals - landing straight in the CRM, so scoring can work from the first second, with no manual retyping.