At its core, lead scoring is a process that involves helping both sales and marketing departments better identify which prospects could become the most valuable to a company based on actions they’ve taken in the past while in the sales funnel. Traditionally, this is done using a 1-5 model where higher scores indicate “hotter” prospects, allowing representatives to focus their attention and resources on creating a more personalized experience for these consumers, all in an effort to increase conversions as much as possible.

The Potential Trouble With Relying Exclusively on Industry Benchmarks
Page views, site searches, downloads, email actions, interactions with landing pages, participation with content like webinars and more can all be considered viable actions within this model. The issue with this approach is that it can easily create certain discrepancies if you’re not careful. Traditional lead scoring takes into account anyone who interacts with your brand, regardless of purchase intent. This means, the scoring doesn’t account for real-life data that truly informs a quality score, i.e. economic score. Can your prospect even afford the product your selling?

Current scores are only relevant if the sales funnel is still the same as the last time it was analyzed, and doesn’t account for a sales person in a slump, a staff change, etc.  If there is some new part or action that needs to be added, it could call into question everything you’ve collected up to that point.

Likewise, data quality is critically important. If you’re not analyzing the right metrics and actions to begin with, you could easily be paying attention to the wrong purchasing patterns or funnel paths, and making decisions based on incorrect analysis.

The Power of AI Deep Learning in Lead Scoring

Home improvement companies are seeking a better, more accurate solution to qualifying leads, so Think Unlimited developed an AI-backed lead allocation platform. The Think Lead Optimizer (TLO) platform works directly with businesses to create a custom algorithm based not on the larger industry, but on a company’s specific sales records, conversion rates, lead spend, and other factors.

This allows organizations to assign representatives to the right lead at exactly the right time based on the data of what they’ve sold previously. By identifying the attributes in which a representative performs best and assigning them to new prospects that fall within that criteria, they’re suddenly in a better position to maximize each opportunity to increase conversions.

This is contrary to the current industry model that typically assigns sales team members and representatives in order. However, it’s not that simple – finding the right sales representative for the job not only increases close rate in their specific customer demographic, but it also allows for someone else to be better paired to close the other demographics as well.

Of course, this creates other benefits that go beyond one’s ability to increase conversions. When representatives see better matched leads and are able to maximize their own efficiency, it instills higher levels of representative retention and moral as well. People become more engaged with their jobs in a way that makes them happier and more satisfied – which goes a long way towards making them more productive as well.

Another one of the major benefits that AI deep learning lead scoring models brings to the table involves taking the guess work out of the lead assignment process. This is especially true when looking at the probability to close and the actual/potential ticket size of each lead. Rather than guessing as to how sales performance compares to the larger industry around you, there is more certainty because you’re working with proprietary information that is unique to your specific business.

If you’d like to find out more information about why you should be using artificial intelligence to score leads based on your company’s historical performance rather than continuing to rely on industry benchmarks, or if you’d just like to see our innovative software in action to see what it can do for your business, please don’t delay – schedule a free demo with us today.