Why High-Scoring Leads Still Get Lost (and How to Stop It)
Lead scoring is one of the smartest ways for sales and marketing teams to prioritize the right leads and focus their efforts.
However, in practice, there is often a gap between marketing and sales teams that widens after lead scoring is implemented.
Scoring leads alone isn’t enough to drive revenue—what happens after lead scoring matters even more.
Without implementing the right lead scoring best practices throughout the process, high-scoring leads may be handed off only to sit untouched. This disconnect can cause hot opportunities to cool off fast.
To capitalize on a lead scoring investment, it’s crucial to have a clear plan for what comes next: smart follow-up, seamless handoff, and strong alignment between marketing and sales.
In this blog, we’ll discuss how to improve lead scoring efforts, including a quick overview of lead scoring, why scoring alone won’t close more deals, and lead scoring best practices to bridge the gap between sales and marketing.
(If you have already implemented lead scoring, feel free to skip ahead to why scoring may not be working for you or 6 lead scoring best practices. If you’re still getting started with lead scoring, keep reading.)
What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring assigns point values to lead actions or characteristics, which in turn make up a lead’s score.
A lead score reflects how qualified the lead is or how likely the lead is to buy, with higher scores indicating quality, high-priority leads.
Marketing and sales teams often score leads based on criteria such as:
- Demographic or firmographic data: whether their persona is the right fit for your product/service.
- Behavior or intent data: this includes data like what they’ve done on your website, what they are searching for.
- Engagement with your business: this includes things like interactions with content marketing, emails, and/or conversations with sales or at trade shows.
- Lead source: higher-intent or high-converting lead sources will score higher.
Through a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce, you can track this data and use CRM automation to assign lead scores for each action.
Lead scores can also include negative points; for example, things like bad contact info or an email unsubscribe could deduct points. Scores can also be set to time decay.
Steps to implement lead scoring
There are a few basic steps to actually setting up lead scoring automation:
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- Decide what the target point value should be for a qualified lead. (This is often 100 points.)
- Understand which criteria are most important for your lead score. Who are your target customers? What actions indicate high intent?
- Assign point values to each criteria. For example, the right demographic data could add 10 points, while engaging with an email could add 20 points, etc.
- Use your CRM to track lead data and engagement and automate point assignment.
- Align sales and marketing behind the entire process. This is one of the most vital steps, but is often overlooked. Sales and marketing must agree on what makes a qualified lead and how leads are scored.
- Decide what the target point value should be for a qualified lead. (This is often 100 points.)
Why does lead scoring matter for B2C teams?
Lead scoring helps sales teams to prioritize the best-fit, highest-intent, qualified leads with their outreach.
While lead scoring is beneficial for any industry in B2B and B2C, it’s especially useful for businesses with longer sales cycles and/or higher-priced items.
For these industries, not only is every lead precious—they can take a long time to actually become a buyer, so they should be tracked and nurtured over time.
For B2C marketing and sales teams, implementing lead scoring can:
- Drive greater ROI
- Increase conversion rates
- Improve personalization
- Quicken the sales cycle
- Save time
- Lower customer acquisition costs (CAC)
- Synergize marketing and sales efforts
Because lead scoring is also based on leads’ behavioral and intent data, it can help your team identify where each lead is in their buyer’s journey—and whether the lead should be nurtured under marketing, or reached out to by sales.
In a competitive market, especially with today’s economic uncertainty, leads are valuable as ever.
For sales efficiency, it’s crucial that you are identifying your best leads, and reaching out to the right leads, at the right time.
Why lead scoring alone isn’t enough
So you’re scoring leads—now what?
While lead scoring has many benefits, it won’t actually drive results if the process is broken—and the lead scoring process can easily break in a few ways.
Common lead scoring failures include:
- Lack of clear follow-up process for leads after scores.
- Sales and marketing disagree on what “qualified” means.
- High-scoring leads are not responded to fast enough, so hot leads go cold.
The disconnect between lead score and contact time is vital in B2C industries where buyer intent is more nuanced and time-sensitive. For example, if a lead requests a quote but doesn’t hear back for three days, the lead is probably turning cold.
What to do after implementing lead scoring: 6 lead scoring best practices
If you’ve built a lead scoring model, you’re already ahead of many B2C teams.
Let’s discuss how to avoid common failures with lead scoring best practices:
Align marketing and sales with a clear SLA
For lead scoring to really work, there must be clear expectations between sales and marketing teams about:
- How leads are scored in the first place.
- What qualifies a lead for handoff to sales.
- How sales reps are notified of a high lead score.
- How fast high-scoring leads are contacted by sales.
- Reps are trained and accountable for following up with these high-scoring leads.
- What happens to leads who are not ready to buy.
For example, you might agree that any lead scoring above 80 must be contacted in under an hour. If this lead is not ready to buy, this is marked in the CRM and the lead is put into a nurture sequence.
Define MQLs vs. SQLs for lead scoring
Sometimes, marketing gets excited about a high lead score, while sales dismisses lead scores. This is a mistake to avoid.
A common reason high-scoring leads stall is confusion over whether they’re ready for sales or still need nurturing. This is why clearly differentiating marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) becomes critical.
An MQL is a lead who’s shown interest by engaging with marketing materials, such as emails or resource downloads, but may not be ready for direct outreach.
An SQL, on the other hand, is someone who’s shown clear intent to purchase and is ready to buy.
Sales may not want to follow up with marketing qualified leads (MQLs) because these leads aren’t ready—and then start ignoring high-scoring leads because they think MQLs are never ready.
Avoid this by differentiating between marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) by lead score. This ensures that sales is being served the right qualified leads, and the customer is only contacted at the right time in their journey.
You can do this in a few ways:
- Align on clear thresholds for when a lead is sales qualified.
- Avoid sending leads to sales too early or too late.
- Use negative points and time decay to avoid inflated lead scores.
- Combine experimentation and sales feedback to get it right in practice.
Revisit your MQL and SQL definitions quarterly based on real sales outcomes. If sales is consistently rejecting MQLs, it’s time to recalibrate your lead scoring criteria.
Getting this right is tough, but in the end it will reduce friction and blame between departments.
Automate immediate outreach
When it comes to SQLs, speed matters. Engaging high-scoring leads quickly and consistently is what drives real growth.
Studies show that leads are 21x more likely to convert if they are contacted within 5 minutes. After one hour, chances of successfully contacting them drops by 10x.
Automation should be used for instant notification for sales reps to follow up with high-scoring leads personally.
As salespeople aren’t always available to contact high-scoring leads right away, automation can also trigger instant outreach. For example, an instant automated SMS or email response to an inquiry that lets the customer know they were heard and outlines next steps.
Create a segmented nurture strategy
73% of leads are not ready to buy, so sales won’t want to talk to them. Now what?
For MQLs, or high-scoring leads who are interested but not ready to buy, don’t just ignore them.
While these leads may not be ready to talk to sales, and sales won’t want to talk to them, it’s vital to cultivate lead interest so that they will be ready down the line.
Marketing teams can do this through effective lead nurturing.
Lead nurture aims to build up your relationship with potential customers and guide them towards making a purchase decision.
Effective nurture campaigns focus on keeping your brand top-of-mind and fostering trust by addressing customer needs and concerns.
Marketing teams can do so by serving them educational content on both your services/products and helpful information that addresses their pain points.
Nurture is most effective as an omnichannel endeavor, but can be as simple as email automation.
By using lead scores and data on lead behavior, marketing teams can segment leads into different nurture tracks.
For example, for a mortgage company, leads who are probably first-time homebuyers should be in a different nurture track than experienced homeowners, because they will have different needs.
You can deduce this by demographic information and lead behavior; for example, a younger lead engaging with a resource on first-time homebuyer loans can clue you into where they belong.
Audit your lead scoring model
Lead scoring is not one and done.
As your sales team follows up with these leads, review your scoring criteria based on real sales outcomes. For example, are the point values you assigned at first really accurate?
Buyer behavior can also change over time, so what signals high intent today may be different in six months.
Sales and marketing teams must conduct regular audits of the lead scoring model in order to update criteria and adjust point values if necessary.
Build strong feedback loops
While marketing teams often build lead scoring out, effective lead scoring relies on accurate, well-implemented feedback from sales.
Lead scoring benefits both teams and helps them collectively drive greater revenue. Keep open feedback loops where:
- Sales can share real feedback after lead interactions.
- Both teams have meetings to review trends and suggestions.
- Marketing makes quick updates to lead scoring models based on sales input.
How to improve lead scoring with technology
The biggest reason high-scoring leads go cold is timing, whether that’s due to misalignment between marketing and sales, a bad handoff process, or just slow speed-to-lead.
Even the best scoring model won’t drive results if it’s not paired with fast, consistent follow-up. With high-intent leads, the opportunity can fade fast—and often lands with a competitor who is faster.
Post-lead scoring, technology can help with:
- Instant lead engagement: When a lead crosses a scoring threshold, automation can trigger an instant reply—via SMS, email, or even live chat. This ensures every customer is engaged with right away, buying your team time to follow up personally.
- Intelligent routing: Software and CRMs can assign SQLs to the right rep based on your criteria, such as location or service type. This eliminates manual work involved with lead scoring and reduces time to engagement.
- Lead nurture: For MQLs, automated nurture flows can be built out in email automation or CRM platforms.
- Real-time visibility: To help sales teams prioritize, CRMs and AI sales tools give you current insights into who is engaging, what stage they are in, and which leads are at risk of going cold.
No lead left behind
For lean teams, fully-managed platforms like Verse.ai can ensure no lead gets forgotten, ignored, or mishandled.
We engage every lead via SMS and hand off only the warmest, highest-intent leads to your reps.
Our AI-powered platform empowers your team to do even more with high-intent leads with:
- Instant response and automatic qualification for every lead
- Continual follow-up for leads who don’t respond
- Customizable lead nurture for up to six months
Learn more about Verse with our self-serve demos or book a demo today.
Lead scoring best practices: Key takeaways
Lead scoring best practices: FAQ
What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on how likely they are to convert. It helps sales and marketing understand where leads are in their journey and prioritize the hottest, most sales-ready prospects.
Why don’t high-scoring leads convert?
Because scoring alone doesn’t close deals. If there’s no clear follow-up process—or sales and marketing aren’t aligned on what a “qualified” lead actually looks like—hot leads can go cold before a rep even reaches out.
What’s the difference between an MQL and an SQL?
An MQL (marketing qualified lead) shows interest (like downloading a guide or filling out a form), while an SQL (sales qualified lead) is actively ready to buy and meets specific sales-readiness criteria. Clear definitions between the two help teams follow up at the right time.
How often should we update our lead scoring model?
At least quarterly. Your ideal customer behaviors can shift over time—especially during seasonal, economic, or campaign changes. Use feedback from your sales team to refine which actions or attributes matter most.
What tools can help with post-lead scoring follow-up?
CRMs and AI-driven engagement tools like Verse can help automate lead response, route leads to the right reps, and track activity in real time—so no lead gets ignored or forgotten.
