Everpeak Partners

Salesforce Optimization & Development Consulting based in Portland, OR

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Free Salesforce Lead Scoring Solution

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Lead scoring comes with Pardot at a high list price, but what if you could have it right now, for free?

If you’ve got Salesforce, you can. This article gives you everything you need to know to make it happen. 

If you’re googling around for lead scoring advice, beware of outdated articles which have formula field code that is also outdated and will lead you down a syntax error rabbit hole. 

Read on to learn why lead scoring matters, what inputs to consider, and how to actually implement it in Salesforce. 

 

1. Why Use Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring provides a transparent, objective way to know which leads best fit your Buyer Persona. 

Without a score that tells you how good of a fit a given lead is, you and your team risk mis-allocating precious time to leads that won’t lead to close deals while hot leads go cold.  

Lead scoring can be built into your outreach process and utilized in list views, call lists, reports, and dashboards to provide valuable insights into your business development activities. 

Combined with other solutions like Lightning Dialer, it’s like turbo charging your revenue engine. Lighting a light under your SaaS. You get the idea. 

Whether you’re a revenue leader or system administrator, lead scoring is a good trick to have up your sleeve. 

 

2. What Are Best Practices for Lead Score Inputs? 

Here is a list of inputs that we have incorporated for past clients: 

  • Job title
  • Employees
  • Location
  • Referral
  • Lead source
  • Current software
  • Has phone
  • Has email
  • Has address
  • Has website
  • Created date

 

Revenue leaders: this is where you can stop reading and forward the article link to your admin. 

Admins: read on for the formula solutions.

 

 

3. How Do I Actually Build Lead Scoring Into Salesforce?

Below is a full implementation guide for a sample lead scoring build-out that is aligned with best practices. 

In this scenario, the client has asked to consider 5 inputs and have a total possible score of 100. 

Once all the inputs have been chosen and the fields are ready to go, there are two main steps to implementing lead scoring: 

  • The first is to create the hidden input fields.
  • The second is to create a total score field which will be visible to the users. 

 

In step 1, we need to create a formula field of the type “Number” for each input. We’ll want to do this on the Lead object. 

The best practice here is to have a naming convention for score input fields. In this example, we used “Hidden Score Input – INPUT NAME.” 

As the name suggests, we’ll want to hide the field from the page layout when we’re done. It’s a good idea to add it at first so we can test whether or not it’s working. 

The formulas here can be repurposed to work with any field. They’re basically just a string of IF statements. 

When you’re done, it should look something like this: 

 

4. Input Fields, Score Logic, and Formulas:

 

Job Title

Score range: 

  • 0-30

Logic:

  • +30 if job title contains: Sales, Business Development, Revenue
  • +15 if job title contains: Director, President, Vice President, VP, Manager, Founder, CEO, Chairman, Chief, Owner, CMO, CRO

Formula:

  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Director”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”President”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”VP”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Manager”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Founder”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”CEO”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Chairman”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Chief”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Owner”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”CMO”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”CRO”), 15,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Sales”), 30,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Business Development”), 30,
  • IF(CONTAINS(Title,”Revenue”), 30,
  • 0))))))))))))))

 

Employees

Score range: 

  • 0-20

Logic:

  • +10 if Employees = 10-25
  • +15 if Employees = 26-100
  • +20 if Employees = 101-250
  • +15 if Employees = 250+

Formula:

  • IF((NumberOfEmployees <10), 0,
  • IF((NumberOfEmployees <25), 10,
  • IF((NumberOfEmployees <100), 15,
  • IF((NumberOfEmployees <250), 20,
  • IF((NumberOfEmployees >=250), 20,
  • 0)))))

 

Location

Score range: 

  • 0-10

Logic:

  • +10 if State = Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho

Formula:

  • IF(CONTAINS( State ,”Oregon”), 10,
  • IF(CONTAINS( State ,”California”), 10,
  • IF(CONTAINS( State ,”Washington”), 10,
  • IF(CONTAINS( State ,”Oregon”), 10,
  • 0))))

 

Industry

Score range: 

  • 0-25

Logic:

  • +25 if Industry = Software, Financial Services, Technology
  • +10 if Industry = Professional Services, Manufacturing

Formula:

  • IF(ISPICKVAL( Industry , “Software”), 25,
  • IF(ISPICKVAL( Industry , “Financial Services”), 25,
  • IF(ISPICKVAL( Industry , “Technology”), 25,
  • IF(ISPICKVAL( Industry , “Professional Services”), 10,
  • IF(ISPICKVAL( Industry , “Manufacturing”), 10,
  • 0)))))

 

Has Phone

Score range: 

  • 0-15

Logic:

  • +15 if the Phone field is populated

Formula:

  • IF(NOT( ISBLANK( Phone ) ), 15,0)

 

Now we’re ready for step 2, creating our total score field. 

We recommend just calling it “Score.” It’ll be another number formula field on the Lead object, but this time we’ll add it to the page layout. 

Here’s the formula code: 

  • Hidden_Score_Input_Industry__c +
  • Hidden_Score_Input_Location__c +
  • Hidden_Score_Input_No_of_Employees__c +
  • Hidden_Score_Input_Phone__c +
  • Hidden_Score_Input_Title__c

 

Here’s a template for the Help Text (which we always recommend adding): 

“The lead score is auto-calculated based off of 5 hidden input fields which analyze objective lead quality metrics.” 

 

Bonus: How to Highlight Extremely Hot Leads:

If you have a particular field that is indicative of a very hot lead, such as a ‘Referred By’ contact lookup field, it’s worth awarding big points when that field is populated. 

You can think of the score of the initial lead quality as one that adds up to 100. However, if a field like Referred By is populated, that means a user actually filled it out.

This suggests the lead is being worked and deserves attention. Therefore we can bump our score above 100 if there is a Referral listed. 

To do so, just add another hidden input and make sure to reference it in your total score field. 

Here’s the formula to increase up the score by 50:

  • IF(NOT( ISBLANK(  Referred_By__c  ) ), 50,0). 

 

5. How Do I Make My New Lead Score Reportable and Accessible? 

For this part, you’re going to need list views and reports. 

Configuring these goes beyond the scope of this article, but we’re happy to help if you need it. 

In fact, we’re offering 2 hours of free consulting for a limited time. Contact me at [email protected] for details. 

How to Build Sales Stage Best Practices in Salesforce Lightning

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Intro: It’s more important than ever to have clarity in your sales process with today’s hectic & constantly evolving business environment where key details can get lost in the shuffle. Many small and mid-size businesses that I’ve advised have sales process in Salesforce don’t have clear definitions for what qualifies a lead or opportunity to move to the next stage. I am writing this blog post to share fundamental best practices I’ve learned from consulting with 200+ businesses to streamline and enhance their sales process in Salesforce.
 
 
1: Define Clear Stages using Salesforce’s “Guidance for Success”
 
Problem: Definitions for Lead Status and Opportunity Stage in Salesforce are not being used with consistency between reps. To one sales development rep (SDR), the status, “Nurturing” status means that the prospect is activity engaged in the sales process. To another SDR the term “Nurturing” means the prospect is disengaged and should be placed into series of automated emails. This creates a lack of process cohesion and causes issues with Salesforce reports and dashboards.

Solution: Use “Guidance for Success,” a feature in Salesforce Lightning that allows each stage to have text below it. In “Guidance for Success”, write out clear definitions for your stages.  It’s a collapsable element so it can be hidden when it’s not needed but it’s always available as a reminder of the true company-wide definition of the stage. Of course, you need to make sure you have good practices, definitions stages to begin with. But having a definition that everyone agrees on makes your sales process more consistent, reporting more accurate and ensures that pipeline forecasting from Salesforce can be trusted.

 
 
2: Define a standard to convert leads
 
Problem: Sales reps are converting leads differently. Similar to when there is a lack of definition with stages, lacking a clear definition with the Lead Conversion point causes many similar problems with reporting. In addition, with most sales processes, it also results in some records stuck as leads while other records are in the contact / account / opportunity objects.

Solution: Here is the way I like to explain my approach to defining a lead conversion point. Sales is like dating; if there is not interest on both sides, it’s not going to happen. When both sides agree there is a potential opportunity to do business together, that is when the lead should be converted. It doesn’t mean all the details are hashed out and it doesn’t even mean that all the decision makers are onboard. It just means that the lead has been qualified internally and has expressed interest in moving forward with the sales process.
 Every business is different so the conversion point can be earlier or later in the process. The element of having some degree of qualification and agreement from the buyer and seller is key to converting the lead, that’s the main takeaway.
 
 

3: Implement Key Fields with an Exit Criteria   
 
Problem: As a salesperson moves through the sales process, new additional data points should be tracked and different data points become relevant at that part of the sales cycle. For example, a budget might not be defined until the 5th sales conversation. However, Salesforce could lacks data validation to remind the rep to collect the data before moving on. In addition, the ‘Budget’ or ‘Amount’ field could be buried in a huge list of other fields.

Solution: First, implement Key Fields in Salesforce. Key fields are dynamically shown based off the stage. For example, in the “Nurturing” stage, you might show a field called “Follow-up Date” and a reason why they were set in the “Nurturing” stage while in the “New” Stage, you might show basics like “Name,” “Job Title” and “Lead Source.” By using the key fields, you can define fields that should be either captured or referenced at a particular stage.
Second, implement validation rules to enforce exit criteria. For example, you can’t move to the proposal stage until there is a budget defined. This is a gentle reminder for reps to enter in the data they are supposed to be inputting. Sometimes people forget and automating a reminder is a great way to ensure data gets up to date and management gets the reporting they need to make important decisions.