So you’ve invested in inbound marketing and now the leads are starting to flood in. That’s great news!
Having an abundance of leads is fantastic, but it can also be pretty overwhelming for your sales team. When they look at the huge list of contacts, how will they know where to start?
That’s where lead scoring in HubSpot comes in!
Do you learn better from listening rather than reading? If so, we've got the perfect podcast episode for you! On this episode of Evenbound's podcast, we sat down with our HubSpot Account Manager, Zach Bischmann, to tell you everything you need to know about lead scoring in HubSpot.
What Exactly Is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is the process of assigning value to each lead you generate. Sales teams use it to separate warm leads from those who aren't quite ready to make a purchasing decision so they’re always putting the most effort towards the leads most likely to close.
Lead scoring, especially in a system like HubSpot, is an exceptionally useful tool that can contribute to better, faster, and more streamlined sales. Lead scoring eliminates a lot of the busywork of sales, helping your team focus on delivering the right message, to the right, qualified leads, at exactly the right time. And when you're doing that, you're going to see serious growth.
What is HubSpot Predictive Lead Scoring?
HubSpot lead scoring is included starting at the HubSpot CRM Professional tier and is available in two distinct versions: Standard HubSpot Lead Scoring and Predictive Lead Scoring. Let’s chat about Predictive Lead Scoring first.
HubSpot Predictive Lead Scoring is available to those on the Enterprise Tier. It's an automated feature that analyzes all of the data on the contacts in your CRM, and uses that information to automatically score leads.
The best part of HubSpot Predictive Lead Scoring is that it's constantly learning. As you get new contacts and as deals close in your CRM, HubSpot continues to compile that data and improve its lead-scoring capabilities.
Helpful Properties in HubSpot Predictive Lead Scoring
HubSpot Predictive Lead Scoring is available in two properties, "Likelihood to Close" and "Contact Priority.”
Likelihood to Close
This is a contact property that HubSpot automatically assigns to your leads based on the number of data points the CRM collects. It is represented by a percentage.
So, if your contact has a 20% likelihood to close, that means that based on HubSpot’s data on the contact, their behavior, and compared to similar contacts your sales team has worked with in the past, this contact is only 20% likely to close in the next 90 days. A higher percentage is always better for this contact property.
Contact Priority
This is another predictive contact property from HubSpot. For this property, HubSpot takes all of the contacts in your CRM, and splits them into four tiers:
- Very High
- High
- Medium
- Low
Again, HubSpot is pulling from both behavior and data in your CRM to predict which of your leads are the highest priority and which might not be ready to make a sale yet. This is remarkably useful for your sales team, as they can see exactly which leads they should prioritize at a glance.
For both of these predictive contact properties, it's good to know that HubSpot works to learn common patterns and behaviors and improve how it assigns leads over time. So, the more diligent your sales team is at logging contacts and activity in HubSpot, the more accurate these properties will become.
How to See Your HubSpot Predictive Lead Scores
Now that you know what these predictive lead scores are, let's quickly go over how you find them and how you use them.
- Navigate to Contacts
- Click More Filters at the top of the contact list.
- HubSpot will populate all of the available filters.
- Type into the search bar either “contact priority” or “likelihood to close”.
- Choose Is Known
- Click Apply Filter
Now your contact list will show each contact's predictive lead score. You can add another filter to show both the Likelihood to Close and Contact Priority. With your list filtered this way, your sales team can see at a glance which leads are high priority and which are likely to close in 90 days.
Standard HubSpot Lead Scoring
This is the second type of lead scoring offered by HubSpot. Available to most HubSpot subscriptions, Standard HubSpot Lead Scoring allows you to automatically assign values to a contact based on both negative and positive attributes. This tool allows you to take control of your contact list by selecting what attributes are most important to your sales team when it comes to indicating a qualified, motivated prospect.
How to Set Up Standard Lead Scoring in HubSpot
To implement HubSpot lead scoring, you first have to know what makes a good lead. Talk to your sales team, look at the data you've got in your CRM, and consider interviewing a few customers to determine what attributes make for a great, motivated lead.
Once you have an idea of what a good lead looks like, it's time to set up HubSpot lead scoring in your HubSpot portal.
- Click the Settings gear in the top-right menu bar of your HubSpot portal.
- Navigate to the Properties tab on the left side of your screen.
- Browse or search for the "HubSpot Score" property.
- Click Edit
At this point, HubSpot will pull up a form, and you’ll have the option to add either positive or negative attribute sets.
Let's look at a couple of examples:
Setting Positive Attributes
Let's say your sales team really wants leads from companies that make over a certain annual revenue. Here's how we would set that up:
- Click Add New Set
- Click Company Properties
- Click Annual Revenue
Choose the revenue number that best suits your ideal lead. HubSpot offers a range of options, like "is greater than", "is equal to", or "is less than".
Once you've chosen your ideal Annual Revenue, assign that attribute value by clicking on the little pencil next to "Score".
The value should make sense for the attribute. For example, if this contact fits your ideal revenue range AND fits your buyer personas, you should give it a higher score to indicate to your sales team that this lead is a great fit.
Once you've assigned a score to the attribute, click Apply Filter, and your HubSpot Score will go live.
Setting Negative Attributes
The steps to add negative attribute sets are exactly the same as those for positive attributes. However, negative attributes are assigned negative scores rather than positive scores.
For example, let's say you don't work in a certain region. You can assign a negative score to any contact that comes in from a region you don't serve. This will bring their score down, so they're not a top lead in your sales contact lists.
HubSpot Lead Scoring "and" & "or" Sets
Similar to positive and negative attributes, HubSpot also lets you stack attribute sets. HubSpot offers both "And" and "Or" options that you can apply to your positive and negative lead-scoring attributes to stack them.
When you use "And" between two attributes, that means a lead must have both of those attributes to receive the score. For example, let's say you have two positive attributes — one on annual revenue, and one on personas. If a lead fits into one of your personas and fits into your annual revenue, then they will receive a positive score. But, a lead who only has one of those attributes won't get the additional lead score points.
If you'd like that lead to get credit for just fitting into your buyer persona, you'd want to use HubSpot's "Or" option instead. Your new positive attribute set would read, "Lead has annual revenue greater than $X, Or Persona is persona x". By using this feature, your leads only need to fit one of these attributes to get the score.
How to View Contacts With a HubSpot Lead Score
After you've set up HubSpot lead scoring, HubSpot will automatically apply the scores you've set up to any new lead that fits the attributes you've created. You can see each of your contact's scores by following these steps:
- Navigate to Contacts
- Click More Filters at the top of the contact list.
- HubSpot will populate all of the available filters.
- Type "HubSpot Score" into the search bar and click "HubSpot Score" when it pops up.
- Choose your score from the available list. If you're just starting, we recommend choosing "is known". This will populate all of the contacts that have been assigned a value according to your new lead scoring attributes, which you can then sort by highest to lowest.
- Click Apply Filter
Unlock Your Sales Success with Evenbound
New to the HubSpot Sales Hub? As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, we've got the team and the training to help you get comfortable using all of those new tools to streamline sales and close more deals. Get in touch with the Evenbound team to learn more about tools like lead scoring, sales sequences, and more!
