In your marketing process, do you recommend doing lead nurturing first, or lead scoring?

Focusing on lead scoring first works well if you're primary problem is that you have too many lead. If sales is having a difficult time sifting through them, trying to separate the ready-to-buy ones from those who aren't yet at that stage, lead scoring is a good process to tackle.

If you're just starting out, it's worthwhile to focus your efforts on developing a comprehensive nurturing or content marketing plan today.

Imagine if you are going out fishing. You go to where you think the fish are, you put some attractive bait on the line, you cast out right where you think you may get a bite. You wait. Perhaps some fish notice your bait and consider taking a bite at it. That's nurturing.

After the fish is on the line and you reel it in, you have a look at the fish. Perhaps it's too small. Maybe it's the wrong kind of fish, one you couldn't possibly eat. Or perhaps you just caught an old tire. You have to figure out what to do with it now that you've brought it in. That's scoring.

If you have plenty of fish to sift and sort, you should first look at a lead scoring system. If you need to provide a continuous stream of leads to sales, look first to your nurturing programs.

I hate to disagree, but I have a different opinion on this one.

You need to start with capturing behavior (often through nurturing) as a first step. True, you can put in some basic lead scoring to see which are your targets and which are less likely to purchase, but demographic scoring alone will not tell you when a sales rep should reach out. Instead, by putting nurturing in place the marketer starts driving activities (email opens, website visits), and can then score off of these activities so the marketer can prioritize leads by who is getting ready to buy (behavior).

Example 1: ABC company has a 10k database and 3K meet target demographics identified though scoring. They do not yet have nurturing.

Example 2: ABC company has a 10K database. 100 visited the pricing page this week and 300 people opened and clicked though on an email in their nurturing program that explained why ABC company was better than their competition. They do not yet have scoring.

My guess is that the best first efforts would be in putting the nurturing emails together in example 2. The sales reps will love these leads because they will have something to talk about (the content they viewed). True, some of these people may not be a right fit, but the sales reps may be able to scan through these to pick out the best until you get a chance to put lead scoring in place.

Just my two cents.

As "the guy" quoted at DemandCon, I'll give some context to my recommendation which had to do with how to align sales and marketing.

My recommendation
In general, I recommend that marketing "starts" with lead scoring to align sales and marketing as opposed to starting with nurturing so the conversation focuses on generating the right kind of qualified leads for sales. No doubt, if there is not sufficient quantity than increasing campaign volume, inbound, and nurtures will help ideally with the lack of quantity issue.

But when it comes to aligning S & M, nothing in my mind can help align the teams better than drawing out the ideal customer profile, rating inbound leads against it (via scoring) and nurturing those leads that are not sales ready.

I like Dave's answer but also believe the discussion has to be taken within the context of overall lead management which goes far beyond lead scoring and nurturing and also includes:
- Data Management
- Lead Planning
- Lead Routing
- Metrics
- Content Blueprint Development

Looking at it simply from a nurturing and scoring perspective is a limited view and there are to many other process areas that also need to be considered and developed.

It will be very difficult to get anything out of your lead nurture program if you do not have any qualification criteria up front - this starts with defining every step in the process (response through customer), assigning qualification criteria, then building your scoring model.

I do agree with Thor in that the qualification process can start simply enough once the definitions are in place and should mature from there. However to start some kind of nurture or have sales sift through simply to create the perception that they are not getting less leads does not accomplish anything.

Keep in mind that the development of lead management process is not a marketing only initiative. Sales are equal partners on developing and implementing process and this will avoid the issues that are mentioned above.

Truth is developing an end-to-end lead management process is hard work even if you start out with nurturing and scoring. To do so takes a unified approach, an understanding of your customer (an ongoing, continual excercise) and ownership. If you are not ready for the hard work and the time it will take to do this right, then it will not produce the results.

Carlos Hidalgo
The Annuitas Group
@cahidalgo

In today's marketing scenario, nurturing starts even before a potential buyer becomes a Lead. Marketers today, create their buyer personas and then create content that would be relevant to these buyers, which is then populated across various media channels.

You have started the process of educating and advising them, ensuring you remain in their purview when they finally decide to take the plunge, which is the core purpose of nurturing.

The point is unofficially you have started your nurturing process, leading a buyer and assisting him in taking a informed decision.

Scoring becomes important to understand, what should be the next step of nurturing, where in the buying process is the Lead in and how should he be prioritized.

So apart from prioritizing, Lead scoring gives direction to your nurturing strategy, helps you match your content, to the needs of the Lead making certain he converts into a potential buyer.

I would agree with Lewis, Scoring should be followed by nurturing as it enables you to put together a nurturing strategy and a clear roadmap which is backed by data and proof points, ensuring better results.

I have to say I´m a little disappointed, there is not much room for expansion. As Jeff says, Steve is right on the money with his response. :)
I would add, that as with many things, whether to focus on Nurturing or Scoring is circumstantial. For example, If you are using a Marketing Automation tool both can be done simultaneously.
Prioritizing the target market and lead scoring is different to Qualifying. Personally, I disagree that you should score leads prior to engagement unless you can bee 100% sure you are scoring and/or qualifying them accurately. You would not want to be basing a long term marketing initiative on pre-judgement.

Thanks,

Michael
Twitter - @mike_trow

I’m in complete agreement with everyone about the benefits of lead scoring to facilitate and enable organizations to zero in on what constitute the right types of qualified leads for them. But I think there’s a risk starting with scoring.

In the absence of sales and marketing automation, incoming leads are traditionally sorted into various levels of interest and qualification based on assessments by Sales. Whether hot/warm/cold, or A/B/C/D, these categories are based on evaluating lead behaviors, demographics and business profiles. Although maybe not as scientific as lead scoring algorithms, the goals and raw materials seem pretty much the same: identify the leads Sales should spend time on.

Without additional behavioral data from subsequent lead interactions with an organization, lead scoring seems to become a quantified approach to doing what Sales has already been doing. It may be more explicit in the values it assigns to each characteristic, but the value assignments are based on the same experience factors as the previous hot/warm/cold and A/B/C/D categories.

Since Sales already does some kind of lead prioritization, we start with improving the quality of the lead flow into Sales. This seems to be where the real alignment of Sales and Marketing occurs since both groups are sharing the same lead definition, and Marketing is gearing its results to deliver what Sales really wants.

All good stuff!

I recently wrote a blog post on an approach (crawl, walk, run, win) to getting started with B2B marketing automation that might be helpful:

www.sales-lead-insights.com/2011/b2b-marketing-automation-crawl-walk-run-win/

First a caveat. Enterprise corporations have silos. Marketing departments who don't talk to sales and sales departments who don't talk to marketing. Lead Scoring is often used as a way for Marketing to make Leads for Sales without actually talking to them, with arbitrary numbers replacing common sense and intuition into when someone is ready to engage more closely. Don't do it.

Every salesperson since time began has had to prioritise leads to make best use of their time. Most would admit to being bad at getting back to people who showed interest but weren't ready to buy now. And modern marketing techniques allow more touches with prospects than we ever had time for previously, giving us much richer feedback than we ever had on their buying intent.

Your answer isn't to do one, then the other in a sequential process. It is to do both continuously during the prospect's engagement process.
Let's say you know that your product appeals to companies between $1 and $50m t/o and with 20-1000 employees. You can probably be quite specific on what type of company will buy. You know that you need the CEO, CFO and COO involved to make a buying decision.

Your engagement process starts when someone visit your website. Customer Intelligence software like Merlin's will identify them and their company. Concentrate on the companies you know will buy. Fast track visitors who meet your criteria.
Your Customer Intelligence software can tell you contact details for the people you need to talk to at the company and location which is looking at your products. Remember that the person doing the research is rarely the key decision maker and almost never the only person involved.

You also get insight into what products your web visitor is interested in from their visit. You can see how far they are into their buying process. How committed they are. Whether it is a single site or company-wide decision. You can even, if your site is well designed, get an idea of their budget.

Now you're ready for nurturing. Create nurturing tracks for the three decision makers you're concentrating on (CEO, CFO and COO). What do they need at each of the stages of buying (Unaware, Reviewing, Considering, Evaluating and Buying)? Layer this over your existing information (stage, interest etc.) and demographics (company size etc.). Another caveat - often the researcher is an influencer or consultant and the company you have data on may not be the final purchaser.
At each stage nurturing should also include qualification to fast track or downgrade according to "tells" on the pace of their buying process. By nurturing three decision makers you get a much more powerful insight - they triangulate to give you a more accurate overall picture.

Nurturing should also include interaction. If people are really considering a product, they will volunteer information to help match their needs to the right product. Info on the parameters which are important to them, who they really need to persuade and what will influence him/her. What your product needs to interface with and what other products are under consideration. Even what are the major roadblocks to a buying decision.

From this the hot leads quickly identify themselves. Customer Intelligence software allows sales to engage with these by phone or face to face without taking them out of the nurturing system - indeed the results of that engagement are taken into account. If you only have marketing automation, you may have to pass them over to Sales via the CRM, but this can cause a disconnect in your three way nurturing as two receive no contact.

Not that interested people also identify themselves. They are a rich source of data.
In the middle are the not ready yet people. Both need a special approach - but that is a subject for another discussion.

I'd be happy to answer, but Steve's response is perfect.

Option 1 - Too many leads
Answer: Start with lead scoring. Uncover good opportunities.

Option 2 - Just starting
Answer: Start with engaging and attracting new opportunities, and then nurturing them.

Jeff Ogden, President
Find New Customers