Lead scoring without software: a simple points sheet

Monday morning, fourteen new enquiries, and one person to call them. Which first? Without a sheet the answer is feel, and the feel lives in one head. A points sheet writes the feel down. It gives each new enquiry a score from two questions: does this buyer look like the customers you win, and have they done anything that shows intent? You add a few whole numbers, write the total beside the name and read the list from the top. It needs no software, but it does need testing against orders you have already won and lost. A score nobody tested is a guess with a number on it.

Keep fit and behaviour in separate columns

Fit is who the buyer is. It changes slowly and comes from the first message: the kind of business, the town, the size of the job, whether they have bought something like it before.

Behaviour is what they have done, and it changes quickly: asked for a quote, answered your questions, visited, came back a second time, went silent.

Give each its own column and then a total. A great fit who does nothing is a different case from a poor fit who keeps ringing, and one blended number hides which is which.

A sample sheet to copy and change

The rules below are hypothetical, written for a dealer in natural stone and tiles who sells to builders, architects and house owners. Replace every line with something true of your own customers.

FIT
+3  Building a new house or block, not patching a floor
+2  Architect, builder or contractor rather than a household
+2  Inside the area you deliver to
+2  The contact pays or decides

BEHAVIOUR
+3  Asked for a quote and gave an area or a stone name
+3  Visited the yard or asked you to the site
-3  No reply after two attempts
-2  Asked only for the lowest rate per square foot

Notice the two negative lines. A sheet with only positive rows drifts upward until every score is high and none means anything.

Decide the cut-offs after the test below, not before. Two lines are enough: above one figure, call within the day; between the figures, reply and set a follow-up date; below, a short reply and a note.

Test it on what already happened

Skipping this is how scoring fails. Before anyone uses the sheet, pull out about a dozen orders you won and a dozen you lost or never heard from again. Score each as it looked on the day it arrived, not with what you now know.

If the won ones do not score clearly higher, the rules are wrong. Find the line that misleads. Perhaps "contact decides" scored high on lost ones because the person you spoke to was a purchase clerk with no authority. Change that line or drop it.

Be honest about the limit. A dozen and a dozen is not proof. It tells you the sheet is plausible, which is enough to begin. Re-test after you have scored real new enquiries for a while.

A stone dealer in Udaipur

Here is an invented example. A dealer in Udaipur sells marble, granite and Kota stone to builders, architects and families building homes. The sales head returned calls in a sequence nobody else could explain, and when the sales head went on leave nobody shared it.

The first sheet gave a big score to "asked for the rate". Scored against last season's lost orders, it fell apart. Many of the lost enquiries had asked for a rate within an hour of writing and then vanished: people collecting three quotes. The winners had mostly answered a question about the floor area and which rooms the stone was for before asking for any price.

They moved the points. "Asked for the rate" lost its score, and "gave the area and the rooms" gained three. Now a junior could rank a day's calls much as the sales head did. The sheet still missed some, since a few orders came from low scorers, such as a family that wrote one terse message and then bought the whole house. So the sales head kept the right to override, with a one-word reason written beside the score.

Run it day to day

Add the fit points when the enquiry arrives and the behaviour points as things happen. Total again at the start of each day for open enquiries, and work down the list.

Let scores age. Behaviour from last month should not count like behaviour from today. When an enquiry has had no contact for a stretch you choose, take away its behaviour points and start again. Review the whole sheet when your customers change: a new product line or a new city makes some old lines wrong overnight.

When not to score

Do not score if you get only a handful of enquiries; reading each takes less time than scoring it. Do not score when each order is large and rare. A tender or a project sale needs judgement on every lead, and a number gives false comfort. And do not score before you have a history to test against. With no record of wins and losses, begin with simple labels, as in hot, warm and cold, and come back to points later.

Points decide who to call first; they do not replace the questions you ask on that call, which the note on qualifying marketing leads before sales goes through. The rest of our sales work sits under sales.

Score twenty-four old enquiries blind

Pick your twelve wins and twelve misses, score them without looking at the outcome, and adjust one line at a time until the wins rise. Lead scoring is the service that drafts and tests the sheet with you, and tell us what you need is how that starts.