CRM, lead flow and sales techniques · Lead management
Give points to the leads that closed before, not to the ones that look good.
A lead score is a number that ranks open enquiries by how likely they are to become orders. Points set from your own past close rates beat points set by opinion. This page ends in a points worksheet built from your last year of won and lost leads, and a re-run that keeps it honest.
Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.
In one paragraph
A lead score is a number that ranks open enquiries by how likely they are to become orders. Points set from your own past close rates beat points set by opinion. This page ends in a points worksheet built from your last year of won and lost leads, and a re-run that keeps it honest.
A dealer in Hubballi gives ten points to any lead from a trade fair and two to anyone from IndiaMART, because the owner met three good buyers at a fair once. Nobody checked. Last year's sheet would have shown that the fair leads closed at the same rate as everyone else, and one marketplace product line closed better than all of them.
Scoring by feel is where a small team starts, and where it stays. The alternative is plain arithmetic on rows you already have: for each source, city, product and budget answer, count the leads, count the orders, divide. The points follow the results, so a rep who argues with a score is arguing with last year's own data.
The sales head owns the worksheet and the person who runs enquiries (marketing, or the owner's assistant) owns the data pull. Both sign it off before it goes into the CRM or the sheet. The sales-process page on lead scoring covers which criteria to pick. This page covers what number each criterion is worth.
It sits before fit and interest scoring, which decides the call order, and before routing, which decides who gets the call. A small team does all of it in a spreadsheet; no paid CRM tier is needed.
Where this sits
Topic 7 of 13 in crm, lead flow and sales techniques: lead management. Segmenting, qualifying, nurturing, scoring, routing and measuring leads inside the CRM.
- The topic before
- Inbound selling: advise
- The topic after
- CRM setup and data
If you want this done for you
Give every enquiry a number that actually predicts whether it will close.
The work
What this is actually like.
“Won and lost are the only labels that count”
Export every lead from the last six to twelve months with its final result. Leads still open are left out, because an open lead has not told you anything. If the result column is blank for half the rows, fix that first; the points will mean nothing until it is filled.
“Divide each close rate by your overall rate”
Say one hundred leads gave eight orders, so the whole sheet closes at 8%. A source that gave 4 orders from 20 leads closes at 20%, two and a half times the average. That ratio is what you convert to points, and it keeps the arithmetic visible to anyone who asks.
“Small groups lie”
Three leads from Mysuru and one order is a 33% close rate and tells you nothing. Pick a floor with your sales head, such as twenty leads, and give every group below it a neutral score until more rows arrive.
“Points drift when the business changes”
A new product, a price rise or a new ad channel changes who enquires. The points from last year then reward the old business. Treat a change in product or channel as a reason to re-run the sheet before the quarter ends.
What we do
What you end up with.
The documents this topic produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.
Points worksheet
One row per attribute value: source, city, product, stated budget, enquiry type. Columns: leads, orders, close rate, ratio to the sheet average, points, sample flag. The sales head fills the points; the data owner fills the counts.
Result: Finished when a rep can score a new lead in under a minute using only the sheet.
Cut-off bands
Three bands written as total points, for example call today, call this week, nurture. The sales head sets the cut-offs by checking which band last year's orders fell in.
Result: Finished when at least four in five of last year's orders would have landed in the top band, or you have written down why not.
Clean source column
A short fixed list of lead sources, with 'unknown' as a real value. Free-text sources such as 'fb', 'Facebook' and 'face book' are merged before any counting starts.
Result: Finished when the source column has no value that appears only once.
Re-run note
Half a page after each re-run: which points moved, which groups crossed the sample floor, what the sales head changed and why. Kept beside the worksheet.
Result: Finished when someone new can see why a score changed between two quarters.
Why us
Why owners pick GullySales over an agency.
Marketing and sales, as one job
Most agencies stop at the enquiry. We also fix what happens after it: the reply, the follow-up, the quote and the CRM.
The person on the first call does the work
No account managers in between. You are never handed to someone you have not met.
A baseline before anything starts
Your numbers are written down on day one, so every later report compares against something honest.
The fee in writing, split three ways
Our time, your media spend and production on separate lines. You always see what goes to us.
No guarantees we cannot keep
The term is agreed in writing and never a default twelve months. We never promise a ranking or a lead count, because nobody controls those.
One office, and we say so
Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru. We work across India by call and WhatsApp and travel when a session needs to be in person.
#257, 3rd floor, Sri Nanjundeshwara Complex, Nagarbhavi 8th Block, Outer Ring Road. How we work.
Your brief
Tell us what you need, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps about your business, what you want and who decides. Most questions are a tap, and you can skip any you would rather answer on the call.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
How many past leads do I need before scoring?
Do I need a paid CRM tier for this?
What if reps disagree with the score?
Should price enquiries score low?
How long is the contract?
How soon will we see results?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
What if we are not happy with the work?
Where to go next
The work that carries this topic further.
The rest of lead management
- Lead management audit and map
- Contact segments for lead management
- Fit and readiness qualification matrix
- Lead nurture campaign plan
- Fit interest and negative scoring
- Lead routing rulebook and automation
- Follow up promise dashboard
- Lead KPIs and SQL feedback
- Rejected and no decision lead review
- Lead pacing plan
Or read all of crm, lead flow and sales techniques.
Your next practical step
Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.