Best Practices for Achieving Perfect Alignment between Marketing and Sales through Lead Scoring with HubSpot

The connection between marketing and sales is crucial for a company's success. A powerful way to facilitate this collaboration is by using lead scoring, a process that assigns scores to leads based on their profile and behavior. In this blog, we will explore the best practices of establishing strong alignment between marketing and sales through lead scoring, highlighting the best practices to implement and leverage HubSpot's platform effectively.

Overview

The best practices for Perfect Alignment between Marketing and Sales

  1. Alignment of Objectives

  2.Defining Qualified Leads

  3.Seamless Communication

  4.Performance Analysis

Lead Scoring Process for Transitioning from Lead to MQL

  1.Demographic Data

  2.Online Behaviors

  3.Interest Score

  4.Qualification Threshold

Effectively Managing Unqualified Leads

  1.Complete Disqualification

  2.Lead Nurturing

Conclusion

The best practices for Perfect Alignment between Marketing and Sales

1. Alignment of Objectives

One of the primary challenges in uniting marketing and sales is to share common objectives. This means both teams must work together to generate leads and convert them into customers. Achieving this requires close collaboration to define clear lead qualification criteria and determine the point at which a lead should transition from marketing to sales.

2. Defining Qualified Leads

Clear definition of qualified leads is crucial to avoid misunderstandings between marketing and sales teams. Both teams must agree on criteria that qualify a lead, such as:

• demographic data
• online behaviors
• interactions with content.

Once these criteria are established, the lead scoring process can be implemented to evaluate and score each lead based on relevance and interest.

3. Seamless Communication

Transparent communication between marketing and sales teams is a fundamental pillar of perfect alignment. Regularly sharing information about leads and their progression in the sales process allows both teams to stay informed, enabling them to make data-driven decisions at every stage of the buyer's journey.

4. Performance Analysis

Frequent analysis of lead performance stands as a critical driver in the ongoing enhancement of the lead scoring process. Through close collaboration, marketing and sales teams can identify gaps in their strategies and make necessary adjustments, leading to a more refined approach that generates a higher number of qualified leads and boosts conversion rates. This proactive approach to data-driven decision-making empowers both teams to stay agile and responsive in a dynamic market environment, ensuring sustained growth and competitiveness in the industry.

Lead Scoring Process for Transitioning from Lead to MQL

The lead scoring process is a critical step in efficiently transferring a lead from marketing to sales. Here are the steps to achieve this:

1. Demographic Data

Criteria such as industry, company size, decision-maker role, etc., should be taken into account to assess the lead's relevance to your business.

2. Online Behaviors

Interactions with the website, content downloads, email openings, social media engagement, etc., should be tracked to evaluate the lead's engagement with your brand.

3. Interest Score

By assigning points to each criterion, a cumulative score is obtained, indicating the lead's level of interest and qualification. You will see below how to setup the lead scoring property in HubSpot

(HubSpot score property setup)

4. QUALIFICATION THRESHOLD

Once a lead reaches a predefined score, they become an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and are transferred to sales for personalized follow-up.
In order to automate the lead lifecycle stage, you will use a powerful no-code tool included in HubSpot: the workflows (see screenshot below for simple automation)

(Lead scoring automation workflow)

Effectively Managing Unqualified Leads

It is inevitable that some leads may not meet the qualification criteria or are not yet fully qualified for sales engagement. To effectively manage these leads, consider the following approaches:

1. Complete Disqualification

If a lead does not meet any of the qualification criteria, they can be completely disqualified, and no further marketing contact is made.

2. Lead Nurturing

For leads showing potential but not yet meeting the required criteria, lead nurturing is an effective approach. Placing them back into a lead nurturing process allows marketing to continue nurturing the relationship and aiming to increase their score to become potential MQLs in the future.

Conclusion

Establishing perfect alignment between marketing and sales through lead scoring is vital for optimizing lead generation and conversion processes. Utilizing the powerful HubSpot platform enables marketing and sales teams to collaborate closely and benefit from a seamless flow of data, ultimately maximizing the effectiveness of their sales strategies. By defining clear qualification criteria, systematically evaluating leads, and continuously adjusting strategies, the company can not only improve sales performance but also deliver a more consistent and personalized customer experience.

Want to know more about aligning Markting & sales? Download our free guide on 6 key actions to align Marketing & Sales → Download it here