Steve Daly
(813) 983-9898

Responding to Michael’s question about why survey-based lead scoring should be a part of any Lead Management mix – I’d first point readers to TIP #99 on this blog site for information about what the process in capable of, if used properly.

Next, I can say my personal motivation for including survey-based scoring in my Lead Management plans is 3-fold:

1. A marketer’s contact database is not just a repository for names, titles addresses and phone numbers to live until a salesperson or campaign planner decides to bring them to life by attempting to make contact. Every individual record is a real person who (if your contact data was developed using finely tuned criteria/relevancy filters) represents a potential relationship.

Once you can humanize your database marketing perspective in this way, it stands to reason that people prefer – and respond differently – to various ‘contact channels’ used to gain meaningful engagement. Some folks inherently prefer and respond to webinar offers, for others its downloading white-papers, or phone calls, or demo meetings … and finally, of the 75,000 or so leads I’ve managed through various sales funnels over the years (since I started keeping track), about 12% of them are “survey responders” (I have to admit here I’m not one of them, but I’ll sit through webinars until my eyes bleed).
(As a BTW — It’s something you really have to work at in your CRM process, but “contact channel preference” is an important lead nurturing/segmentation data-point.)

2. Next, if done correctly, there is no faster way to gain sales qualification insight. Inasmuch, I encourage clients to make sure the survey questions being asked, and the value assigned to each potential answer has complete and total buy in from the sales people who will be working with the leads once they are scored. The point is, when scored survey responses are passed to sales, you’re giving what amounts to a strategic platform of information that can be used to optimize initial and subsequent contacts with the respondent.

It basically boils down to this … chose the intro that you think has the best chance of driving meaningful engagement …

• “Hi Bob, I’m James from vendor ABC and I’m following up on a survey you took last week that indicates your company cannot currently (insert key value here). You also indicated that being able to (insert key value here) would be of extreme importance to you in the next 12-18 months because you have a (insert key driver here) coming up.

Or —

• Hi Bob, I James from vendor ABC and I’m calling to follow up because I see that you downloaded a white paper from our website last week.

3. Lastly, my experience is that people cut from the “survey responder” cloth are usually responsive people in general. A responsive nature is what caused them to accept the survey invitation and answer your questions in the first place, with or without an incentive. So, as a sales guy trying to meet and develop a champion inside of a multitude of organizations, knowing who the “responders” are is pure gold to me.

I hope this helps.

Sure, lead scoring helps — but that “score” is useless without a) enough data and b) accurate data. I commented on Cody’s previous post (an excellent piece by the way, tip #99) — but I can’t emphasize enough how many people are satisfied with the results of their survey without considering statistical elements like significant SAMPLE SIZE (how many responses you get, response rate, etc.) and ACCURACY (level of detail, completion, relevance of question to respondent, etc.).

Great post, Cody. Response rate is huge, and so is accuracy. You address both in this post.

Using randomization increases validity/accuracy by reducing answer bias.

Keeping your survey short increases response rate (stating the obvious here), but also helps accuracy. Using skip logic, for instance, makes sure your FINANCE lead never sees a question about IT/Tech. It makes the survey longer and increases the liability, if you will, of a FINANCE guy answering TECH questions… not a good fit for getting accurate responses.

If anyone wants to talk about this, let me know. My company, Cvent, offers an online survey tool that addresses these types of things, helping you get some of the data that Cody and ReachForce leverage in their lead targeting services.

Dave

What I was going to write was that I am very pleased to have found your blog and that I will be subscribing and reading avidly from now on.

I work in business development for a digital marketing agency and it is always great to read someone who has an interest in the same subject matter as myself

Cheers

Would it be possible to get a blog post that details a little more of why a company would want to a lead scoring survey?