Five Steps for Scoring Your Salesforce® Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities
Step #1- Scoring is Not Just for Leads!
Put Scoring Functionality Inside the Lead, Account, Contact and Opportunity
Many Salesforce users are familiar with marketing techniques which apply a score to potential leads.
For example, a prospective lead that opened two marketing emails with a link to an interesting whitepaper…. would earn an increased score
Eventually when the score reached a predetermined point, the lead would be escalated.
Adding scoring to Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities has had a dramatic impact on increasing sales for our clients because it helps salespeople, marketers and managers focus specifically on the highest scoring Accounts or Opportunities most likely to result in sales.
In addition, by using scoring attributes, the method of determining who is the best prospect or opportunity is less likely to be subjective or open to various interpretations.
We typically conduct a 3 to 4 Hour workshop with key stakeholders in sales and marketing where we determine the scorable characteristics of Leads, Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities.
Step #2- Each Object Will Have its Own Scoring Metrics
Gather Key Stakeholders to Agree on Scorable Characteristics of Leads, Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities.
For example, by focusing on Account (Company) Fields we use individual checkboxes or single-value picklists where we ask the users about various attributes about a certain Account (and why they buy) such as:
Are they a Previous Customer?
Are they Adding New Employees?
Is there New Leadership?
The actual checkboxes vary based on the client or specific industry.
In the example above, we found that a certain client was most likely to sell to Accounts that they had ‘previously sold to’, ‘were adding new employees’, or had a ‘new leader’.
Note that these specific questions are very objective and can be answered by obtaining data from specific and reliable sources
Previous customer knowledge can be obtained from the accounting system
Identifying new employees can be seen inside Linked-In®
Step #3- Determine a Scoring Value!
Once the Checkbox & Picklists Have Been Determined…Apply the Score!
Specific answers will have varying score values:
Individual Checkboxes
(if a) Previous Customer (5 Points)
(if Company is) Adding New Employees (5 Points)
(if Company has) New Leadership (5 Points)
Then, for each of these checkboxes, a corresponding FORMULA field (hidden on the Salesforce page layout) will need to be created called:
Previous Customer Score
Adding New Employees Score
New Leadership Score
Using Picklists
The process for scoring picklists is similar. Let’s say you have found that when analyzing past customers that you have found greater success selling into companies that are privately owned than you have had selling into large public companies
Here is an example of potential Picklist Fields to score these findings:
Corporate Ownership Type (Picklist)
Publicly Traded (2 Points)
Subsidiary of Foreign Owned Co (5 Points)
Privately Owned (10 Points)
For this PICKLIST field, a corresponding FORMULA field (hidden on page layout) will need to be created called:
Corporate Ownership Type Score
Step #4- Use Formula Fields to Calculate Score!
Scores Can be Calculated for Checkboxes and Picklists
Checkbox Formula:
The FORMULA for these fields (Checkbox Fields) will look like this example:
IF(Previous__Customer_c,5,0)
Picklist Formula:
The FORMULA for these fields (Picklist Value Fields) will look like this example:
IF(ISPICKVAL( Corporate_ownership_type, " Privately Owned "), 10, IF(ISPICKVAL( Corporate_ownership_type, " Subsidiary of Foreign Owned Co "), 5,
IF(ISPICKVAL( Corporate_ownership_type, " Publicly Traded”), 2, 0))
Step #5- Calculate a Total Account Score!
Create a Corresponding FORMULA Field called ‘Total Account Score’!
This field should be VISIBLE on the Account page layout.
The FORMULA for this field will look like this:
Previous_ Customer_Score_c + Adding_New_Employees_Score_c + New_Leadership Score_c + Corporate_Ownership_Type_Score_c
So, in this example, if the following items were checked:
Previous Customer (5 Points)
Adding New Employees (5 Points)
……..And the Picklist Value of Corporate Ownership Type = ‘Privately Owned’ is selected
Total Company Score would be “30”
Now that you have a Total Account Score, you can filter records and create reports based on looking for Accounts that have higher Account scores.
Repeat the process for Contacts and Opportunities and then combine the scores to identify the Opportunities that are inside Accounts with a high score and where you are working with a Contact with a high score!
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. Examples cited in this article are only examples. Salesforce®, is a trademark of Salesforce.com, inc. Linked-In® is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
© 2019 Edgemont CRM, LLC. All Rights Reserved – September 2019
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