Overview

Lead Liaison offers lead grading to help qualify prospects based on how well a prospect matches your company's ideal buyer profile. Prospects are graded according to specific demographics or characteristics. Grading values are represented by a letter, ranging from A+ to F.

What is Lead Grading?

• Qualifies leads based on explicit information
• Explicit information is location, company size, title, industry or any custom parameter. Essentially, items you might find on someone’s business card
• Best practice is to use lead grading for explicit information and lead scoring for implicit information (online behavior and/or engagement)

Benefits of Lead Grading

• Helps sales people do their job better
• Identifies ideal  and non-ideal buyers
• Helps marketers communicate more effectively
• Segment databases
• Profile prospects/companies based on type of customer
• Automatically route leads
• Marketing supporting sales

Differences Between Lead Grading and Lead Scoring

Preparing for Lead Grading

• What criteria does your company look for?
• How does your company define an ideal lead?
• What values are important?
• Location?
• Company size?
• Job titles?
• How important are those values?
• Are some values more important than others?

Using Lead Grading

Segment your database based on lead grade. Use the Prospect Grade filter:

Increment/decrement or set lead grade based on criteria using the Change Lead Grade action:

Setting Up Lead Grading

To setup a lead grading process do the following:

• Click Settings > App Setup > Lead Qualification > Lead Grading > Add Custom Grading button

An orange popup will appear. At this stage, decide if you want to grade existing prospects in the Lead Liaison database or only new prospects that enter your database. Typically, you'll only need to grade Known prospects. Known prospects are people in the database with an email address. 

Each section in the configuration popup is described below:

• Name = The name of the Lead Grading Process. The name entered here will also be the name of the Campaign. 
• Stage = Existing or new prospects. 
  • Existing Prospects = Existing prospects in the Lead Liaison database. This is a good way to profile your existing database for your sales team. 
  • New Prospects = Selects only new prospects that enter the system. 
• Type = Known, Unknown or both. 
  • Known = Prospects with an email address. 
  • Unknown = Prospects without an email address. 
  • Both = Both Known and Unknown prospects. 

Grade Your Database

To grade your existing prospect database do the following:

• Click Settings > App Setup > Lead Qualification > Lead Grading > Add Custom Grading button
• Enter a Name for the lead grading process. The name will also be the Campaign name. 
• Select Existing Prospects in the Stage section
• Select Known in the Type section

• Based on your configuration, the software will launch a three step process and load a template. In Step 1, the Known Lead filter is added. Known Lead means only grade prospects with an email address. Since no other filter(s) exist, all prospects in your database will be graded.

• Click the Next button

• By default, the system loads the Change Lead Grade action. Use + to increase the lead grade. Use - to decrease the lead grade and use = to set the lead grade.

• To add filter criteria to the action click the Add Condition button (optional)

• Click the Next button
• By default, the system will run your grading process across your entire database once after clicking the Activate button. If you prefer to activate the lead grading process at some point in the future set the start date accordingly before clicking the Activate button

Grade New Prospects

To grade your existing prospect database do the following:

• Click Settings > App Setup > Lead Qualification > Lead Grading > Add Custom Grading button
• Enter a Name for the lead grading process. The name will also be the Campaign name. 
• Select New Prospects in the Stage section
• Select Known in the Type section
• Based on your configuration, the software will launch a three step process and load a template. In Step 1, Known Lead and Create Date are loaded. Known Lead means only grade prospects with an email address. Create Date within 1 day will only select new prospects that have been created within the day. 

• Click the Next button
• By default, the system loads the Change Lead Grade action. Use + to increase the lead grade. Use - to decrease the lead grade and use = to set the lead grade. 
• To add filter criteria to the action click the Add Condition button (optional)

• Click the Next button
• By default, the system will continually match prospects every hour after clicking the Activate button. If you prefer to activate the lead grading process at some point in the future set the start date accordingly before clicking the Activate button

Managing Lead Grading Processes

To manage your lead grading processes do the following:

• Click Settings > App Setup > Lead Qualification > Lead Grading 
• The table displayed will automatically be filtered by Type = Lead Grading

Viewing Lead Grade

The Lead Grade is visible in your CRM, if connected to a CRM. For example, in Salesforce.com the Lead Grade is part of the Lead Liaison Marketing Data section and can be reported on using standard Salesforce.com reporting mechanisms. Lead Grade is also visible in the lead's Prospect Profile as shown in the screen shot below: