Qualifying Construction Leads in 2022: Best Practices to Save Time and Money

So you just spent two hours at a lead’s house only to walk away empty handed, what now?

Wasting time is frustrating for everyone, but it’s especially frustrating when you realize you never should have been pursuing this lead because they were not an ideal fit for your business. 

In this post, we’ll tell you how to distinguish a good lead from a bad one, go over lead scoring, and walk you through how to effectively create a lead scoring system so that you never waste your time on a bad lead again. 

What is a lead?

A lead is any person who indicates that they’re interested in your company’s services. 

Typically a lead is someone your sales team would contact after they opened the line of communication. (AKA the lead called about a consult, or maybe submitted a request for more information on a website.) Gone are the days of cold calling strangers! 

For example, let’s say a lead filled out an online survey to learn more about how to keep her basement dry. The next day, the basement waterproofing company that created the survey would send her an email with information on how they could help her take care of her basement. 

Because she already expressed interest in the problem the waterproofing company could solve, she became a good, viable lead. But this won’t always be the case, not all leads are created equal and nor are they qualified the same. 

How to tell a good lead from a bad one

There are several reasons why someone might not have been an ideal lead. 

It could be that their project or problem isn’t something that your business specializes in or feels confident tackling (or maybe the problem is actually too small), it could be that the lead doesn’t have the necessary budget or didn’t realize the cost of executing their project, or it could be that the lead simply doesn’t fit your demographic or understand the value you bring. 

Whatever the reason is, you don’t want to be wasting time during your sales process on a bad lead when you could be pursuing a good one. So how do you know which leads are good and which ones are not ideal for your business?

The best thing you can do for your business is understand the demographics of your ideal customers. Who are they? Where are they? What kind of a budget do they have? What’s their biggest problem that your service can solve for them? 

The mentality that everyone is a potential customer is no longer viable. Just because you own a window company doesn’t mean that everyone with windows is a good potential customer for your business. 

Understanding your ideal customer will allow you to analyze your leads more clearly and pursue the ones most beneficial to you. 

What is lead scoring?

Lead scoring is a method of ranking or scoring the sales-readiness of a lead. This means that leads are given a numerical value (or score) to decide where they fall on a scale ranging from "interested" to "ready for a sale.”

The requirements for these qualifications are entirely up to you, but your team needs to be consistent in order to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working on the same scale.

The score you assign a lead can be based on their level of engagement with your business, the amount of information they’ve provided, actions they’ve taken, or other criteria that your sales team determines. 

Every business will have a different way of qualifying leads and value systems vary based on the industry. The best way to create your own value system is to look at past leads.

Which ones became customers and what did they have in common? Similarly, which leads did not become customers? Once you’ve looked at previous data from both sides, you’ll be able to more accurately decide which attributes in a lead should be weighted more heavily based on their likelihood to convert to a customer. 

Determining which data points to score

As we’ve already mentioned, how you score your leads will differ from how other businesses score theirs. It all comes down to who your customers are and what makes them a good customer for your business. Lead scoring can be broken down into two categories: demographic information and behavioral information. 

Some examples of demographic information you might choose to score:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Job title
• Income/Revenue
• Company size (B2B)

Behavioral criteria refers to how a lead interacts with your company or the actions a lead takes. Examples you might want to score include:

• Form/survey submissions
• Free trial requests
• Email opens
• Email subscription
• Webpage visits
• Social media engagement

Every business has their own definition of sales-readiness, so we can’t tell you exactly what to score and why. But hopefully some of these examples will help you brainstorm!

Assigning point values

Remember: Not all scoring criteria are created equal. It’s your job to figure out which traits and attributes contribute to a lead becoming a customer and assign a value to those traits. 

For example, maybe leads that fill out a survey your company promotes are more likely to convert to customers, so they receive a score of 20. On the other hand, leads that subscribe to your email newsletter are less likely to convert, so you assign them a score of 5. 

Again, the exact data points and number will depend on your business’ unique lead scoring system—but you get the gist! 

Here’s what you need to do to develop an effect lead scoring system:

Talk to your sales team

Your sales reps are the ones interacting with your customers the most and they likely have valuable insight on what makes a lead likely to become a paying customer.  

Talk to your customers

Your customers can tell you about their journey to becoming a buyer in great detail. Ask your best customers what early steps they took before deciding to buy—satisfied customers are more likely to respond to surveys or conversations like this.

As you talk to more of them, you’ll start to see trends that will assist you in your lead scoring.

Analyze your marketing analytics

Examine all of your past marketing campaigns, whatever they may be. If you’re running ads, which ones were successful? Which ones generated the most buyers?

The same goes for surveys, form requests, marketing email click-through rates, etc. 

Grow better with better leads

There you have it folks! Now that you know how to distinguish a good lead from a bad one, what lead scoring is, and how to assign lead scores, you can make better choices about which leads are worth your time, and which ones are nothing but a waste of time. 

Armed with the best leads for your company, you’ll be able to create more effective marketing campaigns and grow your business!