Analyzing Sales Prospects $($Comparing Prospects Using Online Lead Scoring System$)$

After graduating with a marketing degree, you landed a job at a thriving real estate agency in Orange County, California. The owner, Linda, has a diversified clientele that enjoys residing in her county because it combines the fun of Disneyland and Knott$$s Berry Farm with the sun of Huntington Beach. In order to analyze and understand her customers, she has been using an internal homemade Excel spreadsheet approach to produce sales leads, but this has resulted in an inefficient and frustrating process in comparison to other approaches performed by salespeople. You share with Linda that in some instances, salespeople are happy with a success rate of $10$ percent when prospecting. This may mean that only one out of $10$ prospects are receptive to a meeting, or that it takes $10$ attempts to secure a meeting with a particular prospect. At this rate, salespeople invest a great deal of time against what can seem like minimal returns.

So$,$ she asked you to come up with a more advanced and precise alternative. You suggested online sales lead scoring, a process that determines the desirability, quality, and tendency of an online sales lead prospect. It is both the key to a new customer acquisition strategy and an improvement of the internal management of sales and marketing resources. It matches the right sales lead with the right agent, who is capable of communicating the right message and value offer. Linda was pleased with the new approach and asked you to implement it$.$ Accordingly, she asked you to give her and her team a presentation about how online sales lead scoring works.

You prepared Figure $1($see below$),$ containing positive online behaviors, weight, and frequency of the activities of four sales prospects $($A$,$ B$,$ C$,$ and D$)$ to show at your presentation.

Figure $1$: Lead Scoring Matrix $($Positive Activities$)$

Positive Online Behaviors Weight A B C D

Submitted $$Contact Me$$ Form $251010$

Submitted Online Form $51020$

Downloaded Offers $102010$

Visited Firm$$s Website Pages $55333$

Registered for Webinar $31140$

Attended Webinar $101120$

Engaged via Email $38012$

Socially Engaged $510233$

Watched a Demo $71151$

Visited Virtual Trade Show Booth $30120$

Visited Pricing Page $103132$

$1.$ During the presentation, you explained that the software will assign numerical scores to leads based on their profiles and how they interacted with both images and information related to the product and website. Then, based on the net behavior lead score, it will classify those prospects using labels such as $$top$,$good$,$average$,$ or $$weak$.$ As a practical and interactive example, you discussed the weights with other agents and together, you assigned point values to the weights and frequencies based on your team$$s experiences. You asked the agents to calculate the total positive behaviors score for each prospect. What did they find?

multiple choice $1$

$199,54,171,61$

$199,58,181,63$

$139,50,131,57$

$159,52,151,59$

$2.$ You also suggested to your team that sales lead scoring is the process of not only adding but also subtracting points for either undesired behaviors or inactivity $($for example, unsubscribing from an email list$).$ Consequently, you presented Figure $2($see below$)$ to your team and asked them to produce the total points for the negative online behaviors. What did they find?

Figure $2$: Lead Scoring Matrix $($Negative Activities$)$

Negative Online Behaviors Weight A B C D

Unsubscribed from Newsletter $-32124$

Opted Out of Receiving Promotional Messages $-32233$

Waited $3$ Days to Visit Firm$$s Website $-13241$

Waited $1$ Week to Click Link in Email $-51111$

Waited $2$ Months to Watch Demo $-301111$

multiple choice $2$

$-48,-62,-50,-56$

$-50,-46,-54,-57$

$-50,-60,-48,-55$

$-44,-58,-46,-53$

$3.$ Having obtained the positive and negative online behaviors for the four prospects, you asked your team to collect the net score of online behaviors for each prospect. What did they find? $($You need to make calculations on your own.$)$

multiple choice $3$

$109,18,105,4$

$129,10,107,5$

$102,20,103,2$

$149,12,127,6$

$4.$ At the end of the presentation, you concluded that by using real$-$time online sales lead scoring, leads can be categorized into various segments and effectively managed. Top$-$value prospects, who are likely to convert to customers, are instantly directed to the elite agents for an immediate interaction by phone and$/$or meeting and a significant promotional offer. Moderate and average priority groups are presented with less significant promotional offers. Weak priority leads might just receive a standard email. You suggested that a $140-$point cutoff for the net online behavior score be used to determine the $$top$$ priority group. You asked your team to determine this