Lead scoring in HubSpot the right way! (HubHeores EP15)

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed apartments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask into action and become the Hub Hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

Welcome back to the Hub Heroes podcast. I don't know about y', all, but whenever I hear a fine print read out loud, I just, like, I get hyped. The passion.

Anyway, I love that guy's cadence too, by the way. The cadence that he gets on that is like. It's like he's wrapping it almost a little bit.

I literally have never heard safe harbor language read in such a way where I'm like, and what's Nicholas Cage gonna do next? What's gonna happen? Anyway, hi, everyone. I am your Long Walks on the Hating host and HubSpot nerd wrangler, Liz Murphy. As always, I am joined by George B. Thomas, our fearless leader of the League of Hub Heroes, as well as Max Cohen and Devin Bellamy of HubSpot, whose disclaimer is only as distinguished as their expertise. Gentlemen, how are you?

I'm good.

No, he's better than good.

Wow.

Yeah.

Calm down, everyone.

Calm down.

First of all, he's. Devin is better than good. Devin is a rev Ops God today. True. Yeah.

Hey, where'd you get that?

Swag alert. Swag alert.

So I got the hat from a little website that's shop.max jacobcohen.com, which is crazy because his real middle name is Aloysius, but I guess Jacob is just easier to spell.

Wow.

So I'm loving. I'm loving the swag alert with some shade throw in thrown in. I love that. Big fan.

The thing is, is that, like, I'm always going to remember him because he is my first tick tock. Never made a tick tock before. First tick tock was My model walk. So feel free to go check my one. They say you'll always remember your first. So, Max, thank you for.

We are still talking about tick tock.

Right? I'm honored. I'm honored that I was your first.

Well, he commented afterwards and so we're.

Talking about tick tock. Okay.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Sick. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I meant too.

Liz, you're doing a job wrangling the hosts. Yeah, go ahead.

Listen, George. Listen, George. I'll wrangle when you hit record.

Shots fired.

You can listen in next week.

Understand what the heck is about foreshadowing. I love it.

Is it foreshadowing if it's already happened? I don't. I don't know. Anyway.

Well, for the listeners, maybe it's Aloysius, because I don't know what that means either, but I feel like I'm that.

Speaking of Aloysius, today's topic is all about lead scoring. And that's what we call a segue we're talking about, isn't it? Thank you.

I was looking, I was curious as to where you were going to go with that. And you did not disappoint, so. Absolutely.

I'm glad I don't disappoint someone. Devin. George. No. So today we're talking all about lead scoring, right? How people get it right, but most importantly, how people get it so horribly wrong. For example, our lead has a score of 632, which I think is a good thing. Maybe I'm not 100% certain what that means. So to get us in the mood for numbers that don't matter or are so ridiculous, I have a trivia question for you. Trivia? The highest scoring NFL football game ever was between two teams for a total of 113 points. The winner scored 72, the loser scored 41. Name the two teams.

Oh, man, I suck at this.

But first I'm just going to say Tom Brady. He's the goat. Well, and so. So it had to have been him. There's no other options.

Yeah. No. So I feel like Green. Green Bay packers. For some reason, Green Bay packers to me feels like one of the teams, but I don't remember like if it is and if who they played. But what I'm going to do, I'm going to do Green Bay packers vs Like the Philadelphia Eagles and be completely wrong.

Well, good news. You were right about one thing.

Yeah.

How long you were. Devin, you.

Well, as enthusiastic as I am about all things sportsball, I will just go out and Say the San Francisco 49ers when they were still in San Francisco, and the Houston Oilers when they were still the Houston Oilers.

So here's the thing, in case anybody's wondering, yes, I am playing favorites today. Devin, I love that you still call them the Houston Oilers. Also, Muffin, you're very, very wrong. So the. The game was played on a crisp day in November, November 27, 1966, between Washington against the Giants. Yeah, the Giants had six turnovers and Washington had three non offensive touchdowns, which is probably more touchdowns than they've scored in the last three seasons combined.

The funny thing is that most people in companies, especially sales teams, know about as much as their lead scoring as we knew about that question.

You know, speaking of Aloysius George, that leads me to my first question. So I want to get right into lead scoring. There's a big difference between what lead scoring actually is and what people think it is. So, George, I want to turn it over to you. Talk to me a bit about what people think it is.

Yeah, I mean, most of the time when we get into this conversation, especially if people have purchased HubSpot, they got tantalized by something called predictive lead scoring. It was one of the selling points that sales was like, and you don't have to do anything and it spits out this, this magical number and you're going to have all the qualified. Yeah, no. Anyway, so they think that it's like this automatic number that means something, but unfortunately it's this number that means nothing to nobody because of the things that they're doing wrong with it.

Devin, Max, talk to me. You guys live and breathe lead scoring. It might be a part of the platform that you guys work on. What do you hear where you're just like, oh my gosh, why? No, opposite. Yes, this is the opposite of what it really is.

So I have a hot take on lead scoring in that we can discuss later is I don't recommend it. I would say even most companies use it. And the reason why it might shock you. I'd say a lot of people, especially salespeople, think it is the best way to cherry pick leads.

Yeah, no thinking required is what a lot of people do before they say the words we want lead scoring. So honestly, I think a lot of the people that run in the circles that we do get it, but a lot of the people that I talk to that are looking to buy a tool that does it, it tends to be a cool boss, like a cool word. They heard their boss say that they need to do. And then there isn't really much else behind it because oftentimes when people say, oh, we need to do lead scoring, I'll go, why? And then they'll go and they don't have an answer. And that's one super frustrating. Two leads to a whole bunch of. Bunch of unnecessary complexity that you don't need to deal with. But three also kind of like reveals a lot of the uninformed direction that someone might have when they're expl Exploring a marketing technology or something like that. I don't know what people think it is sometimes because I think everyone's got a. Their own different misunderstanding of it. I mean, a lot of people do get it right, but majority of people, it's. It's a little bit of a project getting them there.

I love that so much because it proves to me that about nine years ago, when I picked up the mantle to figure out lead scoring in a way to make it actually something worthwhile, my heart is filled with joy that that's actually what Max said right now.

Well, it is the holiday season, George.

So yes, it is.

Glad you're full of joy.

Unless you're listening to this in early February or something.

Then Happy New Year.

In which case, Happy Groundhog Day. Taxes will be due in a couple of months. Time to find those receipts. Gosh, guys, we're full of so much joy today. Talking about taxes. Groundhogs. What is lead scoring? Something you should never do. Please don't. Moving on. We're really off to a great start. But, George, what do you think about Devin's hot take?

Yeah, so I understand maybe where he might be going, but I also have my own narrative around the polar opposite of that and where every company should probably be using it. But it just depends, honestly, of if it's this massive case of confusion or if there's a pleasantly laid out plan that actually makes things actionable and where it's diagnosing where a contact is in the flywheel or sales funnel. So I'm interested to actually hear his hot take, but I feel like I subscribe to the polar opposite of it. Maybe, potentially.

Can I tack on another angle of George's angle on Devin's hot take? Much like anything in HubSpot, that takes you a fair bit of brain power to think about how you tactically set it up. There needs to be real utility behind it, just like there needs to be real utility in any report you build or any integration you scope out and create or whatever. There needs to be a really good why behind it, because there's a lot of mental calories that can go into not only what your lead scoring model is, but how you're actually using the output of it. And a lot of times the output people just are just like, we'll have numbers that say that some numbers are bigger and some are smaller. And that's gonna be helpful.

I couldn't agree more with you. Because sometimes when I hear lead scoring and I think about lead scoring, first of all, my brain hurts. I go down the dark, sad path like Devin does, where I'm like, can everyone just go away? You're ruining everything. But then another part of me is just like, that's what marketers do. We take beautiful things like lead scoring, or let's say just the word authenticity for a moment. Authenticity was great until marketers got a hold of it in a room with a whiteboard and beat it to death. And now it's authenticity, and it makes us all want to cry inside. And I feel like lead scoring is kind of the same thing. Everybody likes the idea in principle, but they ruin it before they even learn what it means, how it should be used, what's possible. I get what you're saying, Devin, and I'm also wondering if we're going to a pure, beautiful, pleasantly planned, as George put it, place. A utopia, if you will. What's possible? What can it be? What should it be?

In the perfect world, one of the best things it is is a tool to keep leads from falling through the cracks. You can trigger automation off of it. You can trigger alerts saying someone's taking a buy action, and it's increasing. There's, like, so many different things you can do with it that basically will alert you to someone is a good fit that did involve you sitting and staring at their contact records every day, or even someone who wasn't on your radar. It's like, oh, well, who is this? And you can take action based on that.

That sounds a lot like what George was saying as well. But here's where I'm curious, because I saw a ton of head nods when you said this. You said, it's a tool that keeps people from, quote, falling through the cracks. How big of a problem is that, George? Do you see that a lot when working with any of your clients?

Well, first of all, yes, it's. It's a huge issue with many companies that we help because everybody is so busy especially. And I'll. I'll put a caveat to this. And again, I'm gonna tease, like, Dev, want to Talk about this. When you're great at your job, falling through the cracks becomes inevitable. When I say great at your job, what I mean is content creation, inbound paid ads, social media. You have more people coming into the door than you can actually pay attention to from a sales team because you're good at your job. And so what lead scoring should be is a place. And I agree with falling through the cracks, but I like to actually even position it to you. Just get a window into where they're at and you can stop it before they fall through the cracks. Right. And that. You're right, Liz. That's why I said diagnose where your contacts are in kind of the funnel and the actions that are needed by the teams that are helping dependent upon where they are. So it's huge problem. By the way, did I say that yet? It's a huge problem, falling through the cracks? No, I mean, it hurts. It hurts when humans fall through the cracks. You're going to break some bones. You're like, you don't want to do that. You want to help people.

Well, here's the thing. Ready? 127. Is that a low lead score or a high lead score? Who knows? And that's that. That's part of the problem. So we have it set in our outline here. We're saying, what is it really? Well, what is lead scoring really? It's a number field. You're going to see a number in a field. It's going to say lead score and then number. The question is, what does that number mean? And what are you going to do with it? And do other people know what it means? Do other people need to know what it means? That is like the real nuanced stuff that, like, a lot of people don't think about. You're going to have a bunch of positive attributes, negative attributes, you know, so contact property equals something, or they've done something or they do something, give points or take away points. Right. But again, it's just putting a number into a field. So if that's literally what's happening, what are you doing to be creative of what that's telling you? I think we can get into a little bit later on in terms of like, what factors should kind of change that number. That's only half the equation. The other half is what are you actually doing with it? And that kind of goes back to what I mentioned earlier. You have to have like a fine utility for it. It needs to bring you value as a marketer or a CRM administrator or whatever. In a salesperson in one way, shape or form. And that involves a ton of communicating with your sales team, communicating with other parts of the business that are gonna use this magical number that you brought. So there's a big problem in like complexity and I think people's unwillingness to really get creative around it and really kind of what it is versus just being a vanity number. That's high because someone clicked a bunch of blog posts like, come on, that's so, so stupid.

Well, and that's only part of it, right? Because they clicked a bunch of blog posts. What's fun, Max, is you're leaning into and I'll talk eventually about information qualified versus engagement qualified because engagement is like they're two totally different things. And are you scoring for both? And actually how are you paying attention to that? And doesn't make sense anyway.

No, don't be quiet because actually, George, you're getting into what we need to talk about, which is now that we understand that there's a lot of people thinking that it's a number on a screen and we're all going to have very good time, even though no one knows what it means and what actually is. I mean, that's what, that's what they've all sounded like in every meeting I've been into. I don't, I don't know what alignment meetings you're sitting in on, but all this comes down to again. Wow, I'm so surprised. HubSpot is only as smart as the strategy you put into it. So let's talk about it. What do companies get wrong when they're building out their strategy?

Yeah, there's a couple of things that I'll hit off of the bat here for sure. First of all, the amount of times that I've seen somebody talk about lead scoring like it's a one and done, meaning I'm going to go put lead scoring into the machine and then I'm going to walk away and it's going to do its thing is grotesque because they need to actually envelop this campaign driven ideation of lead scoring. Meaning. Yes, when you first get into HubSpot, you're bringing a lot of historical things in. Yes, there should be a layer of, okay, let's go ahead and add lead lead scores to the emails and landing pages and things that we created because we're getting engagement from it. But that's where it ends. They don't think about the next campaign that they drop. Well, what's the CTA click worth? What's the landing Page visit worth. What's the form conversion worth? And the next campaign and the next campaign and the next campaign after that. And all sudden you've got like 17 campaigns but you've got lead scoring for when you first launched HubSpot seven years ago. And it makes absolutely no sense. It has to be a symbiotic, ever growing thing that you're adding every time you add new content. The other thing that it's not teams. I added an S on there for a reason. It's not teams focused and it's not action oriented, meaning these scores, nobody can look and go 527. And we realize that's marketing, marketing qualified lead that needs to trigger an automated workflow that gives them 17 emails over the next 365 days to keep top of mind or to push them higher into the lead score to when they're an SQL that automatically happens at 7:27. And now something else happens. And by the way, don't even get me started on the fact when I say action oriented, I don't mean for the actual contact, I mean for the marketer or the sales rep in the company. They know here's the action that I need to take because they're in this phase. And by the way, in a little bit I'll talk about radar research, revenue because that's three dope phases to think about when you're actually doing proper lead scoring.

I'd never think about asking you to get started with anything George, ever. No. That's fantastic though. And I really love the point you made about teams because Devin, I know in talking with you you also really like to think about this as a cross functional effort. But that's the biggest mistake people make. They don't do it. Can you talk to me about that?

Yeah. That's actually one of the reasons why I think there are a lot of companies that should not do lead scoring is because their level of cross functionality within the organization isn't mature enough to handle something like lead scoring. Lead scoring is a team effort that requires if not an sla, then at the very least an understanding of what a good lead is from every step of the way. And for people to come to a consensus about that, it can't just be marketing. I'm gonna put in my set of numbers, sales, I'm gonna put in my set of numbers, service. I'm gonna put in my set of numbers because in case you forgot, the sale doesn't end once the person gives you their money. So with that in mind, you have to Be able to just sit down and come together and build on it and then come back to it. Iterate, ship new decisions, rinse, wash, repeat. It's not like George was saying earlier. It's like when you just set it and walk away. The only thing that's worse than setting it and walking it away is setting it walking away and then blaming the tool for not doing its job because you didn't know how to use it.

I always find that so infuriating because you said something there about establishing SLAs between teams because there's some crazy stat out there where B2B sales reps say only 27% of marketing qualified leads are actually qualified in any way, shape or form. And to your point, what you just said, Devin, HubSpot is not going to help you if mommy and daddy are fighting like that's not going to fix anything. It's not going to help you establish norms and responsibilities. Like if we're going to do all this work to get you these leads and get them to a score we all agree upon, how long is it going to take you to follow up with them? What's that going to look like? Who's responsible if the deal falls through the cracks? There's something that George, you say a lot which is you need to understand that HubSpot needs to wrap around your business. I don't know if you guys have ever seen that cartoon where it's like there's a stick figure standing there with a stick stick poking something going come on, do something. And that's how people treat HubSpot. Why can't you fix all of our dysfunction as a company? Just make us money and it's crazy. Do it. Do the thing. So talk to me about radar research and revenue, George. So you're saying we talked a lot about what, what it's wrong with most lead scoring, strategy development. Tell me about these three phases you're talking about that puts people on the right path.

Yeah, it's interesting because there really is two major veins that I like to open up to the minds of people when I first started start to do things on training with lead scoring. One of them is radar research revenue which by the way could be an entire probably five week master class that would be put out for somebody who wanted to pay money and learn all the things you can do with this. But from a overarching just standpoint, there has to be a mindset wrapped around the numbers that are being spit out in this property that is a score field. And so if you have sat down, whiteboard, Excel, spreadsheet, whatever, and figured out here are the numbers. What do they mentally mean when I say radar? What it is, it's allowing the person who has been made the contact owner of that lead originally know that there's been enough actions that this person should be on their radar. They don't really need to take any actions yet, but they should get familiar with the name John Smith or Betty White or whoever it is because they're starting to churn the butter, starting to rise to the top. But it doesn't mean mean let's go for the jugular yet, like just chill. We're letting you know something's happening, we're cooking something up for you. Then when we get to research, now, they've actually done a couple of different things. Maybe they've attended a couple webinars, downloaded a white paper, whatever it is, but they've reached a score and now they're in research mode. Now research mode could mean two different things. If it's marketing doing the research, it's we're sending out a survey, a poll, we're getting them to fill out a form with special questions or research. If it's the sales team's job, it's they're literally going out and doing research. They're looking at the website, they're looking at social platforms, they're connecting with them on LinkedIn, whatever. But now you're doing research, you're actively trying to find the information that you don't have in your CRM through the processes they've gone before. And then revenue. It's a fall through the cracks thing, literally. We create an email with anybody who does radar research, revenue that sends to the contact owner, the sales rep that says, hey, by the way, John Smith has a score of blah, blah, blah. That means we should have generated revenue with them yesterday. Try to schedule a sales call as soon as possible. And on that email we give them a reverse engineered lead sheet. The last page they viewed was their areas of interest are their phone number is their email is like all the information, by the way, because we've sat down with sales and marketing and said, hey, what are the seven to ten pieces of information you need before you send a sales email or pick up a call for a sales call? Because we're going to deliver that you in the revenue email that we push out. So mindset, right?

Radar.

Ooh, something cool is happening. Research. Oh, time to get my hands dirty. Revenue. Hey, you missed them. Catch them before they walk out the door.

So I'm loving all of that. And then I'm just imagining somewhere out there in the ether, somewhere in the great inbound universe, there's somebody listening to this who maybe they just got HubSpot for the first time, or they're just thinking about dipping their toe in the pool of lead scoring and they're going to. That all sounds amazing and terrifying. And I'm wondering if there's some walking that I should be doing before I'm running. So, Max, I'm really curious to get your thoughts on this. Should I be opening up lead scoring first, or are there other things I should be doing first?

You really need to nail everything else before you even have stuff to score. I've literally had people that have said, all right, the only thing I want to work on is lead scoring. I go, great, show me all your content. Show me all these places that people are engaging with you. Show me all these things that you're doing that you want to be able to score. And literally none of that existed. And it was like, what are we even doing?

Well, you have to. You have to score your contact, right?

That's a thousand points right off the bat, right? If you fill it out at 2002. Anyway. So, like, honestly, the thing is, is, like, you really need to be, like, nailing down your content strategy and have all these different ways that people can actually interact with you. And then you need to have, like, some sort of research that you're doing to really establish that there is any value in people engaging in those ways. Because, again, lead scoring is not a perfect science. High lead score is not going to tell you someone's going to buy. All it's going to tell you is how engaged they are. Use that information how you see fit. But again, not all engagement is created equal. Right? Someone looking at pricing page is a lot different than someone looking at your Contact Us page. Someone looking at a blog post that is intended for decision stage potential buyers is a lot different than someone looking at a blog post that's like, here's our five favorite Netflix series that got canceled. It's totally different. And again, if the content's not there and you haven't seen how people interact with it, and does that actually lead to people having a higher likelihood to want to talk to sales or purchase something or whatever, then you don't really have any information on how you should be scoring that stuff. So you really need to be nailing down everything else and actually have this journey that you can score these different engagement points on. And then you have to let that run and be out there in the wild so you can see how people actually interact with it. And does it actually lead to some sort of of value that we want to measure through a number. Otherwise you're just wasting a bunch of time. So that's one thing.

It's interesting. Hang on, let me throw something out there in the lieu of what Max is talking about. And historically, hearing people talk about content being the fuel for your inbound marketing success, all sudden my brain was like, oh, snap. That means lead scoring is your speedometer. Like, literally, if content is the fuel for your inbound success, the amount of speed or the amount of number or the way it's going to raise or lower because God knows, use negative attributes anyway, the way it's going to raise or lower over time. That's like the speedometer of if your content and people are engaging with your content in the whole kind of system.

I don't want people to get overly excited about a tool that they might not be ready for. The thing is, is that lead scoring is for people who are inundated with leads and need to see, like, okay, I need to make sense of all this because our marketing and sales and service teams are crushing it so hard. I need to be able to in some way find a way to prioritize or be alerted to these people's actions. And it's not just a sea of names and faces. I need a way to disqualify people who are not good fit so I can better prioritize my team's time. If those aren't issues that you're running into, like, if you measure your leads weekly or monthly and not daily, this might not be a good fit for you. Lead scoring is, like Max said, it's the last step. When you've got everything else figured out and it's firing on all cylinders, then the need for lead scoring will present itself. If you're just trying to dial in and really put your existing numbers under a microscope just to see if somebody did something, then it's like, oh, okay, now I have to act now. If that's what you're doing, you're focusing on the wrong thing. You need to open the floodgates and then use lead scoring as some kind of net to help you prioritize, not necessarily trying to squeeze blood from a turnip because it ain't gonna happen.

So, Liz, I know you want to get back to lead scoring, but I have to just throw something out here real quick because if we're ever Under a zombie attack, I'm going to wherever Devin lives. Because Devin is the only guy that I know can calmly knock the shit out of something like no other person ever does. Like the way he started that. He's like, it's real peaceful and calm and also like, bam. Like he just smacks you in the face of the fact you don't even.

Anyway, that's exactly where I was going. Because honestly, what I was gonna say. Stefan, you remind me a lot of when people ask me like, so what do you think about Inception? Like, it's fine. And then they get real disappointed. But it's amazing. It's the greatest movie of all time. It's fine. I probably won't watch it again. And they are just like, what? And they lose their minds. And people are over here going like, lead scoring, lead scoring, what is it? Can I have it? And you're like, like, it's amazing. And you may not. Devin, here's what I want to challenge you on though. I want to challenge you for a second. And this is me as the process person. It's very easy to sit here and say, you gotta earn lead scoring. You gotta wait until you're like, oh my God, look at all these leads, blah, blah, blah. And that reminds me of people who say, well, we're too small, we're agile, we don't need to document processes. And then they hit a growth inflection point and all of a sudden the fact that they never took the time to document anything, when they had time, when they had the ability to get together, when they weren't putting out fires, that's when they decide to go build processes. No. So my question to you is, there's got to be some sort of inflection point before the cup runneth over. And when do you know you've hit it? When do you know this is the right time to proactively get ahead and actually start thinking about lead scoring at all?

Well, the cop out answer is that it's different for everybody. The thing is that when you're reaching a point that you are experiencing a significant growth in your pipeline from the marketing end and you've determined that it's not just vanity metrics, there's something to this, then at that point it's definitely good to start evaluating. But at the end of the day, being process oriented, off the jump, when you're trying to eat, that is difficult. Not to say that it's impossible. I am a one person shop and I have documentation on everything I do. Just because I'm weird like that. But there are higher priority things than getting your lead scoring in order. There's stuff that you just need to get done first. And because at the end of the day, it's about the energy that you're using in order to accomplish these goals, you're not going to get as much return with the amount of energy it takes to correctly do lead scoring as it does to correctly do content marketing and to come up with an editorial calendar and to make sure your conversion paths are tight and to make sure your branding's consistent. You gotta do that first. You gotta make sure your house is clean before you start trying to invite people in.

So I don't think it has to be this first thing. I think it should. Maybe the mindset should be a do this with this. Because here's the thing. And again, I'm pulling from historical, like onboarding trainings. And when you have somebody that has a bunch of stuff and you go into the conversation of lead scoring, they do what every other human does. When you have a metric butt ton of work, you go, oh, that's a lot. And then what do they do? They put it off. And they put it off and it never becomes important. Because the hurdle that you had to leap to make it happen at first because you waited so long to get there is like, nah, maybe it's not as important as we think. But if you're doing it along the way, like, it's just part of, okay, we did this, now we do this. And. And maybe it's, you're only putting the score portion in there and you're not really worried about the activation portion until we get down the road and we know what it means and we can tell people what to do or ask them to do during those time frames. But I just get nervous for the people who would listen to this episode and go, oh, well, I can put it off for six months. And then they look and in six months they got like 13 campaigns and like 270 things that they have to score and they're like, oh, no. I can tell you, I'm a one man shop. As we're putting out content, I'm figuring out what I want to score things. I'm figuring out what I want to put in place. I'm figuring out how in the future I might diagnose what's happening in the system. Now granted, I get it. I have 10 years of HubSpot experience, 10 years of teaching people how to do this. But if I could just wave a magic Wand I would say it's not a and or but it's a with. Yes, get the content right. Yes. Get your content strategy correct. Yes, get it scheduling. But don't leave it lay. Don't like, don't sleep on lead scoring, man.

Don't turn it into a massive project down the line. Yeah, I think it's an interesting way of looking at it and it kind of speaks to the idea of like, listen, don't take lead scoring too seriously. You're not going to get it perfect the first time and you're not going to get it perfect ever. Sorry, it's never going to be perfect because marketing's not perfect. And if you ever think you're striving for perfection on lead scoring, you're spending your time very unwisely. But I love the idea of building the framework as you go and adding to it as you. Because you have. When you create more content, let's say you go and build a whole bunch of pieces of content made for the decision stage and you got to say like, hey, if they specifically read this stuff, like maybe that's a little bit of a better indicator of how it gets, then sure, keep doing that. But again, the stuff has to be there to score if you're going to score at all. I think the other thing to kind of realize too is depending on the flavor of inbound that you would like to consume, you might not even be doing lead scoring at all. You might not even be doing lead scoring at all if you're the gate everything and create these like wonderful engagement experiences and track everything that everybody's doing and taking that whole more classical route. Yeah, you probably get a lot outta lead scoring if you do it the right way, if you have good utility around it. But if you're more of the. In the world of like demand Chen, ungate everything, don't track what people are doing until they're really in that decision stage. You might have less need for it or you might be hyper focusing that engagement once it is tracked in the decision stage. Right. And that's okay too. Just make sure there's some utility behind it.

It.

So let's, let's go to a beautiful utopia where I have gone to lead scoring court and asked Judge Devin am I worthy or am I wanting? And he said, wanting, but also were they. You may, you may pass. And I said, fantastic. George said, leave it lay. But what does that mean? I'm just kidding. So now that we're getting into lead scoring strategy, let's talk about lead Scoring implementation I've leaved at lay I have been found worthy, not not wanting. What does great lead scoring implementation look like and what doesn't it look like?

Okay, I have strong feelings on this. If you are going to do lead scoring, and George kind of talked about this earlier, you have to fundamentally separate the idea of good fit and how engaged someone is. So if we're literally talking about how to set it up in HubSpot using those scoring properties that you can put on companies, contacts, deals, things like that, actually build lead scoring. An easy thing you can do is just. Just build one called engagement level. Put positive things that people can do that measure some sort of positive level of engagement. Start getting it in there, refine it over time. Make sure you communicate what that score means to anyone who's gonna use it. Great. But then you need something to pair with that. Because saying someone is engaged and saying that they are an actual good fit, whatever that looks like for you, are two fundamentally separate things. And the worst thing you can do is try to measure those two fundamentally separate things using the same metric, same number. So, for example, if you are measuring like demographic and firmographic fit about a contact and how they're, like, engaging with you, if I just see a number at the end of the day, I have no idea if that means, oh, this person's a good fit or, oh, this person's engaged. Spot had this problem a long time ago where you would look at lead scores and they'd be high. And we'd call someone and it turns out that they were not a great fit because they were like a student, but they were doing a ton of research. So they got. They looked really engaged. On top of that, people had high lead scores, but it was because they were a really good fit, but they didn't really engage with our content at all. That lead score didn't really tell us much when it was like doing both of those things. The biggest thing that I tell people to do or the light that I try to bring people to, is that you don't have to use a scoring field to lead score. Lead score doesn't have to be a number, right? So when we think about something like measuring fit, the most basic version I tell people to do this with is like, listen, go build yourself a dropdown field and name that dropdown field fit. And literally have the options be good fit, mid fit, bad fit, or whatever you want it to be. You come up with your own scale. And then what you can do is you can build workflows that Say if somebody meets the criteria of a good fit, set that fit property to good fit. If it's mid, set it to mid. If it's bad, set it to bad. And what does that do? Well, now, if I'm a sales rep and I get a good lead sent to me or I get a lead assigned to me, I can look and see are they a good fit and separate that from the idea of how engaged are they. Now, if I am looking at that engagement score that I create, someone at some point would have needed to tell me what the scale is. How do I know if 100 is good or bad? How do I know if a thousand is good or bad is a negative number? Bad? Is it not bad? That has to be communicated. You have to come up with the model. You have to figure that out.

Out.

But I would set it up that way. And I have some hacks later we can talk about that and make that even better. But I'm gonna shut up.

Yeah, I gotta jump in here because by the way, I. I whispered I have a property for that. It's called lead status people. It's in HubSpot by default. I'm just gonna throw that out there. Anyway, I have to back up for a second because I need everybody to understand that this whole lead scoring conversation that we're having is a flea on the dog's butt. Because the conversation we're really having is the dog is quality leads and team process around quality leads. Lead scoring is just a tiny fractional piece of that. And so what I love to do is, you're right, it has to be properties. You have to look at more than just a number. And I love whether it's in the about us section, in a contact record, or whether we create a customizable card. And you can call it whatever you want, but the magic matrix that I love to look at is the Persona property, the lifecycle stage property, the lead status property, and HubSpot score. If you give me all four of those properties together, I can tell you if I should go home and take a nap or get on the call right now. Because I'm not calling Sammy the student, But I'm calling CEO Charlie, who has a score of 526, is a good fit, and is a sales qualified lead.

Boom.

I'm just saying, Devin, talk to me about what we should be doing at the implementation stage. Again, assuming someone is worthy. Assuming you have anointed someone worthy of lead scoring, what are we doing?

Making it a working process. The biggest thing is that you don't just get together one time and then make the responsibility of one person and everyone walk away. That's not going to work. And the other thing is that you can start small. You can start by measuring engagement, like overall. And then eventually you can drill down into the various aspects of where they are in their buyer's journey, or if they're looking at decision stage content, or if you're waiting a particular campaign over the others because you found that one's highly engaging. But it doesn't have to be a monster process to start because you've built iteration into your process. It's one thing if you're going to try and do it right the first time and walk away, you're going to go down a rabbit hole. It's going to give you nightmare nightmares if you just start with a small number of values and build out as you meet. And the values themselves, though, they don't have to be in the plus 50, plus 100. You don't have to have giant numbers like it's the highest scoring football game ever or something. You can just keep it simple and build from there.

I like when people listen. What are some great ways to hack HubSpot in order to do lead scout scoring? Well, like what are some of those great hacks that you like to lean on?

So I feel like this is the moment and I know Max and Devin, you both have something to say, but I want to say this is the moment where I hope people realize that HubSpot gives you the capability and set of tools that you can build a system around that score property. And what I mean by that is I love to teach people about things like information qualified. How many pages of the website have they read? 10, 20, 30? What's the average page views? What does that actually mean? Well, does it mean that you have to educate them when you get on the call or could they actually sell your stuff to you because they've read 120 pages of the website? Of course, barring that you've done content marketing and you have 120 pages because like my friend Marcus Sheridan says, you can't ask him to read your website twice. That never works out. But so there's four pillars that I like to pay attention to and I teach people again, in this whole radar, research, revenue thing, we talk about four pillars. And so realizing HubSpot gives you a list tool, they give you an email tool, they give you a workflows tool that you can build an entire system around. Four pillars. First pillar is Persona positive, negative, Personas. Go back and listen to a previous episode that we did on Hub Heroes podcast because we knocked it out the park with what you should be doing there. Informationally qualified, how well do they know the thing that you do? Engagement qualified. Are they clicking on your call to actions? Are they opening your emails? Are they clicking in your emails? Are they filling out your forms? Are they doing the things that you want them to do? Do from an engagement standpoint. And then the fourth pillar is time recency. Is it in like three years ago because that junk is cold or is it like three hours or three days ago because that's hot? Depending on the other metrics that around it. Think how can I use HubSpot to build the system around what I'm trying to do? Quality leads, AKA part of lead scoring. And start to think in these four pillars of information, engagement, Persona and time.

This I think a lot of the things that we said establish the utility of like what the score is being used for. Communicate to people what it means. So if someone's actually looking at it, what do you do with it? What story does it tell you? Given that you can only tell the story in numbers or another property if you do that good fit method. When I think of what's the basic utility of lead scoring is all right, sales, here are a bunch of leads that you got today that need a reach out. What's one surface level, basic way that you can prioritize them. I don't know, work top to bottom on who's the most engaged. There's other things you should probably be looking at it. But if you had to like break it down to who's the most engaged, sure. Use that engagement score. Great, wonderful. You don't really need to know what's high, what's low, as long as you can filter your view to show you the high numbers at the top. Low, bottom, great. That's like level one. All right. I think level two, you start kind of getting in like, all right, how can I use this a little bit more smartly as a marketer and a lot of times people struggle with when should we send the sales rep after the customer? Because we can't always as much as we want to and as much as we should wait until a customer raises their hand to say I'd like to talk to a salesperson. Sometimes people could be very engaged with you. They could also be a very good fit, but they haven't raised their hand yet. So a cool way that you can kind of use the idea of having an engagement Score. And a fit score is you could build automation or workflows, for example, that say, hey, if their engagement score is above a certain threshold that you've defined and they are a good fit and they haven't filled out any of our forms that are the hand raises that get them in touch with sales, maybe we preemptively assign them to a salesperson, give them a little task that says, this person hasn't asked for anything yet. However, they've been perusing our content quite a bit. They seem like a really good fit. Perhaps you should maybe reach out with like a light little educational introduction versus you want to buy this, right? You know, you can still assign it, but you can assign it with context. What else can you do? Well, maybe this would be a good reason to kick off a slightly more, I don't want to say aggressive, but more pointed decision stage email nurture. If they're a good fit and they've been hella all over your content, maybe you. We kind of have earned the right here to say, did you know that we sell something here? You could get a demo if you want. You kind of know that. Like, all right, I think I have a good enough reason to maybe like position my product here and just like let them know lightly that, like, we do stuff. Right. Or send them to the bottom of the funnel, nuke them with emails, whatever. But don't do that, don't do that. But, like, you can start. You've kind of earned the right a little bit to start some of the decision stage communication.

Max's takeaway for everybody listening to this episode is send them and nuke them with emails.

Nicest way possible.

I understand you've unsubscribed from everything we've ever sent to you, but would you like to schedule a demo with us and be our friend?

Yep. But I think there's. There's an important lesson there in like assigning leads with context. Right. Like in that situation, it's extremely important to say, listen, these people didn't ask to talk to you, but we think that you should pursue them. But, you know, act accordingly.

No, that's. You should apologize. Apologize again.

No worries.

Kidding. Devin, will you sign up for my friend demo?

Oh, man, it's getting all emotional.

Devin, tell me one way I can mess up lead scoring in HubSpot.

Too many high value numbers. You can assign a number, numeric value to an action. And the problem is, is that someone can say, it's like, oh, that's a plus 20 action. That's a plus 30 action. And then the next thing you know is you're measuring everything against that action and it's like, well if that was a plus 30, this one must be a plus 40 and it can get out of hand very quickly. I like to use single digit numbers wherever I can can. My goal to simplify things for my sales team is that I never want my lead score to be more than 100. And so what I will do is a use negative attributes which are negative actions someone might take that you would make them think they're not as good of a fit, like engagement over time, something along those lines. But I like to keep it simple. And then one of the things I do is I go back heck and reevaluate all of the numbers that I've put in. And is it tedious and annoying to some people, but to me the idea of basically having to constantly adjust the curve and understand that well, this action that was a 12 before, now in the grand scheme of things might seem more like it is a nine. And that's what helps get my lead scores where from getting out of control. But also it helps me, it encourages me to go back and re evaluate whether or not there are some things that even belong in the attributes in the first place because there might have been something I was super excited about, which I found out later, doesn't matter. But at the same time there's something that I'm seeing a trend in my good fit customers who are closing and so I need to bake that trend in my lead scoring.

I love that. All right, great. We're coming to the end of our journey. Also emotionally prepare yourselves gentlemen. I have a great lead scoring related secret question for after this. But whether I am just getting started with lead scoring or I have been not listening to Max or Devin and have been doing it a long time even though I probably shouldn't have been. What is the one thing? If I remember nothing else from this episode, what is the one thing I need to remember and why?

Yeah, for me, go figure. Oh. It comes down to educate your team. If they're not in the know of what they need to know, then lead scoring is a no. I'm just gonna throw that out there. And then the other thing that I'll add to that is once you've educated them, make it all action oriented. There needs to be things to be done based on what is being seen. So educate an action. Or you could do it with ease, right? Educate and execute. Educate and execute.

I'm gonna, I'm Gonna. I'm going to cop out and use Simon Sinek's phrase.

Why is that a cop out? He made millions off of that. Well, maybe not millions, because I didn't.

I mean, yeah, I didn't, I didn't come up with it, but like, it is another one of those things in HubSpot and inbound or whatever tools you use. It doesn't matter. If you're going to do a lead scoring, there needs to be a really good why behind it. Because it can take a lot of work, it can confuse a lot of people, it can really waste a lot of time and money. Unless if it doesn't have a, a need, if it's not solving something, why are you doing it?

Well, I don't know. I just wanted to point out something that Max said earlier that I think ties into that as far as its purpose concerned, lead scoring shouldn't exist in a vacuum. Lead scoring is not a standalone thing. It should trigger automation, it should trigger information and should trigger action. It shouldn't just be an arbitrary value.

Yeah, so I'm going to go with that a little bit as well because where my brain went, Max, with what you're saying is this is the. I'm dang gone. And I tried to go a whole episode without saying this is where my brain goes, dang. Got it.

Check.

Anyway, anyway, waiting. And anyway, this is where my brain was going with that comment is that first diagnose if there is a need and then if there is a need. This is one of the ultimate places where you slow down to speed up and you come up with a plan. You don't just hop in HubSpot and start punching numbers in. You get your teams together, you get a whiteboard, you get a lead scoring matrix, Excel, spreadsheet, whatever, and you map it out and then you go in to HubSpot and do it. So is there a need? And then have a plan.

Also, real quick, I'm selling a couple hats that are scientifically proven to improve your lead scoring skills. I think specifically Rev Ops wizard and RevOps Overlord adds a plus 5 lead scoring intelligence stat to your to your brain when you put it on. So shop.max j.com I love how when.

I say, tell me one thing, I get 17, it's almost as if I get yelled at for wrangling you or not wrangling you. And then you don't listen. Also by the swag the hat.

Snapback season. It's snapback. But anyway, there is not.

Are you ready for the secret Question.

Oh, I don't know.

Let's have.

Anything to do with the record button? I hope not.

No.

Oh, it's still on. Hey, it's still on.

You know, George, I wasn't gonna bring it up.

That's next episode. Next episode.

Next episode. Okay. All right, let's pretend for a moment that each of us has a lead scoring model deep within our hearts for friendship. Here is what I want to know. You have a choice. You can tell me what gives someone a thousand plus points in their lead scoring model. As your potential friend, or negative 1000,000 points as your potential friend? Only one of those.

Oh, we can only do one.

Fine. You can do both. Yes. Because you know what happened? You ding dongs would be like, well, I know I was only supposed to choose one, but I'm gonna give you seven. So, yes, let's go with two. You can do both.

I wish I had time to think of a funny response to this, because I feel like later on today I'm gonna be like, oh, I should have said that this make a hat about it funny. But you can't. But you can't think on your feet.

Okay, I'll give you some time and then maybe Devin, and then you can go. Because for me, this is actually pretty darn easy. As soon as the question was being stated, I, like, thought of both of them. So on the positive lead scoring that I know that you're thousand points to being my friend is if I see that you are a blessing bomber. If you are a giver, if you are putting into the world, right? If you're just, like, there to make people smile, leaving them back better than you met them, like, in any way it could be, financially, spiritually, emotionally, you're just. You're bombing the world with blessings. You get a thousand plus points, and we're gonna hang out, we're gonna smoke cigars, drink whiskey, and sit by my fire pit. Like, without a doubt. On the other side, selfishness. If you. If you are selfish and it's all about you and, like, you're gonna conquer the world and you're gonna just, like, demolish everybody around you to get there or whatever it looks like, then it's like, nope. I literally have a. Because it's like, hashtag, no douchebags allowed. Like, that's. That's part of my code. Like, nope, not hanging out with douchebags. Negative thousand on the friend score.

If anybody wants a glimpse into the dynamic of my friendship with George, my answers are somewhat different. You get a positive 1000 if you appreciate the glory, the splendor, the wonder that is the national treasure, Nicholas Cage. Because that's where my priority is. And you get a negative 1000 if you think Sofia Coppola did anything except ruin Godfather 3 with her presence. Fabulous director, incredible filmmaker. Godfather 3, what could have been? I am so violently offended at the existence of Godfather 3. Only reason I keep watching it is because Andy Garcia, when he was young, was super hot. Like, the most hot. I know. I know. George, you agree? I know you agree. No. So George is there with a kindness and. And humanity, and I'm here with Nicolas Cage and. And Godfather 3 takes Devin. Save us from ourselves.

Sure.

Well, I. I guess I'll go in in the middle. I have never met a hardcore Deadpool fan that I didn't like. I don't know what it is about us. Like, I remember when I was. Last time I was in Boston, I was coming up with the hotel, and. And lady said, nice shirt. And I saw she was wearing a Deadpool shirt. I was like, yeah, nice shirt. I said, it matches my socks. And she's like, yeah, it matches my tattoo. And it was the most awesome Deadpool tattoo I had ever seen. She and I had, like, a moment there. She is, like, the greatest human being I've ever met. I don't care. She is just. She. It was great. It was. It was a wonderful moment. So. Plus a thousand. And if you're into. And not just movie, Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool, though I do love him dearly. Specifically, if you're into comic book Deadpool, especially first version Deadpool.

You know what would have been funny is if after she showed you her tattoo, you said, wow, cool tattoo. I named my son.

Oh, wait, I didn't give my negative. I got to give my negative. My negative is beautiful delivery, duplicitous people. Beautiful delivery, Hot or cold? Lukewarm. I will spit you out. Oh, yeah. I knew George would like that. I knew George.

That's. That's, like, close to maybe the first biblical reference on the hug podcast. I'm just gonna throw that out there.

Second out in the first episode. I do. Here we go for cheesies and geezies every now and then.

Yeah.

All right, Max, you're the last guy at Bennigan's weighing mozzarella sticks or potato skins. Pony up.

Oh, my God.

I would get stage fright after that. I would freeze up after that level of a toss. But Max.

Did Max just hang up? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

First things first. I still don't know what Aloysius means or duplicitous. So someone's gonna have to help me.

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Yes.

Yes.

Now, that's what I'm talking about.

About plus a thousand. I'm just like. I'm just. I'm a big hugger. Like a big hug. I'll hug everybody. Just like, give me a hug. You like hugs? That's cool. It's not weird. I just like hugging everybody, so that's always really good in my book. Negative 1000. If you're someone who overcooks your eggs, negative 10,000. Oh, yeah. No, it's just. You just eggs.

You just can't.

Can't overcook your eggs. Just wrong. Well, no, over hard is hard. I'm sorry, but I'm just like. If you're like, for example, I'm making a breakfast sandwich over hard, that's okay, because I don't want. I do love. I do love a yoki sandwich, but sometimes I need to. I need to bring it somewhere. Or I'm wearing a shirt that I can't risk a little bit of yolk. I. I'll do the over hard, but if that's on a plate. Devon, we're gonna have words, man. We're gonna. If you're eating that with a fork, bro, we're going to fight. It's on site, my man. But I love you, though. I don't hug after. So it's.

There's a reason behind over hard, though.

I got to have me some.

I. I used to work at a very sketchy ihop.

You don't even need to.

They used grade B eggs. Didn't even know that grade B eggs were a thing. They used grade B eggs, and then for their scrambled mix, they didn't scramble the eggs and scrambled mix. They would pour old mix in the new mix and completely ruin the pasteurization. And that IHOP has since closed.

So thank God.

I don't mind.

As it should.

What a shock. I am blown away.

Yeah. Ever. Ever since B eggs and grade B eggs and. And that. That's why I have to do over.

Bro, let me make you a break. I will blow your mind.

So.

Yeah.

Ah, but if I'm drunk, it's a completely different story. Give me a burger.

No. Drunk or sober, man, I love being.

Wait, wait. What about a grilled.

I. I just love to dip my toast.

What about a grilled bagel?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

We're going to weird places.

We have gone so far off topic and it's beautiful.

We started at lead scoring. We've ended with War Crimes, the Yokening dippy A and that says to me it's time to go. Thank you so much for joining us this week. Please leave a review. It made everyone uncomfortable when we started talking about griddled bagels. So you do not need to mention that in the review. But if you would like to mention friendship, your feelings on Nicolas Cage, your thoughts on lead scoring, or if you're one of those people wondering, but wait, can I lead score a company? You can, but that's a different episode about ABM and not a topic for today's discussion. And with that, that gentlemen.

Oh yeah, get out.

You. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

I'm home though.

Please. Why couldn't you just play along? Why do you have to make it awkward? Everyone hang up. Goodbye.

I don't wanna.

Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to and use the hashtag hubbyspodcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero. Sa. Sam.