Nothing kills marketing credibility faster than consistently delivering “hot leads” that sales can’t convert.
The Lead Scoring Reality Check:
Pain Point #1: The Activity Addiction Your scoring model rewards noise, not signal:
- Email opens and clicks get the same weight as pricing page visits
- Downloading every piece of content scores higher than requesting a demo
- Social media follows count as buying intent
- Newsletter subscriptions inflate lead scores without indicating purchase readiness
- Trade show badge scans get treated like inbound sales inquiries
Pain Point #2: The Timing Disaster Your “hot” leads peaked weeks ago and you missed it:
- High scores based on cumulative activity rather than recent engagement
- No decay model means stale activity still drives current scores
- Batch processing means urgent buying signals get delayed response
- Peak interest moments getting buried under accumulated historical data
- Prospects researching solutions in January getting contacted in March
Pain Point #3: The Context Blindness Scoring ignores WHY someone engaged with your content:
- Competitor research gets scored as buying intent
- Academic research treated same as solution evaluation
- Job seekers studying your company counting as prospects
- Students or consultants inflating engagement metrics
- No distinction between “browsing” and “buying committee research”
Pain Point #4: The Individual Illusion Scoring individual leads in committee-based buying processes:
- Single-contact scoring when 6+ people influence B2B decisions
- Missing stakeholder expansion signals within target accounts
- No account-level scoring to identify buying committee formation
- Individual behaviors weighted equally regardless of role or influence
- Missing the forest (buying committee) for the trees (individual contacts)
Pain Point #5: The Sales Disconnect Marketing and sales define “qualified” completely differently:
- Marketing scores on digital behavior; sales needs budget and timeline information
- Lead scoring criteria created without sales input on what actually predicts deals
- No feedback loop when sales rejects “high-quality” leads
- Scoring model never updated based on actual conversion data
- Marketing celebrates lead volume while sales complains about lead quality
Pain Point #6: The False Positive Epidemic Your highest-scoring leads consistently disappoint:
- Prospects with perfect scores who ghost after first sales conversation
- High engagement that doesn’t translate to sales meetings
- “Hot” leads who are 18 months away from actually buying
- Scoring systems gaming themselves through automated or bot traffic
- Perfect-on-paper leads who lack budget, authority, or timeline
The Daily Frustrations You Feel:
Monday Morning Dread: Sales reports weekend lead follow-up results, and none of your “hot” leads converted to meetings.
Campaign Review Anxiety: You need to defend why high-scoring campaigns aren’t driving revenue, but you don’t have good answers.
Budget Planning Stress: Leadership wants to increase lead goals, but you know more leads like current ones won’t help sales hit their numbers.
Sales Meeting Tension: Every pipeline review becomes a discussion about lead quality instead of campaign optimization.
The Questions You Avoid Asking:
- If we removed lead scoring tomorrow, would sales actually miss it?
- Are we optimizing for marketing metrics or sales outcomes?
- Do our highest-scoring leads actually have higher close rates?
- When sales rejects leads, do we investigate why or just send more?
- Are we measuring leading indicators of buying intent or just digital engagement?
The Trust Erosion Cycle: Bad lead scores → Poor sales conversion → Sales stops prioritizing marketing leads → Marketing gets blamed for pipeline gaps → More pressure to generate leads → Lower qualification standards → Even worse lead quality → Complete sales/marketing breakdown
The Hard Truth: Most lead scoring models are sophisticated-looking engagement tracking systems that don’t predict buying behavior.
Marissa Homere 