If you’re in B2B sales, you know the pain: too many leads, not enough time, and a nagging feeling you’re chasing the wrong ones. Automating lead scoring can help—but only if it’s set up right. This guide is for sales teams who want practical, no-nonsense steps to get automated lead scoring up and running in Drippi, without getting lost in the weeds or falling for vendor hype.
Why bother with automated lead scoring?
Let’s be real: manually sorting leads is a time suck. Automated lead scoring can help you:
- Spot the good leads faster (so you don’t waste time on tire-kickers)
- Give reps clarity on who to call first
- Reduce bickering between sales and marketing about lead quality
But it doesn’t work by magic. If you treat every website visitor the same, you’ll just automate busywork. The goal is to set up scoring that’s simple, transparent, and actually improves your sales pipeline.
Step 1: Define what a “good lead” looks like (don’t skip this)
Before you even log in to Drippi, get clear on what matters to your sales team. You don’t need a whiteboard session—just answer a few blunt questions:
- What company types (industry, size, region) are actually buying from you?
- Which job titles or roles usually sign the deal?
- What behaviors (like requesting a demo, opening 3+ emails, visiting pricing) seem to predict a real opportunity?
- What’s just noise? (e.g., students, competitors, spam)
Pro tip: Don’t get fancy. Pick 2–3 traits and 2–3 behaviors. If you try to score 20 things, nobody will trust the scores.
Step 2: Map your traits and behaviors to Drippi fields
Now, translate your “good lead” profile into actual data points in Drippi. Here’s what you’re looking for:
- Demographics: Company size, industry, location, job title
- Firmographics: Tech stack, annual revenue, employee count
- Engagement: Email opens/clicks, site visits, form fills, webinar sign-ups
Check which of these Drippi already tracks. If something’s missing (say, job title), make sure your forms or integrations are capturing it.
What to ignore: Don’t waste time scoring things you can’t reliably track. “Decision-maker attitude” sounds great, until you realize you have no data for it.
Step 3: Set up lead scoring rules in Drippi
Time to get into Drippi and set up your scoring logic. Most B2B teams do best with a simple point-based system.
How to do it in Drippi
- Go to the Lead Scoring section.
- Create a new scoring rule.
- Name it something obvious, like “Website Demo Request” or “VP-Level Job Title.”
- Assign points.
- For example:
- Job Title = “Director” or “VP” → +20 points
- Company Size > 100 employees → +10 points
- Visited pricing page → +15 points
- Opened 3+ emails in a week → +10 points
- Generic email domain (e.g., gmail.com) → -15 points
- Set decay or negative scoring.
- If a lead goes cold (no activity in 30 days), subtract points or mark them as inactive.
- Stack your rules.
- Drippi adds up all the points for each lead, updating automatically.
Tips: - Start simple—don’t score for every micro-action. - Negative points are just as important as positive points. They help weed out spammers and students. - If Drippi supports it, test your rules on historical leads to see if the “high scorers” were actually good deals.
Step 4: Define score thresholds (and what happens next)
Scoring is pointless unless you act on it. Decide what “high,” “medium,” and “low” scores mean for your team.
- Hot leads: Score above, say, 50 points. Assign to a rep immediately.
- Warm leads: 20–49 points. Enter a nurture sequence or queue for later.
- Cold leads: Below 20 points. Leave alone or send basic drip emails.
Set up Drippi’s workflow automations to match:
- Create tasks: Automatically assign hot leads to sales reps.
- Trigger alerts: Send Slack or email notifications when a new hot lead comes in.
- Move leads: Automatically change pipeline stages or add to nurture lists.
Be honest: If reps start ignoring the “hot lead” alerts, your scoring’s off. Tighten it up.
Step 5: Test, watch, and tweak (don’t “set and forget”)
You’ll be tempted to declare victory and move on. Don’t. Lead scoring is only useful if it reflects reality.
- Spot-check: Every week, ask reps if the leads labeled “hot” are actually good. If not, adjust the rules.
- Review missed deals: Did any great-fit leads end up with low scores? Figure out why.
- Watch for gaming: If marketing starts stuffing forms to boost scores, tighten your rules.
Pro tip: Set a calendar reminder to review your scoring rules every quarter. Businesses change—your scoring should too.
Step 6: Integrate Drippi lead scores into your sales workflow
Automated scoring is only helpful if your team sees and uses it.
- Show scores in CRM: Make sure Drippi’s scores sync to your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.) and are visible on lead records.
- Highlight top leads: Build simple reports or dashboards that sort leads by score.
- Train your team: Run a 10-minute session on what the scores mean—and what to do when a “hot” lead shows up.
What to skip: Don’t waste time on fancy dashboards nobody uses. Make sure the basics work first.
Step 7: Avoid common pitfalls (learn from others’ mistakes)
Here’s what trips up most B2B teams:
- Overcomplicating the model: If your scoring matrix looks like a NASA launch checklist, you’ve gone too far.
- Scoring based on wishful thinking: Score only what you can see in the data—not what you wish you knew.
- Not involving sales: If sales reps don’t trust the scores, they’ll ignore them. Bring them into the process early.
- Chasing the “perfect” model: Good enough is good enough. Iterate based on real feedback.
Keep it simple and keep iterating
Automated lead scoring in Drippi isn’t magic, but it can save your team hours and surface the right leads—if you keep things grounded. Start with a simple model, get feedback, and tweak as you go. Ignore the hype, skip the bells and whistles, and focus on what actually helps your sales team close more deals. The goal isn’t a perfect score—it’s giving your team a fighting chance to focus on the leads that matter.