If you're trying to wrangle a mess of inbound leads and your sales team is drowning in noise, lead scoring isn't just a nice-to-have—it's survival. This guide is for sales and ops folks who want to cut through the hype and actually get something useful out of Common Room’s scoring features. You’ll get a straight-up walkthrough, what matters (and what doesn’t), plus a few hard-won lessons from people who’ve banged their heads against this before.
Why bother with lead scoring in Common Room?
Let’s be real: not every inbound is worth your team’s time. Some folks are just kicking tires; others are ready to buy. Lead scoring helps you filter out the noise so sales can focus on the right people, faster. Common Room pulls in signals from across your community—Slack, Discord, GitHub, LinkedIn, you name it—and helps you sort who’s hot and who’s not.
But here’s the catch: The tech’s only as good as your setup. Garbage in, garbage out. The point isn’t to automate away human judgment—it’s to help your team prioritize smarter.
Step 1: Get your data sources connected
You can’t score what you can’t see. First, make sure Common Room is pulling in all the places your leads hang out.
Checklist:
- Connect Slack, Discord, GitHub, Twitter, LinkedIn, and whatever else is relevant.
- Double-check that your integrations are pulling in fresh data—sometimes these break, especially after API changes.
- Map custom fields if you use them (like CRM IDs or tags).
Pro tip: If your team only cares about certain channels (e.g., product Slack, not the open-source Discord), skip the rest. More data isn’t always better; it’s just more.
Step 2: Decide what a “good” lead looks like
Don’t let the tool decide this for you. Sit down with sales and actually define what a sales-ready lead means in your world. Is it someone active in your Slack, a GitHub contributor, a person from a target company, or some mix?
Questions to ask:
- What actions usually come before a deal starts?
- Are there certain job titles or companies you care about?
- Is there such a thing as a “false positive” in your current flow (e.g., students, tire-kickers)?
Avoid: Trying to score everything. You’ll end up with a black box nobody trusts.
Step 3: Build your scoring rules
This is where most people overcomplicate things. Common Room lets you create scoring rules based on actions, profile data, and company info. Start simple.
How to set it up:
- Navigate to Lead Scoring in Common Room’s admin/settings area.
- Create a new score (name it something obvious, like “Sales Lead Score”).
- Add rules for the signals you care about. For example:
- Joined Slack workspace (+10)
- Posted in #product-help channel (+15)
- GitHub PR merged (+25)
- Company in target account list (+20)
- Job title contains “Director” or “VP” (+10)
- Email is a corporate domain, not gmail.com (+5)
- Set negative scores where it makes sense:
- Email matches student domains (-15)
- Hasn’t posted in 90 days (-10)
- Already marked as closed-lost in CRM (-30)
Pro tip: Don’t get fancy with weighting until you’ve seen a week or two of real data. You’ll be surprised what actually matters.
What to ignore (at least at first):
- Super-granular activity (e.g., “liked one post” vs. “posted three times”).
- Vanity metrics like number of followers—these rarely map to real sales intent.
- Anything you can’t easily explain to the sales team in 30 seconds.
Step 4: Test with real leads
Don’t assume your score “just works.” Pull a sample of recent leads and see where they land.
- Are your top scorers actually good sales targets?
- Did any solid leads get missed (false negatives)?
- Are you surfacing a bunch of spam or junk contacts?
Fix the rules as needed. This is normal. Expect to tweak things 2–3 times before it starts to feel solid.
Pro tip: Get feedback from frontline reps. They’ll spot patterns the tool misses—like “That guy’s a consultant, not a buyer” or “This company is in our competitor’s ecosystem.”
Step 5: Set up alerts and workflows
Now that you have a decent lead score, make it actionable. Don’t just let it sit in a dashboard.
Options:
- Auto-assign leads: Route high scorers to specific reps or territories in your CRM.
- Slack/email alerts: Push notifications to sales when someone crosses your score threshold.
- Enrich with CRM data: Sync Common Room scores back to Salesforce, HubSpot, etc., so reps see them in context.
What not to bother with:
- Sending every minor lead through—set a threshold that reflects your team’s actual bandwidth.
- Complex automations before you’ve pressure-tested the basics.
Step 6: Keep it simple and iterate
Most lead scoring setups fail because they get too clever too fast. Resist the urge to build a Rube Goldberg machine.
- Revisit your rules monthly, not daily. Patterns take time.
- Document what each rule means and why—it’ll save you headaches later.
- If your sales team ignores the scores, ask why. Sometimes it’s because the scoring isn’t reflecting reality; sometimes it’s because habits are hard to change.
Pro tip: If your sales team finds the scores confusing or useless, that’s not a “training issue”—it’s a sign your rules need work.
What works, what doesn’t, and what to watch out for
What works: - Combining behavioral and firmographic data (what people do + who they are). - Focusing on recent, high-signal actions (e.g., opened a support ticket, started a trial). - Tight feedback loops between sales and ops.
What doesn’t: - Overweighting passive signals (just “joining” a space isn’t intent). - Scoring everyone the same way (e.g., students vs. buying personas). - Letting the tool drive your process. It’s just a filter, not a magic wand.
Watch out for: - Data gaps: If Common Room can’t see an activity, it can’t score it. Don’t assume perfect coverage. - Score inflation: If “everyone” is qualifying as a hot lead, your bar is too low. - Black box syndrome: If nobody can explain the score, your setup is too complex.
Wrap-up: Don’t overthink it
Lead scoring in Common Room is only as good as the rules you give it—and those rules should change as you learn. Start simple, watch what happens, and fix what’s broken. If you’re arguing about edge cases, your system’s probably too complicated. The best setups are the ones your sales team actually uses.
Keep it practical. Iterate often. And don’t be afraid to throw out what isn’t working.