If you're tired of sales wasting time on dead-end leads, you're not alone. Automated lead scoring promises to help—if you set it up right. This guide is for sales ops folks, marketers, or anyone who wants to use Profound to separate the serious buyers from the tire-kickers.
Let's skip the marketing fluff and get straight to it.
Why Bother With Lead Scoring?
Reality check: Most sales teams chase too many leads that never buy. Automated lead scoring helps you focus on the ones that actually matter. But don’t expect it to be magic out of the box. The goal here is simple—spend less time guessing and more time closing.
Step 1: Get Your House in Order
Before you dive into Profound’s lead scoring, check these boxes:
- Clean up your data. Garbage in, garbage out. Make sure your lead info isn’t full of blanks, duplicates, or weird formatting.
- Know your ideal customer. If you can’t describe your best customers in plain English, you’re not ready for lead scoring.
- Agree (as a team) on what makes a lead “good.” If marketing and sales aren’t on the same page, fix that first.
Pro tip: If you’re not sure who your best leads are, start simple. You can always tweak later.
Step 2: Map Out Your Lead Scoring Criteria
It’s tempting to overcomplicate this part. Don’t. Most teams get by with two types of signals:
- Fit: How closely a lead matches your target customer (industry, company size, job title, etc.)
- Engagement: What the lead actually does (opens emails, visits your pricing page, requests a demo, and so on)
Grab a notepad or spreadsheet and jot down:
- What data do you have on your leads already?
- What actions or traits actually correlate with deals closing?
- What “red flags” usually mean a lead is a waste of time?
If you’re just starting, focus on 3–5 criteria for each category. You can get fancy later.
Step 3: Set Up Lead Scoring in Profound
Now for the hands-on part.
3.1 Log In & Find Lead Scoring
- Sign in to Profound.
- Go to the “Settings” area (usually a gear icon).
- Look for “Lead Scoring” or “Scoring Rules.” If it’s hidden, search the help docs—sometimes features are renamed or moved.
3.2 Choose Your Scoring Model
Profound gives you a few ways to score leads:
- Manual scoring: You pick the criteria and assign points yourself. Good for control freaks (and most teams starting out).
- Predictive scoring: Profound claims to use AI to find patterns for you. It sounds cool, but you’ll need a lot of historical data for it to work well. If you’re new, stick with manual for now.
Honest take: Don’t trust “AI scoring” unless you’ve got thousands of closed-won and closed-lost deals in Profound. Otherwise, you’re just asking a robot to guess.
3.3 Add Your Criteria
For each signal you listed in Step 2:
- Click “Add Rule” or similar.
- Set the criteria (e.g., “Job Title contains ‘VP’” or “Visited pricing page”).
- Assign a point value. Make it simple: big signals (like requesting a demo) = more points; small stuff (like opening an email) = fewer points.
- Set up any negative points for red flags (e.g., “@gmail.com” email addresses, unsubscribes, etc.)
Don’t get bogged down in decimals or 101-point scales. Ranges like 0–100 or 1–10 are fine.
3.4 Save and Test
- Hit “Save” or “Publish.”
- Pick a few recent leads and see how they score. Do the results line up with your gut? If not, tweak the points.
Step 4: Define Lead Stages (Optional, but Useful)
If your team works with stages like “Marketing Qualified Lead” (MQL) or “Sales Qualified Lead” (SQL), you’ll want to link your scoring to these stages.
- In Profound, go to your lead pipeline or workflow settings.
- Set up rules: “If score > 60, mark as MQL,” etc.
- Make sure sales and marketing agree on these thresholds. If not, expect arguments later.
Don’t overthink this. You’ll probably have to adjust the numbers after a month anyway.
Step 5: Automate Handoffs and Alerts
The real power of automated lead scoring is keeping humans out of the loop (when possible).
- Set up notifications for sales reps when a lead crosses a certain score.
- Use automation to move leads between lists or assign owners.
- You can also trigger follow-up emails or add leads to campaigns automatically.
Check Profound’s automation section—most of this is click-and-drag, but watch for bugs. Test with dummy leads first so you don’t swamp your team with alerts.
Step 6: Watch, Tweak, and Don’t Get Lazy
This is where most teams quit: they set up scoring, then never touch it again. Don’t fall into that trap.
- Review your top-scored leads every couple of weeks. Are they converting? If not, change the scoring.
- Ask reps for feedback. Are they getting better leads, or just more notifications?
- Kill any criteria that aren’t working. More rules = more maintenance.
Rule of thumb: If you can’t explain to your team why a lead has a certain score, your system’s too complicated.
What to Ignore (For Now)
- “AI-powered” or “predictive” anything unless you have a lot of clean, historical data.
- Super granular rules. Don’t try to score every tiny action. Focus on what actually matters.
- Integrations you don’t need. Start with your core CRM data and expand later.
Pro Tips and Gotchas
- Lead scoring won’t fix broken sales processes. If you’re not following up with leads now, scoring won’t magically make you better.
- Don’t treat your scores like gospel. They’re just a tool to help prioritize, not a verdict.
- Keep your team in the loop. If sales doesn’t trust the scores, they’ll ignore them.
Wrapping Up: Start Simple, Iterate Fast
Setting up automated lead scoring in Profound isn’t rocket science—but it’s easy to overcomplicate. Start with a basic setup, see what works, and adjust as you go. Resist the urge to chase every shiny feature. The best lead scoring system is the one your team actually uses.
Your goal: Spend less time guessing and more time selling. That’s it.