Best Lead Scoring Software
Lead scoring software is used by companies to determine the potential of each business opportunity. By using this type of software, companies can create scales and benchmarks to rank prospects against. A sales team’s time can be valuable and leads can be numerous, so lead scoring software can help teams focus on those lead opportunities that are most likely to convert into sales. Driving focus on high-potential leads can help salespeople save time they would have spent on less valuable leads, and with that time they can craft better messaging when approaching customers with higher probability to close.
Before they score leads, companies need to capture them first. In order to deliver optimal results, lead scoring software needs to be used with software used by marketing and sales, such as lead capture, landing page builders, or CRM.
To qualify for inclusion in the Lead Scoring category, a solution must:
Best Lead Scoring Software At A Glance
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Accelerate revenue from pipeline to paycheck with Salesforce Sales Cloud - your complete growth platform that brings together the power of humans with agents at every step of the sales cycle. Boost pr
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a customer relationship management platform that centralizes sales processes, customer data, and interactions. Users like the platform's flexibility, automation features, and detailed reporting, which reduce manual effort and provide real-time visibility into performance. Users reported that Salesforce Sales Cloud can be complex and overwhelming for new users, with a steep learning curve and potentially high costs for additional features and support.
580,771 Twitter followers
Apollo.io is an AI-powered go-to-market (GTM) platform that helps revenue teams find, engage, and manage B2B buyers across the entire sales cycle. Apollo.io is the company behind the industry’s first
Apollo.io is a platform that combines prospecting, accurate data, structured outreach, and automation to simplify and enhance sales workflows. Reviewers appreciate Apollo.io's AI features, ease of use, and integration capabilities, which make day-to-day outbound tasks easier and more efficient, saving time and allowing everything to happen in one place. Users experienced issues with the platform's data accuracy, email integration reliability, and the number of paywalls across the platform, which can interrupt workflow and experimentation, especially for smaller teams.
ZoomInfo Operations is a sophisticated data management solution designed to assist organizations in optimizing their go-to-market (GTM) strategies by effectively managing sales and marketing data. Thi
23,509 Twitter followers
ActiveCampaign is the autonomous marketing platform built to transform how marketers, agencies, and business owners work. Use Active Intelligence to power goal-aware automations and orchestrate person
13,223 Twitter followers
ZoomInfo Marketing is a sophisticated demand generation solution designed specifically for marketing teams focused on account-based marketing (ABM) and lead conversion. This platform is part of the br
ZoomInfo Marketing is a tool for lead enrichment and account-based marketing, offering features such as data segmentation, intent signals, and integration with CRM and marketing tools. Users frequently mention the accuracy of the data, the ease of use, the ability to target high-intent accounts, and the seamless integration with other marketing and CRM tools as key benefits. Reviewers noted that the platform can feel complex for new users, the data sometimes requires manual verification, and the pricing can be high for small teams.
23,509 Twitter followers
6sense Revenue Marketing is a B2B revenue marketing and account-based go-to-market (GTM) platform that helps marketing and revenue teams identify in-market accounts, prioritize buying groups, and exec
16,970 Twitter followers
6sense Sales Intelligence is an AI‑powered revenue technology solution designed to help B2B sales teams identify in‑market accounts, understand buyer intent, and engage prospects with the right messag
6sense Sales Intelligence is a platform that provides real-time buying intent and account insights to help sales teams prioritize opportunities and align outreach with sales. Users frequently mention the platform's ability to provide real-time buying intent, account prioritization features, and its seamless integration with campaign planning and nurture programs. Reviewers noted that the intent signals can sometimes feel broad and require additional validation, and the contact information for mid-market sized accounts isn't always accurate or up-to-date.
16,970 Twitter followers
Zoho CRM is a cloud-based 360° customer relationship management tool that caters to business needs of mid-scale businesses to large-scale enterprises. Key features include contact management, sales fu
Zoho CRM is a customer relationship management tool that combines sales automation, analytics, and multichannel engagement to manage sales, support, and customer data under one platform. Users like Zoho CRM's affordability, its seamless integration with other SaaS applications, its automation features, and its ease of use, particularly its simple and intuitive user interface. Users reported issues with the cluttered interface, the steep learning curve for new users, occasional maintenance delays, and inconsistencies in customer support responsiveness.
137,095 Twitter followers
LeadSquared is a Sales Automation SaaS platform helping 2000+ organizations globally to drive sales efficiency at scale. LeadSquared has built a global, best-in-class CRM platform that takes away the
1,465 Twitter followers
Vanillasoft is the only sales engagement software that has *built in* lead management and auto dialling. Its the best for fast-moving revenue teams. Most sales engagement tools orchestrate and automat
26,196 Twitter followers
Freshsales is an easy-to-use, AI-powered sales CRM software. Trusted by 65,000+ businesses worldwide, Freshsales CRM helps sales teams attract quality leads, engage in contextual conversations, grow s
19,042 Twitter followers
Demandbase is the leading, enterprise-grade account-based GTM platform for sales and marketing teams designed to make every moment and every dollar count. Since creating the category in 2013, we h
Demandbase One is a unified platform that provides visibility into account intent and engagement, simplifies audience segmentation, and integrates with various marketing and sales platforms. Users like the platform's ability to provide a complete picture of each account, its simplistic installation, and its exceptional support that helps connect marketing and sales motions. Reviewers experienced a steep learning curve with many overwhelming features, slow loading times, and issues with data validation and accuracy.
21,395 Twitter followers
WhatConverts is an all-in-one lead tracking software for marketing agencies and their clients. WhatConverts automatically shows marketers and business owners how well their marketing is working.
WhatConverts is a lead tracking platform that provides detailed attribution for leads, simplifies the conversion tracking process, and offers a comprehensive view of traffic sources. Reviewers like the platform's ease of use, accurate reporting, and exceptional customer service, with many praising the support team's responsiveness and helpfulness. Users mentioned some difficulties with the platform, including occasional bugs, a learning curve for beginners, and limitations in lead scoring abilities and segmentation options.
274 Twitter followers
SalesWings is an AI-powered revenue acceleration platform that helps marketing, sales, and emerging agentic teams make every engagement timely, relevant, and impactful. It provides a holistic, first-p
4,536 Twitter followers
Act-On Software is a Marketing Automation Platform that provides solutions to empower marketers to engage marketing targets at every step of the customer lifecycle. Act-On makes customer data actionab
32,158 Twitter followers
Learn More About Lead Scoring Software
What is Lead Scoring Software?
Lead scoring software is used by companies to evaluate the sale potential of each business lead or opportunity. By using this type of software, companies create scales and benchmarks against which to rank prospects. Lead scoring software helps teams focus on lead opportunities that are most likely to convert into sales, thus saving time. Driving focus on high-value leads helps sales reps save the time they would have spent on less valuable leads, and with that time they are enabled to craft better messaging when approaching ideal customers who have a higher probability of becoming a sale.
Lead scoring systems use a methodology that assigns numerical point values to each lead a business generates. Leads can be evaluated with certain scoring criteria, including the professional information they have submitted to a company and how they have engaged with a website and brand across the internet. The lead scoring model helps sales and marketing campaigns prioritize effective leads, respond to them, and increase the rate at which those leads become customers.
What Types of Lead Scoring Software Exist?
There are two main types of lead scoring software—predictive and rules-based software. More information about both types is listed below.
Predictive lead scoring software: Predictive lead scoring software is the most common type of lead scoring software. This type of scoring relies on a predictive model as well as machine learning and complex algorithms to identify which leads are best for a company to pursue. These models use external data points, such as demographic information, employee count, job openings, web presence, etc., along with historical data and any interactions the lead prospect previously had with the company, to create a more accurate and informed score. The software also creates a predictive model, often using data from a CRM or marketing platform to pinpoint any behaviors and characteristics that closed or won accounts share.
Rules-based lead scoring software: Rules-based lead scoring software is a more traditional type of scoring and is usually standard in most marketing automation platforms. It assigns a numeric value to attitudes, characteristics, and behaviors of a prospect, which is defined by a company’s marketing team, although input from sales is common. The intent is that these scores increase the number of quality leads that are passed to sales. Rule-based scoring can be broken into two categories—implicit and explicit data. Implicit data tracks lead behavior on a website. Explicit data is quantified based on information a prospect enters into a form.
What are Common Features of Lead Scoring Software?
There are several features included in lead scoring software that benefits marketing, finance, sales, and the company as a whole. The most important features are further discussed below:
Importing and exporting data: This feature provides options to easily import and export data to and from multiple file types, such as PDFs, spreadsheets, text files, and more.
Integration: Lead scoring software integrates with marketing and sales software, as well as lead intelligence and advanced analytics platforms.
Comparisons: This software feature assists in comparing lead scores to company benchmarks while providing reporting and analysis that sales teams use to determine which opportunities to follow, and more importantly, which to avoid.
Scoring: Scoring features use criteria such as revenue, budget, and company size to assign scores to leads.
Rankings: Lead scoring software contains functionality to create and manage ranking scales for leads based on company objectives and their market position.
Analysis: Lead scoring software analyzes which leads should be prioritized and then accelerates them up the sales pipeline. The software also matches and assigns leads to the correct sales representative and aligns lead scores with predefined lead distribution criteria.
Scoring management: Lead scoring software reports on and analyzes lead scores to determine the conversion rate of lead opportunities, and aligns lead scores and strategy with existing sales operations.
Attribution: This aspect of software syncs lead data within the sales database for consistency and accuracy, and provides analysis on lead scores, sales funnel insights, and both open and closed opportunities.
Other Features of Lead Scoring Software: Lead Management Capabilities
What are the Benefits of Lead Scoring Software?
Organizations use lead scoring software because it is a key component in an efficient marketing and sales process. By assigning scores to leads, companies determine which leads are ready to send directly to sales and which leads still need to be developed by the marketing team. This practice not only provides sales teams with better-qualified leads but also streamlines communication between the two departments. Below are the benefits associated with using lead scoring software:
Increased efficiency: Lead scoring boosts sales efficiency by providing insights into a consumer’s readiness to make a purchase.
More impactful marketing: Marketing effectiveness increases when integrating lead scoring software integrates with business practices, enabling organizations to effectively measure the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing efforts.
Facilitates collaboration: Lead scoring increases collaboration between marketing and sales to define the profile of sales-ready leads, thus promoting sales and marketing alignment.
Prioritizes leads: Through determining which leads to focus on, lead scoring software boosts revenue and helps sales teams avoid wasting time on leads that are not ready to become closed deals.
Who Uses Lead Scoring Software?
Lead scoring software is mostly used by sales and marketing teams. The most important and relevant reasons for these teams using this software are given below:
Sales teams: Lead scoring software allows sales managers and sales teams to measure leads and focus only on the strong or warm leads that produce sales and revenue. This, in turn, helps maximize conversion rates and shorten sales cycles.
Marketing teams: Marketing teams use lead scoring software to increase marketing qualified leads (MQL) and sales accepted leads (SAL) conversion rates, which could result in more revenue through increased sales. All departments within a company are expected to take on more revenue responsibility, and marketing departments get value from this software by chasing only viable leads.
Finance teams: Finance teams use lead scoring software to track and analyze metrics in regards to sales efficiency, conversion rates, and sales cycles. The more efficient the sales cycle is, the more cost savings a company realizes, and vice versa. Tracking the amount of time and money lost on subpar or premature leads allows an organization to make forecasts and adjustments to minimize these risks in the future.
Software Related to Lead Scoring Software
There are several solutions that benefit sales and marketing departments that also integrate with or provide similar features of lead scoring software. A couple examples of these software categories are listed below:
CRM software: CRM software, sometimes referred to as sales force automation (SFA) software, helps businesses track and manage interactions in a single system of record by creating a customer profile. A CRM records interactions between a business, its prospects, and its existing customers. It also eases those interactions by placing all relevant customer data, including contact information, history, and transaction summaries into a concise live record. Effective CRM also helps organizations follow up with key prospects.
Lead capture software: Lead capture software is used by companies to find new sales opportunities. Since most markets are very competitive, companies must discover new business opportunities ahead of the competition. Lead capture software is used by salespeople for lead generation through using information gathered from various sources including direct from leads, sales representatives, marketing practitioners, or customer support agents.
Lead-to-account matching and routing software: Another related software is lead-to-account matching and routing tools. This software type automatically matches new leads to account records in a CRM and then connects them to salespeople in the same territory. Although the basic functionality is similar to a CRM or marketing automation platform, lead-to-account matching and routing systems have the advantage of managing complex workflows.
Challenges with Lead Scoring Software
Although lead scoring tools have the potential to greatly improve the process of finding MQLs and high-value customers, they do not come without complications. Below is a list of key challenges associated with lead scoring software:
Based on assumptions: Setting up lead scoring in an automated tool requires attributing positive or negative traits of MQLs based on assumptions and guesses. Predictive lead scoring often hones in on traits such as demographics or information entered into a business’ website. However, what makes a lead high value can vary from company to company and product to product.
Labor-intensive: Building an automated lead scoring system requires an immense amount of brainpower and labor. In addition, although a formula may fit in the present, it will need to be continuously revised and optimized. Lead scoring is not a cavalier undertaking and should not be underestimated.
How to Buy Lead Scoring Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Lead Scoring Software
The first step of buying a lead scoring software is developing a list of features and functionalities a product must have to suit one’s company. Buyers can start by creating a short list of general features and must haves, and then create a long list that has more specific functionalities that could act as tiebreakers.
Compare Lead Scoring Software Products
Create a long list
Buyers can consider the following features to assemble a long list of potential products:
- Integration capabilities with other tools (e.g., CRM and marketing databases)
- Cost
Create a short list
Buyers can consider the following features to assemble a short list of top contenders for purchase:
- Rules-based lead scoring vs. predictive lead scoring
- Cloud-based program vs. on-site hardware
Conduct demos
After narrowing down the long list to a short list, one should conduct product demonstrations to ensure the way the software operates would suit their business. Buyers must be certain to see if a rules-based or predictive lead scoring system would work better. Also, if the product operates on a cloud, it’s important to ask questions about cybersecurity and collaboration with remote teams.
Selection of Lead Scoring Software
Choose a selection team
The selection team for purchasing lead scoring software should consist of the chief marketing officer, chief executive officer, management leads in IT, and the chief finance officer. Leadership across these various disciplines will ensure the chosen product accomplishes key business goals within a reasonable budget.
Negotiation
During the negotiation process, one should be prepared to come up against the vendor’s strongest salespeople. For this reason, one must have all company goals and needs clearly articulated to ensure the product is indeed the best fit.
Final decision
In order to make the final decision, each member of the decision-making team must agree that the product meets key criteria. Marketing must be convinced there will be a measurable ROI. The CEO will be looking for signs that the product serves the bottom-line—numbers and money. Therefore, a CEO must believe a lead scoring system will help boost revenue and please investors. IT executives will look out for technicalities and the ease of integration into current operating systems. Finally, the CFO will need to be persuaded that the lead scoring tool will shorten sales cycles and increase conversion rates. Once all of these stakeholders are on board, the final decision can be made.
Lead Scoring Software Trends
Artificial intelligence (AI): Lead scoring platforms equipped with AI can collect and analyze more data in a shorter period of time. AI helps this software analyze data from several sources, including social media, email, CRM systems, and other company systems. AI is also able to create and test different predictive scoring models, automatically selecting the best one based on a sample data set. Another functionality of AI that plays an important part in lead scoring software is increasing accuracy in data by constantly incorporating new insights and continually reanalyzing data.
