Lead Scoring: Definition, Meaning & Guide for Indian Businesses

Lead scoring assigns a numeric score (e.g. 0 to 100) to each lead based on signals like company size, source, engagement and budget, so salespeople work hot leads first.

What is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is how you let your CRM rank leads automatically. Each signal adds or subtracts points: a lead from a top-3 city +10, a lead with a company email (not Gmail) +15, a lead that opened your follow-up email +5, a lead that did not respond in 7 days -20. Above a threshold the lead is "hot" and goes to the top of every salesperson's queue. Below, it is nurtured via automated follow-ups. Lead scoring multiplies the productivity of a small sales team: if your team can call 30 leads a day and you receive 200, scoring decides which 30 they call. Start with a rules-based model; graduate to ML scoring once you have 500+ closed deals to train on.