Beyond the challenges between marketing and sales teams, the biggest challenge for 64% of those surveyed was simply a shortage of customer data. Most businesses just don’t know when to contact their leads at all — they haven't set up lead scoring and lead routing best practices and they have no way to determine who is ready to buy and who is just browsing.

Insight into your customers — such as their demographics, interests, and what actions they typically take with your marketing efforts — is crucial for understanding how to attract more customers.

When you have this information, you can come up with a lead scoring template, which assigns points to leads based on their demographics, interests, actions or any other qualifiers you dictate. You’ll assign higher point levels to things that signify high levels of interest. For example, if your clientele is often from a certain geographic location or has a specific job role, your leads who match that criteria will receive higher points. As your leads interact with your website, engage with email content and fill out forms, all data is captured and taken into account to give these contacts a score to rank them.

You’ll then be able to see quickly which leads are most qualified and ready to buy — and your sales team members will know who to spend their time following up with. This means no more miscommunication between your sales and marketing teams as both can now see which leads are the most promising, and there is a lower risk of misinterpreting buyer signals. Your team won’t have to base decisions about who to follow up with on instinct or guesswork — they’ll have data to go on.