The First Step is Always Acceptance
What if? What if a strategic initiative for your company is to better “qualify,” “value,” or “score” someone over the phone, on the web, or in a specific market? 
Our clients span across many industries and could each outline specific steps that were imperative in the success of creating, utilizing, and maintaining scoring models. The most important step that each organization had to take however is one that should never be overlooked by any organization.
The first step on the road to “scoring” should always be an underlying agreement by the decision makers of your organization that the key to future growth and earnings is to enhance your analytical practices.
Once the leaders of your organization buy-in to the idea that analytical solutions should be embraced and used to drive customer acquisitions, then it is just a matter of allocating the correct resources to accomplish future projects.
A recent article from Marketing Profs painted a beautiful picture of performing a lead scoring project “in-house,” with sales, marketing, and other teams working seamlessly together to develop a real-time model that will allow sales reps to instantly qualify future leads.
However, a company can lose considerable amounts of time, energy, bandwidth, and (most importantly) money to perform the necessary research and analysis that are required to develop a successful, real-time scoring model especially if somewhere along the course of implementing the project other fires need to be put out or it is simply placed on a backburner.
I believe that with practice, understanding, and drive companies do have the ability to develop models in-house; but why go down the road alone?
This would be similar to developing and implementing a strategic long-term plan for your retirement without asking the advice of someone who has had experience in such planning. Your organization should be having many conversations with experienced players that are equipped to answer the many questions that can come out of the discovery phase.
As in many business practices, this first step of acceptance and “buy in” is by far the most important. If a scoring project is an “interesting” idea that could have long-term financial benefits, why not talk to experienced leaders in the industry that can relay appropriate expectations about the time, data, and bandwidth necessary for analytical projects?
Once your organization has taken the crucial first step to believe and agree that analytical projects are an important foundation for long-term growth, the chances that a project like “real-time scoring” will succeed are exponentially greater.
-Deryck B
@DeryckDC
