Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
heroes as we help you educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:53):
Welcome back. We're all together again.
Chad Hohn (00:57):
Yay. I'm here.
George B. Thomas (00:59):
Mom. Feels like spending a minute.
Liz Moorehead (01:01):
I know. How's the first weekend? Good.
Max Cohen (01:03):
It was good.
Chad Hohn (01:05):
But lovely.
Liz Moorehead (01:06):
Okay. I gotta be honest, guys.
Max Cohen (01:08):
I don't remember what they did.
Liz Moorehead (01:09):
I don't know if we're all just, like, missing
each other a lot, but y'all areway too polite right now.
George B. Thomas (01:15):
She she's gonna say turn up the heat.
Yeah. Uh-oh.
Liz Moorehead (01:19):
Just a little bit.
George B. Thomas (01:20):
Just a little bit.
Max Cohen (01:20):
My weekend honestly. It was crazy.
George B. Thomas (01:23):
There we go. Now we're back to the show.
Liz Moorehead (01:26):
Yeah. Well, I had a really great burrito this
weekend, so suck it, Max.
George B. Thomas (01:30):
Oh. Oh.
Chad Hohn (01:31):
I know. Burritos.
Max Cohen (01:32):
I'd like to suck a burrito right now.
Liz Moorehead (01:35):
Okay. I'd like to note for the record. I did not
say that.
Chad Hohn (01:38):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:38):
I did not say
George B. Thomas (01:39):
that. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:40):
Thank you very much.
George B. Thomas (01:41):
That was it's not on the edge of whoopsie.
Max Cohen (01:43):
You pushed us down this path. And now
George B. Thomas (01:45):
She did. Yeah. And and and Max said, yes. I'll
go there quite quickly.
Max Cohen (01:49):
As they've been saying a lot lately, around and
find out.
Chad Hohn (01:52):
Yeah. There's a there's a lot of Fafo going on.
Yep.
George B. Thomas (01:56):
Yep. My goodness.
Liz Moorehead (01:58):
Fafo sounds like a gourmet popcorn. And speaking
of gourmet popcorn, guess whatwe're talking about this week,
guys? Look at that segue.
Chad Hohn (02:05):
Did you
Max Cohen (02:05):
see it?
George B. Thomas (02:06):
Was
Liz Moorehead (02:06):
Horrifying. Like a flawless. I know.
Max Cohen (02:10):
It's been a while. Lead scoring.
George B. Thomas (02:13):
Oh, is that what we're talking about? Yeah.
Yeah. We're talking aboutpopcorn today.
Liz Moorehead (02:17):
Yeah. Well, now I'm hungry. Alright. We're
talking about lead scoring.
George B. Thomas (02:22):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (02:22):
I don't know how we've gotten this far in this
podcast without talking aboutit, especially given the fact
that we had literally, what, twoepisodes with Bastian Paul from
hublead. Yeah. Io talkingbasically about the strategy
behind this very topic, which isyou get leads into your happy
little HubSpot house. How do youknow when they're ready? How do
(02:45):
you know where they are in theirbuyer's journey?
How do you know when it shouldgo from marketing to sales? But
George, you also mentioned thatyou were excited to talk about
this topic because they'verolled out some changes to
HubSpot lead scoring, whichwe're gonna be getting to. So
we're gonna be doing a bit of atwofer today. We're gonna be
talking about strategy and we'regoing be talking about the tools
(03:09):
itself. But George, want tostart with you.
You are always my favoriteperson to come to with this
question because you're the guyknown for simplifying the
complex. That's your thing. Sowhat is the simple definition of
what HubSpot lead scoring is?
George B. Thomas (03:24):
I mean, when I get asked that question list, my
brain gets torn in two differentdirections. Go figure. One, I
feel like it can be like JohnnyDepp and The Drunk Pirate, but
also it can be a treasure map.At the end of the day, when I
think of lead scoring, it's asystem that simply assigns some
points to, and I hate this wordmore and more that I hang out
(03:48):
with Chris Carlin to leads, butlet's just call them humans. It
assigns points to humans.
Although in the new tool thatwe're going to talk about, it
could be humans' contacts or itcould be companies'
organizations. So you have tothink about that subtle
difference. Again, we'll talkabout what went away or what is
(04:09):
going away to what is now here.Think of this like assigning
points to a human organizationbased on things like visiting a
pricing page or downloading awhite paper, or maybe it's based
on attributes. Again, somethingdifferent.
There's multiple types of scoresthat you could be doing because
(04:32):
you could do something like jobtitle or industry, and now
you're getting these kinds ofdifferent scores. So think
numbers, think humans, thinkthat maybe the higher the
number, the possibly the betterfit, is probably about the
easiest way that I can say thatyou could look at a number that
(04:54):
might be a slight indicator toif that human is more ready to
purchase or buy than somebodywho has a potentially lower
number. So it comes down toprioritization of the humans
based on an indicator that isnumeric. Is that simple enough?
(05:14):
I hope so.
Max Cohen (05:15):
I got I got another one. Thing do something, thing
be something, number go up.
Chad Hohn (05:20):
Or down. With configurability.
Max Cohen (05:23):
For configurability. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (05:26):
You can configure it.
Max Cohen (05:27):
Can we make it up here a T shirt?
Liz Moorehead (05:30):
Has the resident content
Max Cohen (05:31):
Figular billery.
Liz Moorehead (05:32):
Blood is not coming out of my ears. This is
fine. This all sounds like theEnglish language, and I'm fine.
Max Cohen (05:38):
They do something.
Liz Moorehead (05:39):
They do be that way sometimes.
George B. Thomas (05:41):
New words are
Max Cohen (05:42):
good. Number goes some way.
Chad Hohn (05:44):
Yeah. Or not. Alright. I think it's,
configurable is really the bigpoint. Like, that number goes up
or down
George B. Thomas (05:50):
Yep.
Chad Hohn (05:50):
Based on what you decide. And then we'll also be
able to talk about this later.There's an AI component
depending on how much, big moneycheddar you shell out to that
big sprocket.
George B. Thomas (06:02):
You had to go there already. But okay. We'll
get there later. We'll get therelater. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (06:09):
I just wanted to tease him for what's to come.
George B. Thomas (06:11):
It it yeah. It's it's coming. Trust me.
Because I have feelings.
Liz Moorehead (06:15):
How many feelings, though? How many
feelings though? Like five,seventeen?
Chad Hohn (06:20):
I've got a feeling.
Max Cohen (06:21):
It's some configurability number.
Liz Moorehead (06:23):
I It's love
George B. Thomas (06:26):
configurable number depending on how this
conversation goes.
Liz Moorehead (06:30):
Oh, god. Okay. So alright. Moving along. When do
you actually need to startthinking about lead scoring in
HubSpot?
Is there such a thing asstarting too early or such a
thing as starting too late?
Max Cohen (06:41):
There's definitely such a thing as starting too
early.
George B. Thomas (06:44):
I agree. Yeah.
Max Cohen (06:45):
I remember. Yeah. Heck, I was onboarding people.
People haven't wrote a blog postyet, get get no leads
whatsoever, and then being likeYeah. We need to shut up this
complex fleet scoring thing.
Chad Hohn (06:58):
You're gonna score exactly how many people?
Max Cohen (07:01):
I'm like, what are we scoring? You're refereeing a
game that's not happening, myguy. Like, what the fuck are we
doing? And it was sorry. Yeah.
I I remember I had this, like,really brutal client that he he
came in and he was, like, theconsultant or something for
this, like, big pharmaceuticalcompany that was, like, about to
(07:22):
get off the ground. And he'slike, all I need to do is set up
lead scoring. I'm like, my guy,this thing isn't even connected
to a domain, my dude. Like, whatis going on? And we literally
spent all of onboarding settingup the most complex lead
scoring, functionality I've everseen.
And I don't think they I thinkat the end of it, he just he
(07:45):
quit or something. Like, it wasso stupid. Yeah. It was so dumb.
Chad Hohn (07:49):
This is back at, like, the score property
version. Right? The old scoreversion?
Max Cohen (07:52):
Yeah. But, like, you know, I think that's that that
truth still holds the sametoday. Right? You you definitely
can do it too early. I mean,really, the the the reason you
need to me, the big reason, andI'm sure there's others, but the
biggest reason that you need anysort of lead score or need to
think about it is when you needto start thinking about
prioritization of
George B. Thomas (08:12):
the
Max Cohen (08:13):
contacts, companies, whatever it may be for some
reason, whether it's, you know,something as simple as, oh, you
know, Jamie, the sales rep needsto be able to sort through all
the leads they get in a day andprioritize the most engaged. Or,
you know, you wanna build somesort of automation that says,
oh, if score x equals certainthreshold and they haven't done
(08:37):
x y z, do something. Right? But,you know, usually usually, I
feel like you don't need leadscoring unless you've gotten
some of the other stuff rightYeah. Really well.
Like, if you really nail downcontent, you really nail down
driving the right traffic, youreally nail down conversion, and
(08:57):
like, you've got a lot of peopletrying to take the time of your
customer facing folks. That'swhen you need to think about it.
Not before. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (09:08):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:08):
I I think the the way that I would say this is
the moment in time that the leadgeneration, meaning the amount
of, let's go there, the amountof humans that are interested in
your stuff eclipses your team'sability to have human
conversations at scale. Yeah.Right? It's like, if you get, if
(09:31):
you're getting five leads amonth, Jimmy can keep up.
Max Cohen (09:35):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:36):
Right. Okay? If if you're getting 20 leads a
month, Jimmy and Susie can keepup, right? Now, if you're
getting 500 leads a month, Jimmyand Susie might need some dang
help. And so understanding rightfit or the high score, or in a
(09:57):
perfect world, high score andfit.
Now all of a sudden Jimmy andSusie can at least start at a
place that might equal successquicker.
Liz Moorehead (10:07):
Okay. So I'm making this face for a reason.
Chad Hohn (10:10):
Uh-huh.
Liz Moorehead (10:10):
Because I agree with what's being said here. The
anxiety She's about
Max Cohen (10:16):
to not agree.
George B. Thomas (10:17):
It an and or a but? It an and or a but?
Liz Moorehead (10:21):
It's neither. It's a question. Wanna clarify
something here because here'sthe disconnect I have. We have
had multiple conversations wherewe've encouraged Chad. I saw
that.
George B. Thomas (10:32):
You in trouble, dude. In trouble now.
Liz Moorehead (10:35):
If he Giga Chats later, he knows I'm forgiving
him. So it doesn't matter. Buthere's the thing. We have had
multiple conversations withguests and without about the
importance of marketing andsales, getting on the same page
about how leads are qualified asearly as possible. So now we're
saying though that thoseconversations should happen as
early as possible, but theimplementation you maybe want to
(10:58):
be more strategic about when youput that into HubSpot.
So it's not a but or an and, I'mjust trying to understand where
that bifur bifurcation occurs.
George B. Thomas (11:07):
Well, you can know that somebody is qualified
without a score.
Liz Moorehead (11:11):
Well, okay. So yes and now we're yes and ing.
That answer changes depending onwhether you're not, you're
talking to marketing and sales.Like again, I gotta go back to
that conversation with BastianPaul where you will have a
marketing team member sayingthis is sales qualified, why
haven't you followed up withthem? And then if someone in
(11:32):
sales will say they're about assales qualified as a sentient
cactus.
Like what are we doing here?Right? So that's where
George B. Thomas (11:39):
I want to un cactus.
Chad Hohn (11:42):
The sactus, if you will.
Liz Moorehead (11:44):
George, help.
Chad Hohn (11:45):
Got him.
George B. Thomas (11:47):
Got him. Got him. I mean I mean, listen, yes,
there. Here's, I don't want thisto get Yeah, super I don't want
this to get super complex. Butlike, when I think about this,
there are levels ofqualification, right?
When I talk to an organization,it might be like, hey, what are
(12:11):
the job titles of your idealclient profile? What is the
amount of yearly revenue thatthey should be making? Are the,
and you could go persona or youcould go ideal client profile,
but there's some high levelthings that air quotes qualify
them before we actually have tosit down and figure out this
(12:36):
scoring conversation that we'rehaving today. So, just want
everybody to realize, and theyalready do this, there's a pre
this, and then there's, when doyou take time to do and use the
tools that we're talking abouttoday? That's the differentiator
that I would say is like, at theend of the day, by the way, most
sales reps who are killing it,it's probably a lot of like
(12:59):
intuition and just historicalunderstanding of like, I can
tell they're a right fit.
So that's why I'm saying whenyou get to the point where you
You know, here's the thing. Youever get like You've been to a
party. There's 10 people.There's 10 people. Yes.
(13:20):
You know you know everybody'sname. You know everybody's name.
That's in different part that'sthat's one party. You ever been
to a party where it's likefifty, sixty people and you're
overwhelmed and you're likeMhmm. Why did I come here?
That's a different kind ofparty. What I'm saying is the
organizations that are at aparty of 10, they're just going
(13:42):
to be able to know who they'resupposed to talk to and realize,
oh, I'm jealous with thisperson. You would get into a
party of 50 or 60. You're notreal sure. You're back in the
corner.
And if I could put a lead scoreon above all of those humans'
heads in that 60 to 70%.
Chad Hohn (13:58):
I'm talked to 80 and a higher.
George B. Thomas (14:00):
Yeah. I'd know where to head. Right? So it's
right.
Liz Moorehead (14:03):
Yeah. I feel like I could end up derailing this
conversation. I'm going toaccept this answer for now. It
still feels a little right.Still no.
Still feels a little. I Itotally get what you're saying,
George. I think depending on thesize of your organization and
how what the influx is, you cankinda skirt the edges on when
(14:25):
that conversation takes place.Mhmm. But and I'll put it a pin
in it here.
I think it is a very delicatemoment of figuring out when the
time is to strike. Because aswe've seen with HubSpot, people
will say, I don't need a processnow until they realize crap, I
needed a process six months ago.
George B. Thomas (14:42):
Yeah. Yes. And I would say it's the size of
your organization and there'ssome type of probably
mathematical equation that couldbe added here And the size of
your audience.
Chad Hohn (14:53):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (14:54):
And I don't mean audience just as like
subscribers to your blog, butlike audience of like humans
activism Your TAM. Solution.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (15:03):
Your actual TAM, like all the people who want the
thing you sell. Right? Yeah. Imean, think that's like one of
the things is when you reallylook at it, two things can be
true at the same time, Isuppose, right? Like you can
have that conversation here oryou can have it here depending
on what's best for what it isthat you're trying to
(15:23):
accomplish.
I mean, I think, you know, goingback to the the original
question there, it's like like,when do we really implement
this? It's like, if our leadsare a graveyard, you know, we
have nobody kicking around inthere. It's just desolate. Like,
obviously, we don't need scoringjust like Max said. You know?
And, like, when it comes to ifour if our reps are drowning and
(15:46):
they're wasting their time with,like, twenties and thirties and
forties, like, we might knowthat these twenty and thirty and
forty prospect people, theymight fit our profile of who
we'd like to sell to, butthey're not engaged. And, you
know, they maybe filled out aform one time six months ago.
(16:06):
You know? But if we don't haveany kind of lead scoring, well,
they're gonna be, like, goingfor that person just as much as
somebody who freshly filled outa form five seconds ago. Right?
And I think that's just thedifferentiator. Like, they might
both be well qualified peoplewho fit our TAM, who fit our
ICP, but this person's, like,you know, live and kick in, and
(16:28):
that one's been, like, dead onthe hook for a long time. Right?
Liz Moorehead (16:31):
Okay. Alright. Let's move on. We've talked
about what we should be doing.We've talked about when we
should be doing it.
Now I want to hear about thebiggest mistakes you see people
make when they're setting uptheir HubSpot lead scoring.
HubSpot. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (16:44):
Max HubSpot lead
Liz Moorehead (16:45):
scoring and HubSpot.
George B. Thomas (16:45):
I think that
Max Cohen (16:46):
yeah. I think that the today, since they because
what do they do? They split itbetween fit and Engagement.
Engagement. Right?
Chad Hohn (16:57):
Which Engagement.
Max Cohen (16:59):
I think solved the biggest problem that I had seen
for years like, back before thistool came out, and it was just
the the scoring properties,right, is that people would use
a single number to measure twocompletely different things.
Like, fit is not the same as howengaged are you. Right? And so
(17:22):
they build these, like,elaborate lead scores that were
like, oh, did they they openedthis email and their job title
contains CFO. And it's like,well, what caused the points to
go up?
Like, are they engaged or arethey a good fit? Likely neither.
Right? So I think the splitdefinitely kind of like solved
(17:44):
what I think was one of themore, you know, issues. Right?
And I'd say the other, you know,other mistake you make is just
like doing it too early andwasting too much time and
brainpower on it that you couldbe spending somewhere else.
Chad Hohn (17:58):
Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're like, if your
salespeople are were like havinga hard time knowing even who the
right humans or companies are inthe first place in your portal,
like you don't even have theback the backing processes the
cell setup, but they have like aton of people in the portal and
(18:19):
they don't even know who's who.I mean, like, you gotta solve
that problem, the business logicproblem, the user experience
problem in your HubSpot, thetraining problem in your HubSpot
before you can even considerjumping into the score. And
then, like, making it way toocomplicated. Like, don't, you
know, make your in the newversion of the tool, you could
set your max score as high asyou want.
(18:41):
Don't make it like a thousandnecessarily. Right? Like, a zero
and one hundred score feels goodbetween for people like, hey.
Zero and a 100 is, like, just aneasy round number, and it's,
like, normal. And I think justmaking it not too complicated.
And then, you know, I think, ifyou with the new version, if you
(19:04):
don't implement, like, the scoredecay, then they may have had a
bunch of engagement, but youwant that that score to tick
down if it's way too old ofactivity so that it helps that
engagement score, you know, workproperly to tell you about the
fact that, yeah, they didthings, but they haven't done
(19:24):
anything recently. Right? And soit's just like a nice
identifier, you know, anddepending on what your marketing
efforts are, I think that's whatdrives how you want to build
that engagement calculationbecause it's unique to every
portal. Right. It's unique toevery business and their their
strategy.
George B. Thomas (19:42):
So I agree with everything that Max and
Chad have said so far, but Iwant to almost, I feel like back
up 50,000 foot view. One of the,I have two by the way, that I
want to mention here. One of thebiggest mistakes that I've seen
is people will set it and forgetit. You you can't just throw
some rules in, walk away andexpect it to work forever,
(20:06):
especially when you're probablydropping one or two new
campaigns per quarter or permonth, depending on your
organization. Yet now you're notscoring anything of the new that
you actually created.
So it's got to be this growingpiece. Also like Chad, you
mentioned this score of a 100,but then I'm like, man, if I had
(20:27):
a score of a 100, like what arethe limited actions that I could
actually score to get somebodyto a 100? Like, should it be
more? And that leads me to mysecond thing that I think people
do wrong is they not the 100, bythe way, just the score in
general is like, what the F doesthe number mean? Yeah.
Like, what does the number mean?Yeah, put a definition
Chad Hohn (20:48):
to it.
George B. Thomas (20:49):
It's the nature nature documentation.
Don't know what that means. Andhistorically, I've had this
thing that I've taught calledradar research revenue, which
will break down this idea oflike, let's say it's a score of
a thousand. Okay, well, twofifty to whatever means they
should be on your radar. Well,what does that even mean?
Well, it means that you shouldprobably be just like, you don't
(21:09):
have to really put a lot ofeffort, but the cream is rising
to the top. Then you get tomaybe like 500 and all of a
sudden they're radar researchrevenue. Yeah. So they're
research. Well, what does thatmean?
Well, now you might want to golook at their social channels or
you might want to go look attheir website, or you might have
like a defined process that youhave when it comes to like
(21:32):
understanding if it's time tolike get them into a
questionnaire or a survey or acertain workflow that gets them
to convert a couple of times toget them specific information
that you are trying to research.And then you get to this level
that maybe at seven fifty, it'slike revenue. Well, what
happens? Well, you get aninternal notification. We should
(21:52):
have driven revenue yesterdaybecause they've, they could sell
our ish to us.
Like they know, they know,they've read 50 blogs. Converted
on seven forms. Having theseaction item ideas, these buckets
around what a score gets to, andthen actually having actions. We
(22:16):
literally built lists and emailsand workflows all around this
thing that is radar researchrevenue. So you could take
action upon the information onceit's delivered to you based on
what HubSpot is doing.
Liz Moorehead (22:30):
That is a very involved. It sounds involved and
it's a much more detailed answerto my version of my answer,
which is I am amazed. This is mysimple version of this answer.
It's not documented. Nobodydocuments their lead scoring.
Nobody documents and shares it.Nobody documents it in a way
(22:51):
that is digestible andunderstood by all. They just
make the score and then expectpeople to understand it. I have
been at I have worked with andbeen with numerous organizations
where that has somehow been thecase. Well, they're like, well,
it's a high number.
We assumed they just know. It'slike 75 could mean anything.
Max Cohen (23:10):
What's a high number?
Chad Hohn (23:12):
Right.
Liz Moorehead (23:12):
75 out of well, for a few of them, they assumed,
like, well, the best score wouldbe a 100. And so they're like,
75, obviously, duh. And I'mlike, that's not how any how any
of that works. And then alsoanother really maybe overly
simplistic one is I love thatthey have the fit, not fit, but
for a long time there peoplewere just focused on putting
(23:33):
score attributes that werepositive. And so you'd end up
with competitors who are allover your website and being very
active because they're verycurious in what your content is.
And they look like the best leadof all time, but they are a
competitor. So little thingslike that.
Max Cohen (23:50):
Yeah. And, like, the it's it's really, really
important if it's a what's the Iguess, would you say this? I
don't wanna say if it's acustomer facing, if it's a user
facing or, like, a a rep facingscore where it's like, okay.
There is a number. You are goingto see the number on a record.
This is what it tells you.Right? Like, it's really
(24:11):
important to educate people onthat because, like, again, how
are they gonna know, well,what's a high score? Like, what
if the score goes up to 500?What if it goes to a thousand?
What if it's infinite? What ifit's whatever? Right? You know,
you you should wanna be able to,like, tell people, like, hey.
This is the, you know, thresholdyou wanna look at if it's this,
if it's that.
Yeah. I forget the version ofthe color code them now.
Chad Hohn (24:34):
Yeah. The new that's exactly what I was gonna say is
the new version of the scoringproperty has color coded
thresholds.
Max Cohen (24:40):
That's
Chad Hohn (24:40):
pretty Essentially level off. So use you know,
whatever your max score is, yousay, like, zero to 50 is low or
51 to 75 is medium. And it'slike a you know, just like you
can with the dropdown propertiesthese days as well. You can
implement the tags or the labelsor the colors. That's
Max Cohen (25:00):
that's a really easy way to tell people it's a good
number without necessarilyputting them through a big
training saying what it is.
Chad Hohn (25:06):
That was one of my favorite favorite parts about,
like, in reporting. I know thisis just a tangent, but, like,
when gauge visualizations cameout and you could put the bands
and gauge visualizations andjust give red, yellow, green, or
whatever colors you want in thatgauge visualization, it tells
you if you're within your KPItarget or not. It's like
(25:27):
immediately able to makesomebody who doesn't know it's
calculated. Understand thatyou're at least in the zone. Now
they might not know how to makeit go up or down.
But they know it's in the zone.Now, one last thing I want to
mention too is like, you know,the deal score on deals, that's
(25:48):
the newer feature that they'veadded. That's really helpful
because it tells you littlepluses and minuses as to what
made it go up and down. And ifI'm not mistaken on this current
score property, you still kindof have to look at the details
or the history of the propertyto see what made it go up and
down. But I hope that maybeit'll come into like its own
(26:11):
custom card that's similar to tothat kind of a function like it
is on the deal score.
Right?
Max Cohen (26:20):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (26:21):
Well, let's stick with the tool here for a minute.
Yep. George, want to turn itover to you because there are
some of us who have been in theHubSpot portal game for a really
long time, some of us who may benew, but what is new with the
HubSpot lead scoring tool?
George B. Thomas (26:35):
It's What's happening in a whole new tool by
the way, because that's onething that we probably should
have said at the very beginningof this episode is like, if you
have HubSpot property score inplace, you need to go and
revisit that real quick, becauseit's getting ready to sunset,
which means any system that youhave historically built on that
(27:00):
property is just not going towork anymore. And so instead of
a property, it is a real tool.And when I say it's a real tool,
what I mean is, it is a toolthat one, if you have
enterprise, you could create ascore with AI. In Pro, you can't
(27:20):
do that. But if you have Pro,can literally create a contact
engagement score.
You can create a contact fitscore. And these engagement or
fit scores could be based off ofcontacts or companies. I alluded
to that it could be human ororganization at the beginning of
Again, this if you haveenterprise, you could even
(27:43):
create a contact combined score,which by the way, that right
there gets real interestingbecause it's
Chad Hohn (27:52):
It goes right back to the original problem Max just
Yeah, yeah.
George B. Thomas (27:56):
It's the right for them and it's the right for
us. And it's all in one kind ofscore. And so there's a higher
level of granularity or a deeperlevel of granularity that you
can go to when you're actuallycreating these scores, because
you have these things that'scalled event groups. And then in
(28:18):
an event group, can addcriteria. And this could be
anything from calls to CTAs, todocuments, to then you could
even get into web events.
And then you can literallyfilter the web events on page
visited. But then after that,you can even filter it down
further than that. And you canadd timeframes and you can add
(28:41):
frequencies. And so, you quicklyrealize that this is not just a
positive attribute, add fivepoints, negative attribute minus
100 points. Like, it's way, waypast that.
You even have a thing in herewhere you can score every time
(29:02):
or you can limit to certainthings as well. So again, I
would just say like, actually,what was that word? Custom of
whatever?
Chad Hohn (29:13):
Configurability. Configurability.
Configurability.
George B. Thomas (29:17):
Yeah, configurability. The
configurability of this thing towhat you're trying to do. Now,
here's one thing I will waysthat you're going to implement
(29:41):
this, unless you know thatyou're just going to put five in
place because you're going toadd more when you go to
enterprise. That's not a salespitch. I'm just letting you know
the limitation here is onewithout AI or with AI, it's
enterprise with that multiscore, it's enterprise.
And if you're not on enterprise,you get five scores.
Max Cohen (30:04):
And
Chad Hohn (30:05):
on that AI assisted one, it's supposed to, like,
analyze successful conversationsis kind of the tagline of what
it what it what they say. So,like, it's supposed to look at
things that influence thelikelihood to close and help try
and recommend. And it, like, youknow, even in the doc like the
even the paywall, it shows like,oh, we're training a model on
(30:29):
this, right, if you're lookingat the paywall. But they're like
trying to make the advancedscoring as intuitive as
possible. I'm not exactly surehow that AI piece works with the
combined score.
If it helps like alleviate theissue of the original score
property, which was both the fitand engagement score, or if
(30:50):
maybe that's one that would bebest used in the background for
kind of the marketing team toget an overall health or score
of the contact, but maybe not,you know, work with the sales
team or maybe that one would bebetter for the sales team. I'm
not too sure. Also, with thoselegacy score properties,
(31:10):
07/01/2025, you're no longergonna be able to edit your
existing score properties. Andthen apparently, August 31,
they're deprecating thementirely, I think. Right?
Yep. Or they'll stop updating.
Max Cohen (31:21):
Yep.
Chad Hohn (31:22):
Because they're basically like lists in a
property, multiple lists in aproperty or something like that.
You can find
George B. Thomas (31:29):
out more information on that. And I'm
just doing this because youshould be checking this out
anyway. In the right hand sidedrop down, there's product
updates, you can go to productupdates and you can look at the
score property sunsetinformation if you are somebody
who has that score property inplace right now.
Chad Hohn (31:46):
Yeah, your workflows if you're using it in a
workflow, your workflowsactually page throws it up in
lights and it's like, hey,you're still using this. Check
it out.
George B. Thomas (31:57):
Yep.
Liz Moorehead (31:58):
Is there anything that we wish was different with
the tool?
Max Cohen (32:01):
I wish it I wish it locked it out until you've
successfully used other tools.
Liz Moorehead (32:07):
Like, you have to earn it like a final walk.
Fucking
Chad Hohn (32:09):
earn it. Yeah. It's a yeah. I should start. It's like
like a game unlock.
That's amazing.
Max Cohen (32:15):
Yeah. That's
Chad Hohn (32:15):
fine. You have to get these three achievements before
you can even start working on
Max Cohen (32:18):
that achievement. Amount of leads to unlock this
tool. It's like, paid for it.Exactly. It's
Chad Hohn (32:25):
amazing.
Max Cohen (32:27):
Performance based. It's a performance based DLC.
George B. Thomas (32:31):
I'm trying to think if there's actually
anything I'm sure there are. Iyou know what I would do? I
would ask the I would ask thelisteners, is there something
currently that they wish that itwould do? Because then they
could let us know. I feel likeit'd be
Max Cohen (32:48):
Yeah. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I feel like I
tried to use it a while ago tobe like, oh, like, how would I
go use that new lead scoringtool to say, you know, if a
person went to like an event,give them a score. And the way I
was like gonna try to do that issay like, if if the contact is
associated to a custom object ofa certain name with a certain
(33:10):
label at a point, I don't thinkI was able to access, like,
associated object data to builda score, but this was a long
time ago. So I don't know ifthey've added it.
Chad Hohn (33:20):
Yeah. The the new one, you can do associated
object information for yourscore.
Max Cohen (33:24):
It's custom objects too?
Chad Hohn (33:26):
I if I'm not mistaken, I was just looking at
building a score property aminute ago.
Max Cohen (33:30):
Yeah. I mean, it's been a while since I looked at
it, so it wouldn't surprise meif they built it in. Mhmm. No.
Liz Moorehead (33:35):
Gentlemen, if you can believe it, we've come to
the end of our time together.
George B. Thomas (33:39):
Oh, wow. What? That
Liz Moorehead (33:41):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (33:41):
Know. Literally can't believe it.
Liz Moorehead (33:44):
Yeah. Help us land the plan.
Chad Hohn (33:46):
For the fit score, it can. Sick. Sorry. I had to
interrupt.
Max Cohen (33:49):
That's great. Because I
Chad Hohn (33:50):
had to tell I had to tell Max that it could be done.
I'm sorry.
Max Cohen (33:52):
So it's fit instead of engagement. That actually
makes a lot of sense. Okay.
George B. Thomas (33:56):
Yep. We're gonna get We're done by
knowledge. Knowledge.
Liz Moorehead (34:00):
Awful.
George B. Thomas (34:01):
Take that, Lord Lack.
Liz Moorehead (34:03):
What is your between one and twenty seven
things you want our listeners toremember from this episode
today?
Chad Hohn (34:09):
28, please.
George B. Thomas (34:11):
No, one thing. Maybe. So I'm torn. I actually,
it's funny Liz, you know me sowell. I'm kind of torn because
my initial knee jerk response islike, when creating lead scoring
for your organization, pleasedocument it and train on it.
That's the first knee jerkresponse of like, do that. But
(34:34):
the other thing I would say isthere's probably a large set of
listeners that haven't evendipped their toe into this bad
boy. Mhmm. And so the other sideof my brain goes to, you know,
don't just ignore it. Like, Maxeven, in this episode, well,
(34:56):
it's been a while since I'veused it or looked at it.
Sure. HubSpot is really good atnot being the HubSpot that you
tested. HubSpot is really goodat not being the HubSpot that
you used six months ago. So,anybody listening out there that
is like, Ah, that thing's janky,because they looked at it when
it was in beta. It's time torelook at it and think about, is
(35:17):
it the right time for you tostart using lead scoring in your
organization?
And if so, build a process,document it, train it, and
actually go forward and use itfor what it's meant to be for,
instead of just a piece of yournavigation that you ignore like
(35:37):
it doesn't exist. Like, project.Oh. Oh, god. Shots fired.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community or will we be able
to defeat him in the nextepisode of the hub heroes
podcast? Make sure you tune inand find out in the next
(36:01):
episode. Make sure you head overto the hubheroes.com to get the
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(36:23):
and use the hashtag hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the
socials and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next. Until nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and of course, be looking for away to be someone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
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Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
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(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:53):
Welcome back. We're all together again.
Chad Hohn (00:57):
Yay. I'm here.
George B. Thomas (00:59):
Mom. Feels like spending a minute.
Liz Moorehead (01:01):
I know. How's the first weekend? Good.
Max Cohen (01:03):
It was good.
Chad Hohn (01:05):
But lovely.
Liz Moorehead (01:06):
Okay. I gotta be honest, guys.
Max Cohen (01:08):
I don't remember what they did.
Liz Moorehead (01:09):
I don't know if we're all just, like, missing
each other a lot, but y'all areway too polite right now.
George B. Thomas (01:15):
She she's gonna say turn up the heat.
Yeah. Uh-oh.
Liz Moorehead (01:19):
Just a little bit.
George B. Thomas (01:20):
Just a little bit.
Max Cohen (01:20):
My weekend honestly. It was crazy.
George B. Thomas (01:23):
There we go. Now we're back to the show.
Liz Moorehead (01:26):
Yeah. Well, I had a really great burrito this
weekend, so suck it, Max.
George B. Thomas (01:30):
Oh. Oh.
Chad Hohn (01:31):
I know. Burritos.
Max Cohen (01:32):
I'd like to suck a burrito right now.
Liz Moorehead (01:35):
Okay. I'd like to note for the record. I did not
say that.
Chad Hohn (01:38):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:38):
I did not say
George B. Thomas (01:39):
that. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:40):
Thank you very much.
George B. Thomas (01:41):
That was it's not on the edge of whoopsie.
Max Cohen (01:43):
You pushed us down this path. And now
George B. Thomas (01:45):
She did. Yeah. And and and Max said, yes. I'll
go there quite quickly.
Max Cohen (01:49):
As they've been saying a lot lately, around and
find out.
Chad Hohn (01:52):
Yeah. There's a there's a lot of Fafo going on.
Yep.
George B. Thomas (01:56):
Yep. My goodness.
Liz Moorehead (01:58):
Fafo sounds like a gourmet popcorn. And speaking
of gourmet popcorn, guess whatwe're talking about this week,
guys? Look at that segue.
Chad Hohn (02:05):
Did you
Max Cohen (02:05):
see it?
George B. Thomas (02:06):
Was
Liz Moorehead (02:06):
Horrifying. Like a flawless. I know.
Max Cohen (02:10):
It's been a while. Lead scoring.
George B. Thomas (02:13):
Oh, is that what we're talking about? Yeah.
Yeah. We're talking aboutpopcorn today.
Liz Moorehead (02:17):
Yeah. Well, now I'm hungry. Alright. We're
talking about lead scoring.
George B. Thomas (02:22):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (02:22):
I don't know how we've gotten this far in this
podcast without talking aboutit, especially given the fact
that we had literally, what, twoepisodes with Bastian Paul from
hublead. Yeah. Io talkingbasically about the strategy
behind this very topic, which isyou get leads into your happy
little HubSpot house. How do youknow when they're ready? How do
(02:45):
you know where they are in theirbuyer's journey?
How do you know when it shouldgo from marketing to sales? But
George, you also mentioned thatyou were excited to talk about
this topic because they'verolled out some changes to
HubSpot lead scoring, whichwe're gonna be getting to. So
we're gonna be doing a bit of atwofer today. We're gonna be
talking about strategy and we'regoing be talking about the tools
(03:09):
itself. But George, want tostart with you.
You are always my favoriteperson to come to with this
question because you're the guyknown for simplifying the
complex. That's your thing. Sowhat is the simple definition of
what HubSpot lead scoring is?
George B. Thomas (03:24):
I mean, when I get asked that question list, my
brain gets torn in two differentdirections. Go figure. One, I
feel like it can be like JohnnyDepp and The Drunk Pirate, but
also it can be a treasure map.At the end of the day, when I
think of lead scoring, it's asystem that simply assigns some
points to, and I hate this wordmore and more that I hang out
(03:48):
with Chris Carlin to leads, butlet's just call them humans. It
assigns points to humans.
Although in the new tool thatwe're going to talk about, it
could be humans' contacts or itcould be companies'
organizations. So you have tothink about that subtle
difference. Again, we'll talkabout what went away or what is
(04:09):
going away to what is now here.Think of this like assigning
points to a human organizationbased on things like visiting a
pricing page or downloading awhite paper, or maybe it's based
on attributes. Again, somethingdifferent.
There's multiple types of scoresthat you could be doing because
(04:32):
you could do something like jobtitle or industry, and now
you're getting these kinds ofdifferent scores. So think
numbers, think humans, thinkthat maybe the higher the
number, the possibly the betterfit, is probably about the
easiest way that I can say thatyou could look at a number that
(04:54):
might be a slight indicator toif that human is more ready to
purchase or buy than somebodywho has a potentially lower
number. So it comes down toprioritization of the humans
based on an indicator that isnumeric. Is that simple enough?
(05:14):
I hope so.
Max Cohen (05:15):
I got I got another one. Thing do something, thing
be something, number go up.
Chad Hohn (05:20):
Or down. With configurability.
Max Cohen (05:23):
For configurability. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (05:26):
You can configure it.
Max Cohen (05:27):
Can we make it up here a T shirt?
Liz Moorehead (05:30):
Has the resident content
Max Cohen (05:31):
Figular billery.
Liz Moorehead (05:32):
Blood is not coming out of my ears. This is
fine. This all sounds like theEnglish language, and I'm fine.
Max Cohen (05:38):
They do something.
Liz Moorehead (05:39):
They do be that way sometimes.
George B. Thomas (05:41):
New words are
Max Cohen (05:42):
good. Number goes some way.
Chad Hohn (05:44):
Yeah. Or not. Alright. I think it's,
configurable is really the bigpoint. Like, that number goes up
or down
George B. Thomas (05:50):
Yep.
Chad Hohn (05:50):
Based on what you decide. And then we'll also be
able to talk about this later.There's an AI component
depending on how much, big moneycheddar you shell out to that
big sprocket.
George B. Thomas (06:02):
You had to go there already. But okay. We'll
get there later. We'll get therelater. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (06:09):
I just wanted to tease him for what's to come.
George B. Thomas (06:11):
It it yeah. It's it's coming. Trust me.
Because I have feelings.
Liz Moorehead (06:15):
How many feelings, though? How many
feelings though? Like five,seventeen?
Chad Hohn (06:20):
I've got a feeling.
Max Cohen (06:21):
It's some configurability number.
Liz Moorehead (06:23):
I It's love
George B. Thomas (06:26):
configurable number depending on how this
conversation goes.
Liz Moorehead (06:30):
Oh, god. Okay. So alright. Moving along. When do
you actually need to startthinking about lead scoring in
HubSpot?
Is there such a thing asstarting too early or such a
thing as starting too late?
Max Cohen (06:41):
There's definitely such a thing as starting too
early.
George B. Thomas (06:44):
I agree. Yeah.
Max Cohen (06:45):
I remember. Yeah. Heck, I was onboarding people.
People haven't wrote a blog postyet, get get no leads
whatsoever, and then being likeYeah. We need to shut up this
complex fleet scoring thing.
Chad Hohn (06:58):
You're gonna score exactly how many people?
Max Cohen (07:01):
I'm like, what are we scoring? You're refereeing a
game that's not happening, myguy. Like, what the fuck are we
doing? And it was sorry. Yeah.
I I remember I had this, like,really brutal client that he he
came in and he was, like, theconsultant or something for
this, like, big pharmaceuticalcompany that was, like, about to
(07:22):
get off the ground. And he'slike, all I need to do is set up
lead scoring. I'm like, my guy,this thing isn't even connected
to a domain, my dude. Like, whatis going on? And we literally
spent all of onboarding settingup the most complex lead
scoring, functionality I've everseen.
And I don't think they I thinkat the end of it, he just he
(07:45):
quit or something. Like, it wasso stupid. Yeah. It was so dumb.
Chad Hohn (07:49):
This is back at, like, the score property
version. Right? The old scoreversion?
Max Cohen (07:52):
Yeah. But, like, you know, I think that's that that
truth still holds the sametoday. Right? You you definitely
can do it too early. I mean,really, the the the reason you
need to me, the big reason, andI'm sure there's others, but the
biggest reason that you need anysort of lead score or need to
think about it is when you needto start thinking about
prioritization of
George B. Thomas (08:12):
the
Max Cohen (08:13):
contacts, companies, whatever it may be for some
reason, whether it's, you know,something as simple as, oh, you
know, Jamie, the sales rep needsto be able to sort through all
the leads they get in a day andprioritize the most engaged. Or,
you know, you wanna build somesort of automation that says,
oh, if score x equals certainthreshold and they haven't done
(08:37):
x y z, do something. Right? But,you know, usually usually, I
feel like you don't need leadscoring unless you've gotten
some of the other stuff rightYeah. Really well.
Like, if you really nail downcontent, you really nail down
driving the right traffic, youreally nail down conversion, and
(08:57):
like, you've got a lot of peopletrying to take the time of your
customer facing folks. That'swhen you need to think about it.
Not before. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (09:08):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:08):
I I think the the way that I would say this is
the moment in time that the leadgeneration, meaning the amount
of, let's go there, the amountof humans that are interested in
your stuff eclipses your team'sability to have human
conversations at scale. Yeah.Right? It's like, if you get, if
(09:31):
you're getting five leads amonth, Jimmy can keep up.
Max Cohen (09:35):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:36):
Right. Okay? If if you're getting 20 leads a
month, Jimmy and Susie can keepup, right? Now, if you're
getting 500 leads a month, Jimmyand Susie might need some dang
help. And so understanding rightfit or the high score, or in a
(09:57):
perfect world, high score andfit.
Now all of a sudden Jimmy andSusie can at least start at a
place that might equal successquicker.
Liz Moorehead (10:07):
Okay. So I'm making this face for a reason.
Chad Hohn (10:10):
Uh-huh.
Liz Moorehead (10:10):
Because I agree with what's being said here. The
anxiety She's about
Max Cohen (10:16):
to not agree.
George B. Thomas (10:17):
It an and or a but? It an and or a but?
Liz Moorehead (10:21):
It's neither. It's a question. Wanna clarify
something here because here'sthe disconnect I have. We have
had multiple conversations wherewe've encouraged Chad. I saw
that.
George B. Thomas (10:32):
You in trouble, dude. In trouble now.
Liz Moorehead (10:35):
If he Giga Chats later, he knows I'm forgiving
him. So it doesn't matter. Buthere's the thing. We have had
multiple conversations withguests and without about the
importance of marketing andsales, getting on the same page
about how leads are qualified asearly as possible. So now we're
saying though that thoseconversations should happen as
early as possible, but theimplementation you maybe want to
(10:58):
be more strategic about when youput that into HubSpot.
So it's not a but or an and, I'mjust trying to understand where
that bifur bifurcation occurs.
George B. Thomas (11:07):
Well, you can know that somebody is qualified
without a score.
Liz Moorehead (11:11):
Well, okay. So yes and now we're yes and ing.
That answer changes depending onwhether you're not, you're
talking to marketing and sales.Like again, I gotta go back to
that conversation with BastianPaul where you will have a
marketing team member sayingthis is sales qualified, why
haven't you followed up withthem? And then if someone in
(11:32):
sales will say they're about assales qualified as a sentient
cactus.
Like what are we doing here?Right? So that's where
George B. Thomas (11:39):
I want to un cactus.
Chad Hohn (11:42):
The sactus, if you will.
Liz Moorehead (11:44):
George, help.
Chad Hohn (11:45):
Got him.
George B. Thomas (11:47):
Got him. Got him. I mean I mean, listen, yes,
there. Here's, I don't want thisto get Yeah, super I don't want
this to get super complex. Butlike, when I think about this,
there are levels ofqualification, right?
When I talk to an organization,it might be like, hey, what are
(12:11):
the job titles of your idealclient profile? What is the
amount of yearly revenue thatthey should be making? Are the,
and you could go persona or youcould go ideal client profile,
but there's some high levelthings that air quotes qualify
them before we actually have tosit down and figure out this
(12:36):
scoring conversation that we'rehaving today. So, just want
everybody to realize, and theyalready do this, there's a pre
this, and then there's, when doyou take time to do and use the
tools that we're talking abouttoday? That's the differentiator
that I would say is like, at theend of the day, by the way, most
sales reps who are killing it,it's probably a lot of like
(12:59):
intuition and just historicalunderstanding of like, I can
tell they're a right fit.
So that's why I'm saying whenyou get to the point where you
You know, here's the thing. Youever get like You've been to a
party. There's 10 people.There's 10 people. Yes.
(13:20):
You know you know everybody'sname. You know everybody's name.
That's in different part that'sthat's one party. You ever been
to a party where it's likefifty, sixty people and you're
overwhelmed and you're likeMhmm. Why did I come here?
That's a different kind ofparty. What I'm saying is the
organizations that are at aparty of 10, they're just going
(13:42):
to be able to know who they'resupposed to talk to and realize,
oh, I'm jealous with thisperson. You would get into a
party of 50 or 60. You're notreal sure. You're back in the
corner.
And if I could put a lead scoreon above all of those humans'
heads in that 60 to 70%.
Chad Hohn (13:58):
I'm talked to 80 and a higher.
George B. Thomas (14:00):
Yeah. I'd know where to head. Right? So it's
right.
Liz Moorehead (14:03):
Yeah. I feel like I could end up derailing this
conversation. I'm going toaccept this answer for now. It
still feels a little right.Still no.
Still feels a little. I Itotally get what you're saying,
George. I think depending on thesize of your organization and
how what the influx is, you cankinda skirt the edges on when
(14:25):
that conversation takes place.Mhmm. But and I'll put it a pin
in it here.
I think it is a very delicatemoment of figuring out when the
time is to strike. Because aswe've seen with HubSpot, people
will say, I don't need a processnow until they realize crap, I
needed a process six months ago.
George B. Thomas (14:42):
Yeah. Yes. And I would say it's the size of
your organization and there'ssome type of probably
mathematical equation that couldbe added here And the size of
your audience.
Chad Hohn (14:53):
Mhmm.
George B. Thomas (14:54):
And I don't mean audience just as like
subscribers to your blog, butlike audience of like humans
activism Your TAM. Solution.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (15:03):
Your actual TAM, like all the people who want the
thing you sell. Right? Yeah. Imean, think that's like one of
the things is when you reallylook at it, two things can be
true at the same time, Isuppose, right? Like you can
have that conversation here oryou can have it here depending
on what's best for what it isthat you're trying to
(15:23):
accomplish.
I mean, I think, you know, goingback to the the original
question there, it's like like,when do we really implement
this? It's like, if our leadsare a graveyard, you know, we
have nobody kicking around inthere. It's just desolate. Like,
obviously, we don't need scoringjust like Max said. You know?
And, like, when it comes to ifour if our reps are drowning and
(15:46):
they're wasting their time with,like, twenties and thirties and
forties, like, we might knowthat these twenty and thirty and
forty prospect people, theymight fit our profile of who
we'd like to sell to, butthey're not engaged. And, you
know, they maybe filled out aform one time six months ago.
(16:06):
You know? But if we don't haveany kind of lead scoring, well,
they're gonna be, like, goingfor that person just as much as
somebody who freshly filled outa form five seconds ago. Right?
And I think that's just thedifferentiator. Like, they might
both be well qualified peoplewho fit our TAM, who fit our
ICP, but this person's, like,you know, live and kick in, and
(16:28):
that one's been, like, dead onthe hook for a long time. Right?
Liz Moorehead (16:31):
Okay. Alright. Let's move on. We've talked
about what we should be doing.We've talked about when we
should be doing it.
Now I want to hear about thebiggest mistakes you see people
make when they're setting uptheir HubSpot lead scoring.
HubSpot. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (16:44):
Max HubSpot lead
Liz Moorehead (16:45):
scoring and HubSpot.
George B. Thomas (16:45):
I think that
Max Cohen (16:46):
yeah. I think that the today, since they because
what do they do? They split itbetween fit and Engagement.
Engagement. Right?
Chad Hohn (16:57):
Which Engagement.
Max Cohen (16:59):
I think solved the biggest problem that I had seen
for years like, back before thistool came out, and it was just
the the scoring properties,right, is that people would use
a single number to measure twocompletely different things.
Like, fit is not the same as howengaged are you. Right? And so
(17:22):
they build these, like,elaborate lead scores that were
like, oh, did they they openedthis email and their job title
contains CFO. And it's like,well, what caused the points to
go up?
Like, are they engaged or arethey a good fit? Likely neither.
Right? So I think the splitdefinitely kind of like solved
(17:44):
what I think was one of themore, you know, issues. Right?
And I'd say the other, you know,other mistake you make is just
like doing it too early andwasting too much time and
brainpower on it that you couldbe spending somewhere else.
Chad Hohn (17:58):
Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're like, if your
salespeople are were like havinga hard time knowing even who the
right humans or companies are inthe first place in your portal,
like you don't even have theback the backing processes the
cell setup, but they have like aton of people in the portal and
(18:19):
they don't even know who's who.I mean, like, you gotta solve
that problem, the business logicproblem, the user experience
problem in your HubSpot, thetraining problem in your HubSpot
before you can even considerjumping into the score. And
then, like, making it way toocomplicated. Like, don't, you
know, make your in the newversion of the tool, you could
set your max score as high asyou want.
(18:41):
Don't make it like a thousandnecessarily. Right? Like, a zero
and one hundred score feels goodbetween for people like, hey.
Zero and a 100 is, like, just aneasy round number, and it's,
like, normal. And I think justmaking it not too complicated.
And then, you know, I think, ifyou with the new version, if you
(19:04):
don't implement, like, the scoredecay, then they may have had a
bunch of engagement, but youwant that that score to tick
down if it's way too old ofactivity so that it helps that
engagement score, you know, workproperly to tell you about the
fact that, yeah, they didthings, but they haven't done
(19:24):
anything recently. Right? And soit's just like a nice
identifier, you know, anddepending on what your marketing
efforts are, I think that's whatdrives how you want to build
that engagement calculationbecause it's unique to every
portal. Right. It's unique toevery business and their their
strategy.
George B. Thomas (19:42):
So I agree with everything that Max and
Chad have said so far, but Iwant to almost, I feel like back
up 50,000 foot view. One of the,I have two by the way, that I
want to mention here. One of thebiggest mistakes that I've seen
is people will set it and forgetit. You you can't just throw
some rules in, walk away andexpect it to work forever,
(20:06):
especially when you're probablydropping one or two new
campaigns per quarter or permonth, depending on your
organization. Yet now you're notscoring anything of the new that
you actually created.
So it's got to be this growingpiece. Also like Chad, you
mentioned this score of a 100,but then I'm like, man, if I had
(20:27):
a score of a 100, like what arethe limited actions that I could
actually score to get somebodyto a 100? Like, should it be
more? And that leads me to mysecond thing that I think people
do wrong is they not the 100, bythe way, just the score in
general is like, what the F doesthe number mean? Yeah.
Like, what does the number mean?Yeah, put a definition
Chad Hohn (20:48):
to it.
George B. Thomas (20:49):
It's the nature nature documentation.
Don't know what that means. Andhistorically, I've had this
thing that I've taught calledradar research revenue, which
will break down this idea oflike, let's say it's a score of
a thousand. Okay, well, twofifty to whatever means they
should be on your radar. Well,what does that even mean?
Well, it means that you shouldprobably be just like, you don't
(21:09):
have to really put a lot ofeffort, but the cream is rising
to the top. Then you get tomaybe like 500 and all of a
sudden they're radar researchrevenue. Yeah. So they're
research. Well, what does thatmean?
Well, now you might want to golook at their social channels or
you might want to go look attheir website, or you might have
like a defined process that youhave when it comes to like
(21:32):
understanding if it's time tolike get them into a
questionnaire or a survey or acertain workflow that gets them
to convert a couple of times toget them specific information
that you are trying to research.And then you get to this level
that maybe at seven fifty, it'slike revenue. Well, what
happens? Well, you get aninternal notification. We should
(21:52):
have driven revenue yesterdaybecause they've, they could sell
our ish to us.
Like they know, they know,they've read 50 blogs. Converted
on seven forms. Having theseaction item ideas, these buckets
around what a score gets to, andthen actually having actions. We
(22:16):
literally built lists and emailsand workflows all around this
thing that is radar researchrevenue. So you could take
action upon the information onceit's delivered to you based on
what HubSpot is doing.
Liz Moorehead (22:30):
That is a very involved. It sounds involved and
it's a much more detailed answerto my version of my answer,
which is I am amazed. This is mysimple version of this answer.
It's not documented. Nobodydocuments their lead scoring.
Nobody documents and shares it.Nobody documents it in a way
(22:51):
that is digestible andunderstood by all. They just
make the score and then expectpeople to understand it. I have
been at I have worked with andbeen with numerous organizations
where that has somehow been thecase. Well, they're like, well,
it's a high number.
We assumed they just know. It'slike 75 could mean anything.
Max Cohen (23:10):
What's a high number?
Chad Hohn (23:12):
Right.
Liz Moorehead (23:12):
75 out of well, for a few of them, they assumed,
like, well, the best score wouldbe a 100. And so they're like,
75, obviously, duh. And I'mlike, that's not how any how any
of that works. And then alsoanother really maybe overly
simplistic one is I love thatthey have the fit, not fit, but
for a long time there peoplewere just focused on putting
(23:33):
score attributes that werepositive. And so you'd end up
with competitors who are allover your website and being very
active because they're verycurious in what your content is.
And they look like the best leadof all time, but they are a
competitor. So little thingslike that.
Max Cohen (23:50):
Yeah. And, like, the it's it's really, really
important if it's a what's the Iguess, would you say this? I
don't wanna say if it's acustomer facing, if it's a user
facing or, like, a a rep facingscore where it's like, okay.
There is a number. You are goingto see the number on a record.
This is what it tells you.Right? Like, it's really
(24:11):
important to educate people onthat because, like, again, how
are they gonna know, well,what's a high score? Like, what
if the score goes up to 500?What if it goes to a thousand?
What if it's infinite? What ifit's whatever? Right? You know,
you you should wanna be able to,like, tell people, like, hey.
This is the, you know, thresholdyou wanna look at if it's this,
if it's that.
Yeah. I forget the version ofthe color code them now.
Chad Hohn (24:34):
Yeah. The new that's exactly what I was gonna say is
the new version of the scoringproperty has color coded
thresholds.
Max Cohen (24:40):
That's
Chad Hohn (24:40):
pretty Essentially level off. So use you know,
whatever your max score is, yousay, like, zero to 50 is low or
51 to 75 is medium. And it'slike a you know, just like you
can with the dropdown propertiesthese days as well. You can
implement the tags or the labelsor the colors. That's
Max Cohen (25:00):
that's a really easy way to tell people it's a good
number without necessarilyputting them through a big
training saying what it is.
Chad Hohn (25:06):
That was one of my favorite favorite parts about,
like, in reporting. I know thisis just a tangent, but, like,
when gauge visualizations cameout and you could put the bands
and gauge visualizations andjust give red, yellow, green, or
whatever colors you want in thatgauge visualization, it tells
you if you're within your KPItarget or not. It's like
(25:27):
immediately able to makesomebody who doesn't know it's
calculated. Understand thatyou're at least in the zone. Now
they might not know how to makeit go up or down.
But they know it's in the zone.Now, one last thing I want to
mention too is like, you know,the deal score on deals, that's
(25:48):
the newer feature that they'veadded. That's really helpful
because it tells you littlepluses and minuses as to what
made it go up and down. And ifI'm not mistaken on this current
score property, you still kindof have to look at the details
or the history of the propertyto see what made it go up and
down. But I hope that maybeit'll come into like its own
(26:11):
custom card that's similar to tothat kind of a function like it
is on the deal score.
Right?
Max Cohen (26:20):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (26:21):
Well, let's stick with the tool here for a minute.
Yep. George, want to turn itover to you because there are
some of us who have been in theHubSpot portal game for a really
long time, some of us who may benew, but what is new with the
HubSpot lead scoring tool?
George B. Thomas (26:35):
It's What's happening in a whole new tool by
the way, because that's onething that we probably should
have said at the very beginningof this episode is like, if you
have HubSpot property score inplace, you need to go and
revisit that real quick, becauseit's getting ready to sunset,
which means any system that youhave historically built on that
(27:00):
property is just not going towork anymore. And so instead of
a property, it is a real tool.And when I say it's a real tool,
what I mean is, it is a toolthat one, if you have
enterprise, you could create ascore with AI. In Pro, you can't
(27:20):
do that. But if you have Pro,can literally create a contact
engagement score.
You can create a contact fitscore. And these engagement or
fit scores could be based off ofcontacts or companies. I alluded
to that it could be human ororganization at the beginning of
Again, this if you haveenterprise, you could even
(27:43):
create a contact combined score,which by the way, that right
there gets real interestingbecause it's
Chad Hohn (27:52):
It goes right back to the original problem Max just
Yeah, yeah.
George B. Thomas (27:56):
It's the right for them and it's the right for
us. And it's all in one kind ofscore. And so there's a higher
level of granularity or a deeperlevel of granularity that you
can go to when you're actuallycreating these scores, because
you have these things that'scalled event groups. And then in
(28:18):
an event group, can addcriteria. And this could be
anything from calls to CTAs, todocuments, to then you could
even get into web events.
And then you can literallyfilter the web events on page
visited. But then after that,you can even filter it down
further than that. And you canadd timeframes and you can add
(28:41):
frequencies. And so, you quicklyrealize that this is not just a
positive attribute, add fivepoints, negative attribute minus
100 points. Like, it's way, waypast that.
You even have a thing in herewhere you can score every time
(29:02):
or you can limit to certainthings as well. So again, I
would just say like, actually,what was that word? Custom of
whatever?
Chad Hohn (29:13):
Configurability. Configurability.
Configurability.
George B. Thomas (29:17):
Yeah, configurability. The
configurability of this thing towhat you're trying to do. Now,
here's one thing I will waysthat you're going to implement
(29:41):
this, unless you know thatyou're just going to put five in
place because you're going toadd more when you go to
enterprise. That's not a salespitch. I'm just letting you know
the limitation here is onewithout AI or with AI, it's
enterprise with that multiscore, it's enterprise.
And if you're not on enterprise,you get five scores.
Max Cohen (30:04):
And
Chad Hohn (30:05):
on that AI assisted one, it's supposed to, like,
analyze successful conversationsis kind of the tagline of what
it what it what they say. So,like, it's supposed to look at
things that influence thelikelihood to close and help try
and recommend. And it, like, youknow, even in the doc like the
even the paywall, it shows like,oh, we're training a model on
(30:29):
this, right, if you're lookingat the paywall. But they're like
trying to make the advancedscoring as intuitive as
possible. I'm not exactly surehow that AI piece works with the
combined score.
If it helps like alleviate theissue of the original score
property, which was both the fitand engagement score, or if
(30:50):
maybe that's one that would bebest used in the background for
kind of the marketing team toget an overall health or score
of the contact, but maybe not,you know, work with the sales
team or maybe that one would bebetter for the sales team. I'm
not too sure. Also, with thoselegacy score properties,
(31:10):
07/01/2025, you're no longergonna be able to edit your
existing score properties. Andthen apparently, August 31,
they're deprecating thementirely, I think. Right?
Yep. Or they'll stop updating.
Max Cohen (31:21):
Yep.
Chad Hohn (31:22):
Because they're basically like lists in a
property, multiple lists in aproperty or something like that.
You can find
George B. Thomas (31:29):
out more information on that. And I'm
just doing this because youshould be checking this out
anyway. In the right hand sidedrop down, there's product
updates, you can go to productupdates and you can look at the
score property sunsetinformation if you are somebody
who has that score property inplace right now.
Chad Hohn (31:46):
Yeah, your workflows if you're using it in a
workflow, your workflowsactually page throws it up in
lights and it's like, hey,you're still using this. Check
it out.
George B. Thomas (31:57):
Yep.
Liz Moorehead (31:58):
Is there anything that we wish was different with
the tool?
Max Cohen (32:01):
I wish it I wish it locked it out until you've
successfully used other tools.
Liz Moorehead (32:07):
Like, you have to earn it like a final walk.
Fucking
Chad Hohn (32:09):
earn it. Yeah. It's a yeah. I should start. It's like
like a game unlock.
That's amazing.
Max Cohen (32:15):
Yeah. That's
Chad Hohn (32:15):
fine. You have to get these three achievements before
you can even start working on
Max Cohen (32:18):
that achievement. Amount of leads to unlock this
tool. It's like, paid for it.Exactly. It's
Chad Hohn (32:25):
amazing.
Max Cohen (32:27):
Performance based. It's a performance based DLC.
George B. Thomas (32:31):
I'm trying to think if there's actually
anything I'm sure there are. Iyou know what I would do? I
would ask the I would ask thelisteners, is there something
currently that they wish that itwould do? Because then they
could let us know. I feel likeit'd be
Max Cohen (32:48):
Yeah. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I feel like I
tried to use it a while ago tobe like, oh, like, how would I
go use that new lead scoringtool to say, you know, if a
person went to like an event,give them a score. And the way I
was like gonna try to do that issay like, if if the contact is
associated to a custom object ofa certain name with a certain
(33:10):
label at a point, I don't thinkI was able to access, like,
associated object data to builda score, but this was a long
time ago. So I don't know ifthey've added it.
Chad Hohn (33:20):
Yeah. The the new one, you can do associated
object information for yourscore.
Max Cohen (33:24):
It's custom objects too?
Chad Hohn (33:26):
I if I'm not mistaken, I was just looking at
building a score property aminute ago.
Max Cohen (33:30):
Yeah. I mean, it's been a while since I looked at
it, so it wouldn't surprise meif they built it in. Mhmm. No.
Liz Moorehead (33:35):
Gentlemen, if you can believe it, we've come to
the end of our time together.
George B. Thomas (33:39):
Oh, wow. What? That
Liz Moorehead (33:41):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (33:41):
Know. Literally can't believe it.
Liz Moorehead (33:44):
Yeah. Help us land the plan.
Chad Hohn (33:46):
For the fit score, it can. Sick. Sorry. I had to
interrupt.
Max Cohen (33:49):
That's great. Because I
Chad Hohn (33:50):
had to tell I had to tell Max that it could be done.
I'm sorry.
Max Cohen (33:52):
So it's fit instead of engagement. That actually
makes a lot of sense. Okay.
George B. Thomas (33:56):
Yep. We're gonna get We're done by
knowledge. Knowledge.
Liz Moorehead (34:00):
Awful.
George B. Thomas (34:01):
Take that, Lord Lack.
Liz Moorehead (34:03):
What is your between one and twenty seven
things you want our listeners toremember from this episode
today?
Chad Hohn (34:09):
28, please.
George B. Thomas (34:11):
No, one thing. Maybe. So I'm torn. I actually,
it's funny Liz, you know me sowell. I'm kind of torn because
my initial knee jerk response islike, when creating lead scoring
for your organization, pleasedocument it and train on it.
That's the first knee jerkresponse of like, do that. But
(34:34):
the other thing I would say isthere's probably a large set of
listeners that haven't evendipped their toe into this bad
boy. Mhmm. And so the other sideof my brain goes to, you know,
don't just ignore it. Like, Maxeven, in this episode, well,
(34:56):
it's been a while since I'veused it or looked at it.
Sure. HubSpot is really good atnot being the HubSpot that you
tested. HubSpot is really goodat not being the HubSpot that
you used six months ago. So,anybody listening out there that
is like, Ah, that thing's janky,because they looked at it when
it was in beta. It's time torelook at it and think about, is
(35:17):
it the right time for you tostart using lead scoring in your
organization?
And if so, build a process,document it, train it, and
actually go forward and use itfor what it's meant to be for,
instead of just a piece of yournavigation that you ignore like
(35:37):
it doesn't exist. Like, project.Oh. Oh, god. Shots fired.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community or will we be able
to defeat him in the nextepisode of the hub heroes
podcast? Make sure you tune inand find out in the next
(36:01):
episode. Make sure you head overto the hubheroes.com to get the
latest episodes and become partof the league of heroes.
FYI, if you're part of theleague of heroes, you'll get the
show notes right in your inboxand they come with some hidden
power up potential as well. Makesure you share this podcast with
a friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to
(36:23):
and use the hashtag hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the
socials and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next. Until nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and of course, be looking for away to be someone's hero.
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