Many sales and marketing leaders with whom I've recently spoken are eager to leverage AI. More than one has referenced AI-powered Lead Scoring as a priority — but they should aim higher. With the right lens, AI can transform Lead Scoring into something far more powerful: a prescriptive guide for precisely where, why, and how to invest your sales and marketing resources.
The Compass: Customer Value
A rich understanding of Customer Value — the value a customer generates for your company over time — is critical to guiding go-to-market efforts. This intelligence comes from a thorough examination of your existing customer base:
- What constitutes a high-value customer versus a low- or negative-value customer?
- What drives that value? Transaction size, profitability, frequency, relationship breadth, loyalty, growth over time — or something else?
Not all customers are created equal, and not all deserve the same time or investment. These insights are crucial for prioritizing prospective customers.
The Map: Targeting
Knowledge of your existing customers also provides a gold mine of targeting insights. Who is high value? Who tends to be low or negative value? Do they have identifiable characteristics? Do they exhibit certain behaviors during the acquisition process? Where can they be found? Through what channel(s) are they acquired?
Answering these types of questions is where AI thrives. By processing historical data, today's algorithms can pinpoint subtle but critical markers that indicate potential value. These markers help you find, value, and prioritize leads, whether at the segment, micro-segment, or individual level.
The Route: Next Best Actions
Quantifying a lead's potential value is just the beginning; AI can also identify the actions to take to unlock that value. Guided by a Customer Value lens, AI can identify personalized, lead-specific actions — like tailored messaging, a well-timed outreach, or targeted offers — that maximize ROI.
By connecting actions directly to a probability-adjusted expected value, your sales and marketing teams can systematically advance leads not just to conversion, but to enduring, high-value relationships. And instead of generic follow-ups or individual instincts, every team member will be systematically guided by ROI-based Next Best Actions.
Final Thoughts
AI can be a transformational partner in sales and marketing, but only if it's pointed in the right direction. By using Customer Value as your North Star and aligning targeting and actions with ROI, you'll elevate Lead Scoring into a scalable Lead Pursuit Optimization framework, unleashing AI's full transformative power.
Applying This to Retention
The same Customer Value lens transforms retention strategy:
- Prioritize retention of high-value and potential high-value customers — allocate resources where returns are most significant
- Invest proportionally — more to save high-value customers, less for low-value
- Leverage offer elasticity — understand effectiveness of various offers; non-discount strategies often achieve higher ROI
- Personalize based on value — tailor retention strategies to individual profiles and potential
- Deploy top talent to high-value accounts — the best representatives managing the most valuable relationships
- Proactively address churn triggers — identify and mitigate risks before they materialize