AI based Account Scoring - Why, How and What?
Discover how AI revolutionizes account scoring, offering precision and efficiency over traditional scoring methods. Understand the difference between old rule-based scoring and new AI based scoring.
Account scoring has lately been a crucial part of the sales workflow.
Traditional account scoring heavily relies on intent signals i.e. target account activities on the internet and directly with the company i.e. interest indicators.
Here are the 2 aspects:
Internet Activities
Interest Indicators
First aspect of traditional scoring is understanding if the target account is actively looking for solutions. This involves:
Internet Activities: Observing if target accounts are:
Finding the solution on platforms like G2.
Searching for reviews.
Engaging with social media posts linked to relevant keywords and phrases.
This utilizes second-party and third-party data to identify interest and need.
Interest Indicators: Scores are assigned based on the target account's interest in the company. This includes interacting with the company's online assets i.e.
Visiting the website.
Downloading white papers.
Attending webinars.
Commenting on social media posts.
This is primarily first-party data, directly gathered from the company's marketing tools.
Tools like 6Sense, DemandBase, CommonRoom help you collate this data-set and score accounts.
Sales leaders often face challenges with traditional scoring methods. They ask following questions in every strategic meeting:
Are the data sets effective and accurate?
Can we draw reliable conclusions from the data?
How to differentiate between critical data that truly indicates buying intent and general data that's less useful.
Issues with the traditional Account Scoring system
Relevance and Accuracy of Data
Scoring systems often use second-party and third-party data along with prospect signals from internet activities. This raises serious doubts about the relevance and accuracy of the data.
An account score might be inflated due to past engagements that are no longer relevant. For example, an account might have downloaded a case study / white paper a while ago, but that doesn't mean they are still interested.
Black Box
One major issue with traditional scoring is transparency. It kind of operates like a “Black Box”. Sales leaders often find themselves questioning these scores because:
The scores are used more for indicative purposes rather than actual decision-making.
Competition
Another major challenge is that multiple companies are accessing the same scoring data and competing for the prospect’s attention.
According to a stat from our last webinar with Christine, at any given moment, there are about 11 companies fighting for the prospect's attention.
This raises the question:
How can this scoring system help you stand out and demonstrate a better understanding of the prospect's problem compared to your competition?
Inability to Customize
Scoring models often fail to align with a company’s specific Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and sales process.
Inaccurate Prioritization: The inability to customize the scoring model results in incorrect scoring.
Lack of Context
Traditional account scores provide a single number to represent the likelihood of an account converting. However, this number lacks context:
Without insight into the specific behaviors and attributes that contributed to the score, it becomes difficult for sales and marketing teams to take meaningful action.
New way of Scoring Accounts - AI based
Account scoring has evolved into being more relevant, contextual and accurate with AI.
New account scoring systems leverage AI to identify the need of your solution with prospects. But what does this mean?
Earlier, account scoring focused on catching buyers in-market. Now, the focus has shifted to identifying buyers before they even enter the market.
How Does It Work?
The new approach to account scoring is more analytical and logical than traditional account scoring. Here’s how it works:
- Keyword and Context Analysis: The system looks for mentions of pains, needs, and challenges related to specific keywords and activities across various public sources of information.
Diverse Data Sources
These public sources can include a wide array of documents and media:
- Financial Reports: Documents like 10-K filings and earnings calls.
- Interviews and Social Media: Statements made in interviews and social media posts.
- Hiring Trends and News: Hiring patterns and recent news articles.
All these documents are updated regularly from a central repository, so that analysis is always updated.
AI scans these documents for relevant keywords and context, providing insights that are:
Business-Relevant: Tailored to your specific business needs.
Hyper-Personalized: Allows for hyper-personalized outreach based on pain points identified.
One of the biggest advantages of the new account scoring system is its openness and adaptability:
Customizable Models: You can customize the model based on context, keywords, and relevance to your business.
Transparency: The system provides sources of insights being used, giving you confidence in the data.
Knowing the sources of your insights and having the ability to customize scoring models builds trust and enhances the effectiveness of your outbound conversations.
This new approach to account scoring is a game-changer, offering more precise, actionable, and transparent insights than ever before.
AI based Account Scoring vs Intent Signal based Account Scoring
When it comes to account scoring, there's a clear winner.
And yes, it's AI-based account scoring.
But, Why?
One of the prominent Sales AI tool that have built this new Account Scoring is Evabot.
- Evabot has helped more than 10 companies, including large enterprises, improve their outcomes by a minimum of 20%.
AI can process billions of tokens, analyzing and inferring data at a scale humans simply can't match. It excels at sifting through volumes of data to provide insights and scores based on relevance and recency.
Sales leaders are tired of traditional tools that don't allow customization, lack transparency and push for multi-year prepaid deals. They need:
Flexibility: They are looking for innovative solutions with flexible pricing.
Time Savings: Tools like Evabot don't just score accounts accurately—they do it in a fraction of the time compared to traditional methods of account scoring.
Customization: The ability to tailor the scoring model to specific business needs
Transparency: Knowing how scores are derived builds trust and confidence with the system.
Are you a Laggard or an Innovator?
It's time to take a hard look at your account scoring strategy.
Are you keeping up with AI , or are you stuck with Intent Signals yet?
Rule-Based Scoring vs. AI-Based Scoring
Some hard questions for right decisions…
Are you still relying on traditional, rule-based scoring from intent signals?
Or are you adopting AI tools that offer dynamic, data-driven insights with relevant and precise account scores?
It's not just about choosing between traditional and new methods of Account Scoring. Think about the stage of your AI adoption:
Are you evaluating AI tools solely for account scoring and prioritization?
Or are you limiting AI to just email personalization?
Think how you approach your sales strategy:
Are you using AI insights to identify and focus on high-priority accounts on the go?
Or are you still doing research manually or with DIY AI Tools, missing out on the speed and accuracy?
And what about your approach to prospecting:
Are you only targeting prospects who are currently in the market?
Or are you also identifying and nurturing those who will soon enter the market?
Sales teams that have embraced AI-based scoring and prioritization are seeing impressive results:
These teams have improved their meeting booking rates by a minimum of 20% with the same resources.
So, are you a laggard or an innovator?
- Laggard: If you stick with rule-based scoring and manual methods, you risk falling behind.
- Innovator: And if you adopt an AI-based account score, you’ll at least stay ahead of the competition in prospecting.
The choice is clear…
Go for AI based Account Scoring.
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