Hi
I have overall 28 years’ experience and have set up the entire sales processes including lead identification and qualification for IT and SaaS companies. Here are few points
1.Know your ideal customer: what type of company is the best fit (industry, size, location, tools they use).
2 Check the basics first: do they match your target profile?
3 Look for buying signals: visiting your pricing page, downloading a case study, opening your emails.
4.Talk to sales often: see which leads convert and refine your scoring.
5. Keep it simple: start with A/B/C categories instead of a complex system.
Tech stack can range from simple tools to advanced. Hubspot, and Salesforce offer wide range of features, but they have a cost angle to it.
At the end, it is about matching the right kind of company with the right level of interest.
Happy to get into a call to discuss more details

There are a few levels to this that I'd recommend you consider, there's the individual lead level and the account level. An individual lead may be seem strong; but the account may not be a fit for your ICP. So the current process I've implemented recently is to look at both simultaneously.

Start by rigorously defining your ICP. What is your ideal customer look like? The better you can define that the better you can score that business against your ICP. I then break that ICP down into Firmographic, Contact Signals, and Technographic Fits. With those, we create a scoring mechanism that allows use to identify exactly how good a fit would be.

ICP Scoring allows you to quickly identify if a potential prospect will be a good one or not.

From there, we look at the individual leads or people that work at that company. For these, I typically want to tap into their LinkedIn profiles to assess who they are, and combine that with brand interactions on the website or other media you are tracking. Specific scoring rules will vary a bit based on sales cycles, and whether you are doing a marketing qualification process prior to handing the lead over to the sales team.

Typically though the individual leads would be scored based on an RFM engagement model that allows you to identify the hand raisers, or the people that are showing an increased interest in what you are offering.

But the basic premise is:

1. If the company the person works for is a strong fit for the ICP AND

2. They are raising their hand expressing interest AND

3. They have shared enough information for the sales team to reach out to them directly

Then you have a pretty strong lead.