What is lead scoring, and why score leads on what they did rather than on points?
Who this is for: marketers and sales teams who get leads from their website and have to decide which ones to follow up first.
What you'll learn: the usual ways leads are scored, where each one goes wrong, and how Bread & Butter scores every visitor on what they actually did on your site, learning from the deals you close.
A new lead lands in your inbox or CRM. Is it an MQL or an SQL? Hot, warm or cold? Someone who read three pages about your product and came back twice this week, or someone who grabbed a PDF with a throwaway address and will never open your follow-up?
Lead scoring is how teams answer that before a rep spends time on it. Done well, your team works the best leads first. Done badly, it's a number nobody trusts.
In short: Most lead scoring adds up points: some for fit (job title, company size, industry) and some for behaviour (pages viewed, downloads, email opens). Someone has to choose the points, and the rules go stale as your site, your campaigns and your buyers change. Bread & Butter doesn't use points. It records every visit from the first one, joins them into one journey per person, and ranks every visitor 1 to 10 against everyone else on your site. The score is live from the first visit, it's calculated for visitors who haven't converted yet as well as for leads, and it gets more accurate every time you mark a deal Won/Closed, because that teaches it what your buyers actually look like.
The usual approaches
Fit, or explicit, scoring
Points for who the lead is: job title, seniority, company size, industry, location. The information usually comes from the form they filled in or from a data provider.
It tells you whether someone could buy. It doesn't tell you whether they want to, or whether now is the time. A perfect-fit visitor who left after four seconds isn't a buyer.
Behaviour, or implicit, scoring
Points for what the lead did: five for the pricing page, ten for a demo request, two for an email open, minus a few for every week without activity.
It's closer to intent, but it has three problems. Someone has to guess the points. The guesses don't change when your site does. And most behaviour scoring only starts counting once the person is known, so everything they did before they filled in the form is missing, which is usually most of the journey.
MQL, SQL and the handoff
Most teams combine the two and set a threshold. Cross it and the lead becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead and goes to sales. Sales accepts it or doesn't, and it becomes a Sales Qualified Lead.
The argument that follows is familiar: marketing says the leads are good, sales says they aren't. Usually both are right, because the threshold is built on points nobody has checked against the deals that actually closed.
How Bread & Butter scores leads
It scores the whole journey, from the first visit
Bread & Butter records every visit from the first one, whether or not you know who the person is yet. When they finally fill in a form or subscribe, everything they did before arrives with them: the pages they read, the order they read them in, how far they scrolled, where their attention went, how often they came back and what brought them each time.
So the score isn't based on the one session where they converted. It's based on everything.
It doesn't use points
There are no rules to write. Focused Score builds a model around your own site and ranks every visitor 1 to 10 against everyone else on it. A 10 on your site means the most engaged of your visitors, not the most engaged on the internet. Visitors scoring 6 or higher appear on your Focused Tab, together with everyone who has converted, so your team has one short list to work from. See What is Focused Score and how does it evaluate my traffic?
It adds fit when a lead arrives
When a lead gives you their email address, Profile Enrichment researches them and their company: role, career, company size, industry, recent news. Their score then reflects both what they did and who they are, so the perfect-fit visitor who bounced and the deeply engaged student writing a dissertation both land where they should. See What is Profile Enrichment, and what does it find?
It learns from the deals you close
This is the part points-based scoring can't do. Every time you mark a lead Won/Closed, Bread & Butter learns a little more about what your buyers looked like on the way in, and every future visitor is scored against that. The score gets more accurate over time without anyone editing a rule. See Why does marking leads Won/Closed make Focused Score more accurate?
It moves with the person
Buying intent isn't fixed, and neither is the score. When a lead comes back, the new visit joins their journey, the score updates, and the research runs again, so your rep sees where they are today, not where they were when they first converted.
Two examples
The paid visitor. Someone clicks a Google Ads search result, reads two product pages and leaves. Three days later they come back directly, read your pricing page and a case study, and book a call. Their profile shows both visits, the ad and keyword that first brought them, and a score that rose between the two. Your rep knows what they read before the call starts.
The slow burner. Someone arrives from organic search, reads a blog post and leaves. A week later they're back from a newsletter, then again from a LinkedIn post. On the fourth visit they subscribe. Web analytics would count four unrelated sessions from three channels. In Bread & Butter it's one person, one journey and one score, and every source that played a part gets the credit.
Where the score goes
The score travels with the lead. It's on every profile in Bread & Butter, and it's sent with the lead to Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Slack and anywhere else you connect, with the full journey behind it. See The Intelligence Brief
It also runs your reporting. The Attribution Report ranks every source, campaign and keyword by the quality of the visitors it sends, not just the number of clicks. See What is the primary purpose of the Attribution Report?
Common questions
Can I set my own scoring rules?
No. That's deliberate: rules are the part of lead scoring that goes stale. What you control is what counts as a win. Won/Closed is the default Success Factor, and you can point it at a different lead stage if your process needs it.
How long before the score is useful?
Scores appear from the first visit after installation. After about fifteen days your Focused Ratio has enough history to compare against the benchmark. From then on, every deal you mark Won/Closed makes the score more accurate.
Does it replace MQL and SQL?
It doesn't have to. Many teams use a score threshold as their MQL line and keep their own qualification step for SQL. The difference is that the threshold is set by a model that learns from your closed deals, not by points someone chose.
Does it score visitors who haven't filled in a form?
Yes. Every visitor is scored from their first visit. You won't know who they are until they tell you, but you can see how many serious visitors you had, what they looked at and where they came from.