How to Score Leads Without Guessing: A Framework That Actually Predicts Close Rate

Lead scoring fails for one of two reasons: either it's a black box nobody trusts, or it's so simple (just company size, say) that it misses obvious signals like a lead who just asked for pricing twice in one week.

We score every lead across eight weighted factors: need (inferred from stated pain points), budget (firmographic proxies like revenue and employee count), authority (do we have a decision-maker's contact info), timing (recent buying/growth/hiring signals), pain intensity, growth trajectory, industry fit (which industries have historically converted best for the specific service being sold), and company size (a sweet spot, not a straight line — very large companies often have slower sales cycles than the ROI would suggest).

The key design choice is that every sub-score is independently explainable — you can look at any lead and see exactly why it scored the way it did, which makes it possible to audit and improve the model over time instead of trusting a mysterious single number.