Introduction

Profile Scoring is the process of assigning an attractiveness score to a customer based on how important the customer (or the company) is to your business. In other words, it will help you in defining your ideal customer. 

Profile Scoring enables customer-facing teams to: 

• Prioritize and give proper attention to potential customers. 
• Rank your customers based on profile scores.

Watch this video to understand the importance and process of Profile Scoring. 

With Profile Scoring, you can:

• Produce higher quality prospects
• Shorten the sales cycle, thereby increasing sales productivity
• Strengthen your relationship with your customers
• Simplify the customer evaluation process
• Preserve your time and energy for significant customers

Key Terminology

Make sure that you are aware of these terms before you read this document. 

Feature Availability

The Profile Scoring feature is supported only for Contacts and Organizations modules. 
 

Deciding Profile Scores

Profile Scoring is not just adding numbers and assigning a rating to your customers.  Before you start calculating or configuring your customers’ profile scores, you must learn the systematic way of doing it. Here is a list of things you must do before you score a profile: 

Identify what defines the importance of a customer to your business

If you have already set up a business, you already know your target market. You must recognize and list your priorities concerning your target customers.

For example, let’s consider you cater to businesses of different sizes and prefer SMBs. SMBs can be defined based on the number of employees, annual revenue, or other relevant parameters to your business. 

You must now define an attribute to capture these parameters and understand why this attribute is relevant to the profile score.

List attribute values in the order of importance

After you define the attributes, you must list each attribute's values based on your target market. Make sure your list is in the order of your priority.

Assign weights to capture the importance

After you decide on a list of values for each attribute, you must assign weights to capture the importance of each value an attribute contains. Weights are nothing but adding scores.

Calculating the maximum score

The maximum score is the reference score to which each customer's profile score will be compared to. 

Once you have assigned scores to the attribute values, you can calculate the maximum score by adding the highest score allotted for each attribute.

Calculating the profile score of a customer

Now that you have the numbers in hand, calculating the profile score is easy. All you have to do is identify your customers' value under each attribute, and add their scores. 

By doing this, you will be able to see the profile score of the customer. You can also compare the customer’s profile score with the maximum score and know where the customer stands in the priority list.

Adding a profile rating

Profile Scores cannot convey a lot on their own. But you can define a rating for the profile scores. For example, you can set a 5-star rating for a customer whose score can meet 90% of your maximum score.

Profile Scoring for Contacts

Profile Scoring for contacts is a systematic way of capturing the importance of a contact’s purchasing decisions and the overall relationship with a brand (for B2B). Contacts can be influencers or decision-makers not only during the pre-purchase phase but also during the entire customer life cycle. Contact profile scoring uses important contact attributes like their roles, time at a firm, position, etc.
 

Profile Scoring for Organizations

Profile Scoring for organizations is a systematic way of capturing a (potential) customer’s attractiveness to your business based on the essential attributes that define your ideal customer. 

These attributes may be the business size (revenue, number of employees), location, business vertical, brand value, etc. Each attribute may have different levels of importance. So, it is logical to assign weights based on their importance. The cumulative score includes weights of all the attributes that define your ideal customer.

Configuring Profile Scores 

If you have understood the terms and systematic way of adding a profile score, we believe you are ready to configure your customers' profile scores in Vtiger CRM.

Follow these steps to configure the profile scores:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the User Menu icon on the top right corner of the page. 
3. Click Settings.
4. Look for the Marketing & Sales section.
5. Click Profile Scoring.
6. Select either Contacts or Organizations module. 
7. Click the ‘Select a field’ drop-down and select a field (attribute). 
   • A box with the field’s (attribute’s) name and pre-defined values will pop-up.

Note: You can customize the fields and the values under Settings > Picklist Field Values.

8. Assign the Score (weight) for each value in an attribute. You can customize attributes and values by adding, deleting, and modifying defaults.

Note: There is no limit for assigning the score, but you cannot assign a negative value.

9. Click Save if you are satisfied with your configuration.
10. Click Yes.

The total profile score is calculated automatically in the background whenever individual scores of each field change.

Configuring Profile Rating

Once you have configured the profile scores for all the attributes, it's time to assign a rating for the scores. In Vtiger CRM, you can assign profile ratings using stars. More stars mean a higher percentage of the score. For example, a customer can get a 5-star rating only if the profile score meets 90% of the max score.

Follow these steps to configure the profile rating:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the User Menu icon on the top right corner of the page. 
3. Click Settings.
4. Look for the Marketing & Sales section.
5. Click Profile Scoring.
6. Select either Contacts or Organizations module.
7. Look for the Profile Rating box.
8. Define Profile Rating using the stars. 
9. Click Save if you are satisfied with your configuration.
10. Click Yes.

Once you have defined the profile rating, your customers will be assigned these ratings based on their profile score. A background function will calculate their profile score based on your configuration, compare it to the total score, and assign a profile rating to them.

Workflows for Profile Scores

Workflows in Vtiger CRM will help you set up specific responses that must occur when your high priority customers trigger an action. For example, you can set up a workflow that will alert account managers when high priority issues are reported by 4 or 5-star customers.

Configuring Workflows in such cases will help you act quickly and satisfy your current customers.