Two-Tier Opportunity Scoring System

Overview

A two-tier scoring model separates the question of how engaged is this lead? (marketing signal) from how good is this project fit? (sales judgment). The two tiers operate at different stages of the pipeline and use different inputs, but together they give sales leadership a consistent, reportable basis for prioritizing effort and capacity.

This pattern emerged from work with ^[1], where the need to scale from an $8–12M to a $20–30M company required moving from intuition-based deal selection to a structured, defensible scoring process.

Tier 1 — Lead Scoring (Pardot, Automated)

Stage: Lead object, pre-conversion
Owner: Marketing / automated
Purpose: Measure marketing engagement and intent signals

Lead scoring at this tier is fully automated and driven by behavioral data captured in Pardot. It answers: Is this person paying attention to us?

Typical Scoring Inputs

Key Characteristics

• No manual input required. Scores update automatically as engagement occurs.
• Relative, not absolute. A high Pardot score means high engagement relative to other leads — it does not indicate project fit.
• Feeds prioritization, not qualification. A high score surfaces a lead for faster human review; it does not auto-convert or auto-assign.

"The lead scoring is more of — is this somebody who knows about us, is interested about us — it's more of a sales and marketing scoring than the specific project scoring."
— Karly Oykhman, Quarra Stone working session

Tier 2 — Opportunity Scoring (Salesforce, Manual)

Stage: Opportunity object, post-conversion
Owner: Sales rep / sales leadership
Purpose: Evaluate project and client fit against strategic criteria

Once a lead converts to an opportunity, a manual scoring process evaluates whether the project itself is worth pursuing. This tier answers: Should we invest production capacity in this deal?

Typical Scoring Dimensions

Scoring criteria should be defined in a client-specific matrix. For Quarra Stone, the existing qualifier matrix (developed with executive coach Dennis) covers dimensions including:

Key Characteristics

• Manual entry by the assigned rep at or shortly after opportunity creation.
• Structured as a weighted matrix, not free-text, to enable reporting and comparison across the pipeline.
• Informs capacity planning. A scored pipeline allows production leadership to evaluate whether the mix of in-flight opportunities is appropriate before committing to new work.

"If you sell the wrong jobs and you absorb your machine capacity… you can't get to where you need to in a year because you've absorbed your capacity on too many opportunities that are the wrong kind of value tier."
— Lincoln Durham (lldurham), Quarra Stone

How the Tiers Interact

Lead enters system
       │
       ▼
[Tier 1: Pardot Lead Score]
  Automated engagement scoring
  High score → surfaces for faster review
       │
       ▼
Manual assignment by sales leadership
  (lldurham reviews and assigns based on rep fit + bandwidth)
       │
       ▼
Lead converts → Opportunity created
       │
       ▼
[Tier 2: Salesforce Opportunity Score]
  Manual project-fit scoring via matrix
  Score informs pursuit decision + capacity planning

The two tiers are intentionally decoupled. A lead can have a high Pardot score (very engaged) but score poorly on project fit (wrong timeline, wrong complexity). Keeping the scores separate prevents marketing enthusiasm from overriding strategic deal selection.

Implementation Notes

Pardot Lead Scoring

• Configure scoring rules in Pardot for each engagement type (page visit, email open, form fill, etc.)
• Sync lead score field to the Salesforce Lead object for visibility
• Pardot score should be visible on the lead record without requiring reps to log into Pardot

Salesforce Opportunity Scoring

• Build the scoring matrix as a set of structured fields on the Opportunity object (picklists or numeric fields, not free-text)
• Consider a roll-up formula field that calculates a composite score from the individual dimensions
• The existing qualifier matrix (developed with Dennis) is the source of truth for scoring criteria — import those dimensions directly rather than rebuilding from scratch

Reporting

• Tier 1 enables marketing attribution reporting: which channels produce the most engaged leads?
• Tier 2 enables pipeline quality reporting: what is the average fit score of opportunities by stage, rep, or source?
• Both tiers require consistent data entry — this is why the ^[2] and required fields matter upstream

Related

• ^[3]
• ^[4]
• ^[5]
• ^[6]