Reports show that about 8.5 lakh students are studying abroad. But there’s something even more interesting here. The number of students abroad is growing at a rate of 15%, and if this continues, we will have 20 lakh Indian students studying abroad by 2025.

This presents an excellent opportunity for overseas education consultants to capitalize on this trend. No doubt that there are many ways to realize this goal, but using lead-scoring strategies is one of the best ways to reach out and drive conversions.

Read More – What is Lead Scoring in CRM?

But thanks to the complexity of overseas education consultancy, even lead scoring is not an easy task and has its own set of challenges. In this blog, we will take a look at some of these

Lead-scoring Challenges and Ways to Overcome

Challenge 1: Outdated or Inaccurate Data

The first lead-scoring challenge that overseas education consultants have to deal with is the issue of outdated and inaccurate data. The overseas education field is dynamic, and it evolves quickly, and outdated data will leave you with incorrect lead scores. As a result, your business will end up wasting valuable resources that would be better spent on other value-driven tasks.

Solution:

Thankfully, there is a simple solution to this challenge where all you need to do is update your database and get rid of any inconsistencies. For instance, you can follow up on the existing leads to verify their current educational status. Besides that, other things like verifying all the existing email addresses and removing any sort of duplication will also help.

Challenge 2: Lack of a Clear Lead Scoring Process

Most overseas education consultants do not realize this, but sometimes, the problem is as simple as an inconsistent lead-scoring process. Very often, there is no proper communication between different teams, which results in unwanted inconsistencies. This will leave you with gaps and silos that hinder proper collaboration and affects your overall lead-scoring results.

Solution:

One effective way to address this challenge is to revamp and enhance your entire lead-scoring process. You must start with a thorough analysis to determine existing gaps and shortcomings and address them with the right strategies. You must even optimize the communication channel between different teams with proper CRM solutions.

Challenge 3: Lack of Proper Lead Scoring Criteria

One of the biggest mistakes you could make as an overseas education consultant is not defining your lead scoring criteria. Inconsistent or subjective lead scoring criteria means your teams will have issues determining if a lead is qualified or not. This will definitely create more confusion for everyone, and your business might lose a good opportunity for such minor technicalities.

Solution:

One simple and effective way to avoid this entire ordeal is to define your specific lead scoring criteria. You can easily access a wide range of lead-scoring frameworks to define every lead-scoring criterion based on your unique requirements. You must define these criteria based on the student’s point of origin, demographics, and location and assign scores accordingly. This will help you get a much clearer idea and augment your efforts accordingly to get the right results.

Challenge 4: Unclear and Unrealistic Expectations

One thing you need to be very clear about as an overseas education consultant is not to keep any unrealistic expectations from Lead Scoring Models. Of course, lead scoring models are generally very effective, but over or underestimation of results is not good news for anyone. This does no good but increases the risk of losing direction and focus while defining and implementing the lead-scoring strategy.

Solution:

Well, the simple solution to this issue is to keep your expectations more realistic and in line with the reality of this industry. You must set small and achievable goals based on the condition of the market, global economy, business goals, and competition. After that, you will need to keep track of these goals and evaluate your performance and returns based on the results. Thankful, nowadays there are many technology solutions that can help you track these details very easily.

Challenge 5: Using a Generic Lead Scoring Model

It is no secret that the overseas education industry is constantly changing with everything that is going on in the world. This is the reason you cannot rely on a generic lead-scoring model that fails to keep up with the changing realities of this world. What’s even worse is you might lose accuracy and relevance, which will hamper your lead-scoring abilities further.

Solution:

Updating your lead scoring models with the changing realities of the overseas education world is the best solution to this problem. It is better if you use proper data-driven tactics like A/B testing to determine if the model aligns with the latest realities of the market. You can even segment your lead scoring models based on factors such as educational background, location, economic background and more.

In Conclusion

Proper lead scoring can be an excellent tool for overseas education consultants, but only when they use it properly. You must remember each and every challenge that might come your way and find better ways to manage them. This should not be very difficult when you have the right CRM software for overseas education consultants and let technology take the load off of you.