Glossary
The difference between prospect scoring (before contact, company-level fit) and lead scoring (after contact, behavior-based), and where each applies.
Prospect scoring ranks companies you haven't contacted yet by how likely they are to be a good fit, based on firmographic and behavioral signals available before any outreach happens. It's easy to confuse with lead scoring, which ranks people who have already engaged with you (visited your site, opened an email, requested a demo) by how likely they are to convert.
| Prospect scoring | Lead scoring | |
|---|---|---|
| Applies to | Companies, pre-contact | People, post-engagement |
| Based on | Firmographic/technographic fit, public signals | Behavior: email opens, site visits, form fills |
| Answers | "Should we reach out to this company at all?" | "Is this person ready to talk to sales?" |
Most lead-scoring tools assume you already have inbound engagement data to score, they're built for teams with real website/email traffic. A small team doing outbound-first prospecting often has none of that yet, which is exactly why account fit scoring (the prospect-scoring approach, applied before any contact) is the more useful starting point: it works from public company data, not from a marketing funnel that doesn't exist yet.
Prospect scoring is effectively the same mechanism as an account fit score, the term you'll see depends on which vendor or team is describing it.
Bring your criteria to a live call. We'll run a real scoring pass while you watch, not a slide deck.
Book a demo