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How Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring Works


How Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring Works

The Four Ps of Marketing Model necessitates that customers are presented with the right product for their needs, at the right place, at a price the market will bear and with the right promotion to demonstrate how this product fulfills a need.


This is not an easy task — especially when many leads never translate into sales. Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring can help sales professionals and businesses by providing actionable information for use in refining their processes and prioritizing efforts and resources.


How Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring Works

It’s simple to prioritize sales leads according to the most obvious differentiators — geographic location, industry, company size, job title, etc. However, Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring kicks it up a notch by using artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically analyze historical sales data and identify top factors that determine whether a lead is likely to convert to an opportunity.


Sales reps using Salesforce Sales Cloud can then segment and prioritize leads based on the predictions, and then they can dive deeper with Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring predictions available each lead record.


Salesforce Winter ‘21 Release Brings Einstein Lead Scoring With Less Data

Prior to the Salesforce Winter ‘21 Release, qualifying for use of Einstein Lead Scoring required 1,000 new leads and 120 leads converted in the previous six months. This data requirement prevented all but enterprise-level companies in many industries from using the power of the machine learning in Salesforce Sales Cloud Einstein.


Now smaller businesses can use Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring by taking anonymized data from Salesforce customers to use as the baseline, or benchmark, of scoring predictions. Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring is available with Enterprise, Performance and Unlimited editions of Salesforce and using either user interface (UI) — Lightning Experience or Salesforce Classic.


One important consideration is that predictive models developed using the global anonymized data will be switched to a model that uses only your organization’s data as the amount of data accumulates to a satisfactory level.

Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring

Configuring Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring with the Setup Wizard

Salesforce provides great documentation on how to enable and set up Einstein Lead Scoring within your organization.


The setup is intuitive — with one exception. Some people may need help getting their Remote Site Settings to allow access to their Salesforce server. Remote Site Settings are the primary Salesforce method for allowing Salesforce administrators to authorize access to external systems and resources. While Einstein Leading Scoring is within the Salesforce ecosystem, we have to explicitly allow it access into each Salesforce org.


For more information about Remote Site Settings click here.


Remote Site Settings Configuration

You can set up the Remote Site Setting by going to Company Information in your Salesforce org and getting the instance number from the bottom right-hand side of the first-page section.


Note: Your instance will look something like this - NA150, NA139, etc.

  • In the Quick Find box of the Set up page, enter ‘Remote Site Settings.’

  • Select the new button in the pane on the left side of the page.

  • Update the following fields: Remote Site Name, Remote Site URL, Active

  • Select the ‘Save’ button.

Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring Remote Site Settings
  • Once this is completed, simply go to ‘Setup’ and enter ‘Assisted Setup’ in the Quick Find box.

  • Select ‘Assisted Setup’ under the Einstein Sales.

  • Then, select the ‘Get Started’ button.


Einstein Lead Scoring Setup Wizard

Einstein Lead Scoring Setup Wizard Overview

Quickly, you can walk through the steps in the setup wizard.


1. The Start page will tell you what information you will need as you go.

  • What are the next steps for leads in your firm’s process?

Accounts and Contacts?

Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities?

  • Should all the leads be included in Einstein Lead Scoring or a subset of leads?

  • What fields should be included in the analysis?

All fields?

What fields to use as filter fields.

- If you choose to select only certain leads, then you can select up to 100 field filters.

- Some field types are not supported for lead field filters (multi-select picklists, text areas, encrypted strings, or address).

- Picklist has some common sensical requirements you should know about when using as filter fields.

- Should you exclude fields that are not specific to the sales process or that you do not regularly populate?

Check the documentation here for lead field filter specifics. If you remove a value from a picklist, then it will not be used in the filtering.

Einstein Lead Scoring Setup Wizard

Once you have walked through the setup wizard, a confirmation page will allow you to start the process with the Score Leads button at the end.


Add the Einstein Scoring component to the Lightning Page Layout, the Lead Score field to page layouts, list views and reports, and you are ready to start to view your Lead Scores.


Einstein Lead Scoring Setup Troubleshooting

If you do not see scores immediately for a particular lead, check the following possible causes:

  • It can take around 24 hours before scores are available.

  • The lead was added less than four hours ago.

  • The lead has not been modified in the six months before scoring was turned on.

  • The status value is unqualified or a similar status.


How to use Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring in Daily Sales Operations

Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring User Interface (UI)

Once the Einstein Lead Scoring component is placed on the Lightning Page Layout, users can see the score along with attributes, both positive and negative, of the lead that are influencing the score most.


The Lead Score field on list views and in reports now allows users to better plan their time, resources, and actions to assist leads with their product and service needs.


Scoring of leads is completed by looking at the past converted leads including custom fields and the activity data your sales professionals are most likely already entering. If required during setup, leads and fields can be omitted to reflect your current data state and refine the predictions.


Included is the out-of-the-box Einstein Lead Scoring Dashboard that can be augmented to allow visualization of your organization’s performance. The initial components on the dashboard are:

  • Conversion Rate by Lead Score

  • Lead Score Distribution

  • Conversion Rate by Lead Score

  • Average Lead Score by Lead Source

Further Considerations for Using Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring

  • Better and more data leads to a more accurate predictive model.

  • Once your Salesforce Organization has enough data, Einstein will switch from the global predictive model to one based solely on your data.

  • Users must have access to the following fields on the Lead: Company, Phone and Email.

  • Filter fields are limited to 100 currently.

  • In Salesforce instances with approximately a million scored leads, Einstein Analytics Lead Scoring can stop working.

  • Before updating fields on the Lead, Einstein scoring needs to be turned off. Then you can make the changes and turn on again.

Conclusion and Resources

Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring as of the Winter ‘21 Release allows those Salesforce customers who could not quite reach the data requirements for a predictive model to create one with anonymized data from Salesforce customers creating a global model.


Every ten days, or whenever the Salesforce Administrator updates the scoring configuration, the lead data and the model are refreshed. Lead scores are updated every few hours as needed.


Providing continuously improved predictions for sales professionals and their firms is a smart way to allow the best use of resources, refine processes and prioritize sales reps’ time.


Resources for Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring:



Contact CRM Science Salesforce Consultants


The CRM Science Salesforce Consulting team develops cutting-edge solutions using Salesforce analytics tools, and Salesforce awarded the team a 2017 Salesforce Partner Innovation Award for Analytics Cloud work with client Deluxe Entertainment.


Contact CRM Science Salesforce Consultants to chat about Salesforce solutions using Einstein Lead Scoring, analytics tools, and more.


Contact CRM Science Salesforce Consultants


Robert L. Davis

Salesforce Developer

CRM Science

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