Lead qualification, run from one HQ.
Every lead reviewed, scored, tagged, and pushed to sales-ready or shelved with a reason. Heads of sales stop triaging inboxes. AEs stop opening calls they shouldn't be on.
Three jobs. One desk.
Score against your written criteria. Tag with a reason. Route to the right next step. Same desk, same hands, every lead.
Score
Every lead is checked against five gates: ICP fit, buying signal, authority, budget, timing. Pass on all five and the lead is sales-ready. Miss one and the reason is captured.
Tag
Qualified, disqualified, or back to nurture. Disqualifies carry a written reason: wrong size, wrong stakeholder, no signal, timing off. The tag tells the story.
Route
Sales-ready leads land on the right AE with a brief. Nurture goes back to the cadence. Shelved is shelved with a reopen date. The HQ writes the next move on every lead.
A DQ is a record, not a delete.
When the answer is no, the HQ writes down why. Sales gets back the time they would have wasted. Marketing gets back a signal they would have missed.
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Plain-English reason on every DQ"Below ICP headcount." "Wrong stakeholder." "Budget cycle starts Q3." The reason is the audit trail.
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Reopen dates baked inTiming-based DQs come with a reopen date. The shelf is not a graveyard. It is a calendar.
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Marketing gets the patterns backThe most frequent DQ reasons feed your campaign brief. Wrong size, wrong title, wrong industry. The HQ closes the loop.
Senior qualifiers at the desk.
Not interns. Not a shared pool. The people at the HQ have closed, hired, or sold in the categories they qualify for. They can defend a yes and a no.
Priya R.
Eight years in B2B SaaS sales. Owned mid-market FinOps and HR-tech qualification before joining the desk.
SaaS · FinTechMarco K.
Former AE turned qualifier. Specializes in cybersecurity and infra. Knows when "interesting" means yes and when it means polite.
Cybersec · InfraSarah A.
Built the criteria playbook used by the desk. Six years closing complex deals in healthcare and life sciences.
Health · LifeSciJordan D.
Background in industrials and supply chain. Reads procurement signals the way most SDRs read titles.
Industrial · LogisticsThe desk, stood up for you.
Two shapes of engagement. Both ship with the same desk, the same criteria, the same audit trail. Pick what fits the volume you bring.
Standard desk
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One senior qualifier on the deskKnows your category. Owns the criteria. Reads every reply with context.
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Written criteria playbookFive gates, five answers. The same definition of qualified, on the wall.
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DQ ledger with reasonsEvery disqualified lead leaves a record. Pattern reports back to marketing.
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AE handoff briefsRouted leads ship with a one-pager. Your AE walks in already knowing the room.
HQ pod
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Two qualifiers plus a leadCoverage across segments and time zones. One owner sets the bar.
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Segment-specific criteria setsSMB, mid-market, enterprise carry different gates. The HQ keeps them honest.
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Routing logic to multiple AEsRound robin, territory, named-account. The HQ pushes leads to the right desk.
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Quarterly criteria reviewWalk the won deals, walk the DQs, retune the gates. The bar stays current.
What the desk cleaned up.
Two recent engagements. Names anonymized, numbers are real and rounded.
FinOps platform stopped routing 6 in 10 leads that couldn't have closed.
A Series B FinOps team had AEs taking every demo. The HQ rewrote the criteria, ran the inbound through it, and shelved the wrong-size accounts with reasons. AEs got their hours back. Marketing got a list of patterns to fix at the top of the funnel.
Mid-market HR-tech AE team handed back the calendar to qualified buyers only.
The HR-tech vendor was booking on title. The HQ added authority and timing gates, tagged every miss with a written reason, and put a reopen date on the shelf. The AE team walked into rooms where the buyer had budget and a decision window.
Stand up your qualification HQ.
Send your ICP, your closed-won pattern, and the role of buyer that actually shows up. We'll write the gates with you and walk you through a sample console.