Qualify an inbound lead

Most inbound is not worth a call and some of it is worth dropping everything for. The job is to tell which within a few minutes, from public information and the product's own signals, and to leave a note that means nobody repeats the work.

Steps

1. Check for an existing relationship first. Search the CRM by email domain. A lead from a current customer, a past trial or an open opportunity is not a new lead and must not become a second record.
2. Identify the company from the domain: what they do, roughly how big, and whether they are plausibly a buyer of this product at all. One enrichment lookup, or the company's own site. Personal email domains are not disqualifying, they just mean this step takes longer.
3. Identify the person: their role, and whether it is the role that would use this or the role that would buy it. Both are useful and they lead to different conversations.
4. Read what they did in the product, if they signed up. Somebody who connected a tool and ran something is a different lead from somebody who created an account and left. This signal beats every demographic one.
5. Read what they wrote. The free-text field on a signup form is the highest-value thing on it and it is routinely ignored.
6. Decide, and write one line: worth a conversation, worth a nurture sequence, or not a fit — with the reason. "Not a fit" with a reason is a useful record; an unworked lead is not.
7. Route it. Create or update the CRM record with everything above, assign an owner if it is worth a conversation, and say so in the channel the team watches.

Stop and ask

• Before reaching out to anyone at a company that is already an open opportunity someone else owns.
• Before contacting someone who has previously asked not to be contacted. Check that before anything else if the domain is familiar.

Never

Send the outreach yourself unless that is the agreed process. Draft it for the owner, with the two specific things you learned that make it worth their reply.