Operations

Lead Qualification Categories for AI Scoring

Qualified, Nurture, Unqualified — a three-label pipeline gate with numeric confidence and a Strict Other for the leads that fit nothing.

Overview

Lead qualification is a classification problem wearing a scoring costume: the decision is which pipeline lane, not which number. This setup classifies leads into three lanes whose definitions encode the criteria — Qualified requires budget, authority, need, and timeline signals; Nurture is genuine interest without readiness; Unqualified is no realistic path — under Strict ambiguity with a 0–100 confidence score. The score bands are defined in the prompt (90+ unambiguous, 60–89 good fit, below 60 best available), so downstream automation can threshold them meaningfully.

Workflow

Extract first, classify second
Run the lead text through extraction for the fields, then through this for the lane — two prompts, two clean jobs.
Encode your criteria in the definitions
The Qualified definition IS your qualification bar — tighten or loosen the signals there, not in extra rules.
Threshold the score, don't average it
Confidence is self-reported per lead: great for routing thresholds, meaningless as a portfolio average.

Why This Works

Three exclusive lanes with criteria-bearing definitions beat a 0–100 "score" nobody can audit
Strict mode keeps junk leads from inflating the Qualified lane
Defined score bands make the confidence number actionable instead of decorative

Best for

Sales ops feeding a pipeline from inbound forms and emails
Teams whose reps disagree about what "qualified" means
Automations that act differently above and below a confidence bar

Not for

Extracting the lead's details (name, company, team size) — extraction runs first, this runs second
Predicting deal size or close probability — that's modeling, not labeling

Use cases

Gating CRM entries into sales-ready and nurture lanes
Applying BANT-style criteria consistently across hundreds of leads
Thresholding numeric confidence for automation rules

Customize This Resource

Opens this setup in Data Classification Prompt. Generate to get the full classification prompt — then adjust the labels, ambiguity mode, and confidence output.

Open in Data Classification Prompt

Prompt Template

TASK
Classify inbound leads by qualification stage for the sales pipeline.
Assign exactly one of the labels defined below to the text in the input.

LABELS
- Qualified: Budget, authority, need, and timeline signals are present — ready for sales.
- Nurture: Genuine interest and potential fit, but not ready to buy now.
- Unqualified: Clearly outside the target profile — no realistic path to a sale.
- Other: Does not clearly fit any label above.

CLASSIFICATION RULES
- Read the entire text before deciding — the deciding signal may come late.
- Judge by content and intent, not by tone, length, or formatting.
- Match the text against the definitions, not just the label names.
- Use only the labels defined above, plus "Other" when nothing fits — never invent any other label.

EDGE CASE RULES
- If the text fits more than one label, choose the one matching its primary purpose — what the writer mainly wants.
- If two labels fit equally, prefer the more specific definition over the more general one.

AMBIGUITY POLICY
- If no label clearly fits, return exactly "Other" — do not force a fit.
- "Other" is a valid answer; a forced wrong label is not.

CONFIDENCE
- With each label, report a confidence score from 0 to 100.
- 90 or above = unambiguous fit; 60–89 = good fit with some uncertainty; below 60 = best available choice.
- The score reflects your certainty about the fit — it is self-reported, not computed.

OUTPUT FORMAT
Return your classification as a single valid JSON object with a "label" key and a "confidence" key.

EXAMPLE OF A VALID RESPONSE
{
  "label": "Qualified",
  "confidence": 92
}

OUTPUT RULES
- Return only the JSON object — no text before or after it.
- Do not wrap the output in markdown code fences.
- Return the label text exactly as defined above — no paraphrasing, no abbreviations, no new labels.

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