01The Question Is Wrong
Why "who qualifies" is the wrong question
Two Jobs, One Word
The right question is not who qualifies. It is qualify what — because there are two filters, they run at different moments, and they use information that arrives from different places.
The first filter answers: is this company one we serve at all? A workshop in Manaus asking for 20 kilos when your minimum batch is 2 tonnes and you only ship in the South and Southeast does not fail because the person lacks interest — the person has plenty of interest. It fails on fit, and fit is visible in fields the site already collects, before anyone picks up a phone. That filter belongs to marketing, and it can be automated.
The second filter answers: is this company going to buy, and when? A metalworks in Caxias that fits perfectly may be three months from a budget approval, or may be collecting quotes to renegotiate with its current supplier. No form field will ever tell you that. It comes out on the call, from the seller, and it is genuinely the seller's job. Asking marketing to guarantee this second filter is asking marketing to read the buyer's mind — which is exactly what generates the sentence "the leads are bad".
02What Each Side Owns
What each side owns, concretely
Written as a sequence, so nobody has to remember who does what. Each stage has an owner, an input and an exit condition:
The Two Filters in Order
Marketing — Fit
Segment, application, region and company size, read from the form and from the pages visited. Automatic, zero conversation. Exit condition: the four fields fall inside what the factory serves.
→
Inside Sales — Reachability
A first call that confirms the person exists, works there and speaks about the subject. Two minutes. Exit condition: a real human confirmed the application. In small teams the seller does this themselves — the stage still exists as a stage.
→
Sales — Intent
Who signs the purchase order, whether budget exists this year, and what the deadline is. Only comes out in conversation. Exit condition: an opportunity in the pipeline with a value and a date, or a rejection with a written reason.
The rule that holds it together:
Marketing is never held accountable for intent, and sales is never held accountable for fit. If a lead from the wrong region reached a seller, that is a marketing failure. If a perfectly fitting lead was never asked about budget, that is a sales failure. Written this way, the Monday meeting stops being about opinion.
Note what this division does not cover: the mechanics of moving the approved lead from one team to the other — routing, package, accept and reject. That is a separate machine and it is described in the lead handoff.
03The Written Cut-Off
The written cut-off — one page, both signatures
Piece 01
The Four Fit Fields
Write the accepted values, not the concept: which segments, which applications, which states, which minimum volume. "Medium and large industry" is not a criterion — "metalworking, food and packaging, in SP, PR, SC and RS, from 500 kg per order" is. If it cannot be checked by someone who does not know the business, it is not written yet.
Marketing Owns
Piece 02
The Three Intent Questions
Who signs the purchase order, whether there is budget in this year's plan, and what the deadline is. Three questions the seller asks on the first call and records the answer to. Not a script and not an interrogation — the point is that the same three answers exist for every opportunity in the pipeline.
Sales Owns
Piece 03
The Quarterly Review
Once a quarter, both sides open the rejected leads and check whether the criterion is still right. A factory that added a new line or opened a new state has an outdated cut-off, and an outdated cut-off silently throws away leads that fit. Fifteen minutes, four times a year.
Shared
04When the Two Disagree
When the two sides disagree about the same lead
Disagreement is not the failure — it is the raw material. The failure is disagreement that leaves no trace. Give the seller a closed list of six rejection reasons (wrong region, volume below minimum, competitor, student or researcher, existing customer, no application fit) and require one to be picked. After 30 days you no longer have opinions; you have a distribution. If 40% of rejections say "volume below minimum", the form is not asking for volume, or the ads are pointing at the wrong search terms — and that is a fix, not an argument.
Whoever owns the number decides the tie. If the commercial director answers for revenue, the commercial director has the final word on the cut-off — and also owns the consequence of a criterion so tight that the pipeline runs dry. A decision without a consequence attached is what makes the criterion drift back to opinion within two months.
Two things tend to follow. Once rejection reasons are being logged, the volume-versus-quality trade-off becomes measurable instead of debatable, and the natural next step is putting the whole agreement — criterion, deadlines and consequences — into a document both teams sign; see the SLA between marketing and sales. And if approved leads still sit untouched after all this, the problem was never qualification — see sales does not follow up.
05FAQ
FAQ
Who qualifies the lead, marketing or sales? +
Both, on different things. Marketing qualifies fit — segment, application, region and size — from data the form already captures. Sales qualifies intent — who signs, what budget exists, what the deadline is — which only comes out in conversation. Neither side should be held accountable for the other's filter.
Can marketing qualify a lead without talking to the person? +
For fit, yes — segment, application, region and volume are all visible in form fields and browsing behaviour. For intent, no. Budget, decision maker and deadline require a conversation, and expecting marketing to guarantee them is what produces the complaint that the leads are bad.
Should a manufacturer have a pre-sales or inside sales role? +
The stage is always needed; a dedicated person is not always. With fewer than around 40 leads a month, the seller does the two-minute confirmation call themselves. Above that, the seller starts skipping it, and a dedicated inside sales role pays for itself by protecting the seller's hours for actual negotiation.
Who writes the criterion of what counts as a qualified lead? +
Both sides write it together in one sitting and both sign it. A criterion written by marketing alone gets ignored by sales; one written by sales alone tends to be so tight that volume collapses. One page, accepted values spelled out, reviewed quarterly.
What happens when sales says the lead is not qualified and marketing disagrees? +
The seller picks a reason from a closed list of six and the lead goes back to marketing. After 30 days the distribution of reasons answers the question by itself. If a tie still needs a decision, whoever answers for the revenue number decides — and carries the consequence of a criterion that runs the pipeline dry.
Does a small factory with three sellers need all this? +
It needs the written criterion and the rejection reasons — those cost one afternoon and a spreadsheet. It does not need a dedicated pre-sales team or scoring software. The rule scales down well; what does not scale down is leaving the criterion in people's heads, because three heads hold three different criteria.
Does lead scoring replace the qualification criterion? +
No — scoring only automates a criterion that already exists. Setting up points without having agreed what a good lead is just encodes the disagreement into software and makes it harder to see. Write the one-page criterion first; automate it afterwards, if the volume justifies it.
How often should the qualification criterion be revised? +
Once a quarter, in fifteen minutes, with both sides reading the rejected leads. Revise it immediately, outside the calendar, whenever the factory adds a product line, changes its minimum order or starts serving a new state — an outdated cut-off throws away fitting leads without anyone noticing.
Nobody in your company has written down what a good lead is?
We sit both teams down for one session, write the four fit fields and the three intent questions with your accepted values, and leave the one-page criterion signed and in use.
