How to qualify inbound B2B leads without a sales team

When leads start coming in, they're not all buyers. Some are students, some are competitors, some are companies too small to pay you or in an industry you never sell to. Without a way to sort them, you either answer everyone with the same care (slow) or skim and miss the good ones.

Qualifying a B2B lead comes down to a few questions:

• Is the company in an industry you sell to?
• Is it the right size, in staff or revenue?
• Is it somewhere you serve?
• Is the person someone who decides, or close to it?
• Is it on your "never" list? For example, a bank, if you never sell to banks.

Write those down once as your buyer profile. Then score every lead the same way, and keep the reason next to the score so you can check it. A clear "no" (an excluded industry, or a size outside your range) should outweigh everything else that fits.

How AO does it: in Product › Ideal Customer Profile you set the industries you sell to, a Never a fit list, company size and yearly revenue, where your buyers are, and who decides. For each new lead, AO finds the company from the form or the email domain, including the company named on a form sent from a personal Gmail address. It reads free public facts first: the company's own site and its Wikidata record. It then scores the lead out of 100, with the reasons in plain words, such as "Industry: software, one you sell to · Size: inside your 50–5,000". An excluded company says why it's excluded. Every lead is kept, cold ones too, and each gets a reply drafted for your approval.