Lead Qualification Automation: Route Evidence, Not a Mysterious Score

# Lead qualification SOP

Version: 1.0

Owner: Revenue operations

Effective date: [YYYY-MM-DD]

Review cadence: [cadence and owner]

## Purpose and scope

Validate, qualify and route one inbound lead record using approved evidence and versioned criteria. Qualification allocates internal attention; it does not authorize external outreach, claims, pricing, opportunity creation or a buyer commitment.

## Trigger, inputs and prerequisites

- Trigger: approved inbound lead event with a unique event ID.
- Inputs: person/account identifiers, source and permission state, declared request, fit fields, engagement events with dates, existing ownership and criteria version.
- Prerequisites: approved eligibility/fit table, territory and assignment rules, default owned queue, correction path, data-retention policy and external-communication approval policy.

## Roles

- Revenue operations: owns criteria, routing rules, versions and exceptions.
- Marketing operations: owns source and permission evidence.
- Sales owner: owns the commercial response and record corrections.
- Data/privacy owner: approves fields, sources, retention and access where required.

## Procedure

1. Receive the event and deduplicate against person, account and open-record keys.
2. Validate source, permission state, freshness and required fields.
3. Separate eligibility, fit, stated need, engagement, unknowns and ownership fields.
4. If approved, extract a bounded field from free text with the exact source span; otherwise mark unknown.
5. Apply the versioned eligibility and fit decision table deterministically.
6. Apply territory, account ownership, queue and capacity rules separately from qualification.
7. Store reason codes, supporting evidence, unknowns, criteria version and destination.
8. Route conflicts and high-value ambiguity to the named review queue.
9. Let the assigned sales owner decide any contact or commercial next action.
10. Correct source fields or rules with actor/reason, then rerun without duplicating effects.

## Decisions, exceptions and approvals

- Duplicate identity: hold assignment and resolve the canonical record.
- Missing field: preserve `unknown`; never convert absence into negative fit.
- Conflicting sources: show both source and freshness values for review.
- No assignment match: use the owned default queue.
- Criteria update: keep the original result/version; migrate only under an approved policy.
- External communication, pricing, qualification override or opportunity creation: named sales approval.

## Output and completion

Output one owned record containing qualification result, evidence, unknowns, reason codes, criteria version, assignment rule/version, destination, review state and correction path. Completion means the route is owned—not that a sale is likely.

## Measures

Track duplicate rate, unknown-field rate, manual-review age, routing correction rate, unowned records, criteria-version distribution and false certainty found in review. Set targets from observed cases.

## Worked example (simulated)

A record has recent content engagement and an eligible region but gives no supported operational use case. The workflow records engagement and region, leaves need unknown, and routes the owned clarification queue. It neither creates an opportunity nor sends a message. A rep asks the approved question and owns the update.

## Revision log

| Version | Date | Change | Approver |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1.0 | [YYYY-MM-DD] | Adapted from public template | [name/role] |

# Lead qualification workflow blueprint

## Trigger and termination

- Trigger: `{event_id, person_key, source, permission_state, received_at}`.
- Success: qualification and deterministic assignment recorded with an owned destination.
- Stop: invalid source/permission, unresolved identity conflict, revoked criteria version or owner-issued stop.

## State model

`received -> validating -> duplicate_review | extracting -> qualifying -> assignment -> review | assigned`

Terminal alternatives: `rejected_source`, `stopped`, `superseded`. Corrections create a new evaluation linked to the prior one.

## Data contract

Keep eligibility, fit, stated need, engagement and ownership as separate objects. Every fact has `{value, source_id, observed_at, freshness_status}`. Extracted text also has `{source_span, extractor_version, confidence_or_abstain}`. Result has `{criteria_version, matched_rules, unknowns, reason_codes}`.

## Ordered steps and actors

1. **Trigger:** receive the lead event.
2. **Code:** deduplicate person/account/open records and validate provenance.
3. **AI (bounded):** extract allowed fields from approved text or abstain.
4. **Code:** apply eligibility and fit rules.
5. **Code:** apply territory, account, queue and capacity rules.
6. **Human:** resolve conflicts, ambiguity and correction requests.
7. **Human:** choose external and commercial next action.
8. **Code:** record final owned route and evidence packet.

## Idempotency, retry and rollback

- Keys: `capture:{event_id}`, `evaluation:{canonical_record_id}:{criteria_version}:{input_hash}`, `assignment:{evaluation_id}:{assignment_version}`.
- Retry enrichment/reads with bounded backoff; preserve unavailable rather than defaulting.
- Before retrying an assignment write, read the destination system by effect ID.
- Rollback reassigns through a corrective event; do not delete the original route.

## Permissions and data handling

Allow only approved source fields. Minimize retention and access. Do not place sensitive or undeclared attributes into model prompts, criteria, logs or test fixtures. Keep external communication outside this workflow unless separately approved.

## Exception routes

- Duplicate/conflicting identity -> record stewardship.
- Missing or stale source -> source owner.
- Extraction abstention -> qualification review.
- No territory/owner match -> default owned queue.
- Criteria dispute -> revenue-operations owner.
- No exception owner -> safe stop.

## Acceptance tests

1. Duplicate capture creates one evaluation.
2. Missing fit field remains unknown and does not subtract points.
3. Conflicting sources show both values and block automatic route where policy says so.
4. Unsupported free text returns abstain with its source span.
5. Qualification and assignment rules remain distinct in the record.
6. No assignment match reaches the default owned queue.
7. Retry does not create a second assignment effect.
8. Criteria correction preserves and links the prior evaluation.

## Audit record

Retain source events, canonical record decision, input/rule/model versions, extracted spans, unknowns, matched rules, assignment result, reviewers, corrections, retries and external effect IDs.