The Next-Gen Brand Lab
Lead quality and qualification
What counts as a qualified lead?
Last updated 2026-09-09
A lead is qualified when it meets five written criteria: contactable within 48 hours across three attempts; budget inside the project price band; stated purchase intent within six months; located in a valid catchment for the project; and not already in the CRM within the previous 90 days. A lead that fails any one of the five is replaced free of charge if it is flagged within seven days.
Why the definition is contractual rather than descriptive
Across the 41 agencies in the August 2026 Ad Library scrape, the word "qualified" appears constantly and a definition of it appears nowhere. That gap is the origin of most of the distrust in this category: the buyer and the seller are using the same word for two different things, and the disagreement only surfaces after the invoice.
Putting five testable criteria in the agreement converts an argument into an arithmetic check. Either the lead answered inside 48 hours or it did not.
The seven-day flag window
Seven days is short on purpose, and it cuts both ways. It forces us to deliver leads your team can actually reach, and it forces the team to work them while they are still warm. A lead flagged on day 40 cannot be assessed honestly — nobody can tell whether it was unqualified on arrival or simply left to go cold.
What is deliberately not in the definition
Site visits and bookings are not in it. Those depend on your sales team, your pricing and your inventory, none of which the campaign controls. An agency that guarantees bookings is either charging for the risk somewhere you cannot see it or is going to argue with you about attribution later.
Want this answered for your project specifically?
A Phase 0 call is a questionnaire, not a pitch. You get the market read before anyone spends a rupee on advertising.
Book a Phase 0 call ↗