Lead Qualification System Planner: Documentation and Schema

Documentation for the planner fields, illustrative JSON schema, human decision boundary, and implementation checklist.

2026-09-14 — Craig Major

The Lead Qualification System Planner is a planning resource for defining a reviewable lead workflow before implementation. It does not make a qualification decision by itself and it does not send outreach.

Planner fields

ICP definition

• target industry;
• geography;
• company-size or operating conditions;
• target role;
• positive fit criteria;
• exclusion criteria.

Signal and source

• signal name;
• source type;
• source URL or record ID;
• observed date and time;
• evidence excerpt;
• source reliability note.

Qualification recommendation

• criterion;
• observed evidence;
• missing evidence;
• confidence: high, medium, or low;
• suggested route;
• reason for the recommendation.

Human decision

• reviewer;
• decision: accept, reject, request information, or defer;
• decision reason;
• next action;
• next review date.

Example record

{
  "signal": "new hiring activity",
  "source": "approved public source",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-01T13:00:00Z",
  "evidence": ["role and source URL recorded by the system"],
  "missing": ["decision-maker contact"],
  "recommendation": "human_review",
  "confidence": "medium",
  "review": {
    "decision": "request_information",
    "reason": "fit signal is present but account context is incomplete"
  }
}

The example is illustrative. Replace it with real source evidence before using the planner in production.

Operating boundary

The system may collect, normalize, summarize, and route information. A person decides whether an account is a fit and whether outreach is appropriate. Store the reason for the decision so the rubric can be improved without hiding the change.

Implementation checklist

• define the ICP and exclusions;
• name the source and evidence fields;
• decide which conditions require escalation;
• create the review queue;
• test missing, conflicting, and duplicate records;
• record the baseline time from signal to review;
• document ownership and retention.

Use the planner with the AI Lead Qualification guide. When the process is defined, discuss an AI Lead Qualification System.

Worked implementation sequence

1. Define the intake event and preserve the original enquiry.
2. Create normalized company, contact, source, service-fit, timing and ownership fields.
3. Use email plus company identity as a duplicate signal; route uncertain matches to review instead of merging automatically.
4. Write qualification rules with explicit outcomes for missing values. Unknown timing remains unknown.
5. Apply existing-account ownership before territory or round-robin routing.
6. Present the evidence, proposed score and routing reason to a person before any customer-facing response.
7. Test a complete lead, duplicate, referral, existing customer, missing company and unavailable owner.

Example record

An enquiry names a service and company but omits timing. The system preserves the message, finds an existing account owner, records timing as unknown and prepares one follow-up question. It does not invent urgency or send the response. Acceptance requires the correct owner, visible source evidence and no duplicate CRM record.