Written by Mike Hurley, founder of WarmUp. We built this for a company's book-a-call form. It is running as a pilot: it reads the CRM and writes nothing back yet.

A form with three fields to a verdict with its evidence · before anyone picks up the phone

Read the board left to right, following the numbers: the form and the gaps it leaves, the engine, Stage 1 (is the pain there?), Stage 2 (is it big enough?), the verdict. The strip under the legend follows one submission through. The band at the bottom is the four places we chose to be strict. Click the board to open it full size.

Why it helps

A short form gets filled in. Ask for a name, a company and an email and people book. Ask for a title, a website and a company size and fewer do. The cost of the short form lands on the rep, who opens the call knowing a name and an email address and spends the first ten minutes finding out whether the company is one you can help.

The engine does that finding out before the call. It turns the email into a company, finds the person's title, and runs five checks in two stages. The rep gets one of three answers with the evidence behind each check: call now, take a look first, or not a fit right now. A good account with the wrong person on the form is still flagged as a good account, with a note to reach someone else there.

What I cannot tell you yet is what it does to close rates. It is a pilot. The verdicts are being read by a person beside the calls that follow, and nothing is written to the CRM until the field names are approved.

Why we built it this way

• Every check has three answers. Pass, fail or unknown, each with the evidence that produced it. A check that can only say yes or no has to guess when the lookup comes back empty, and the guess is invisible later.
• Finding nothing is not a pass. The definition we started from let "no tool detected" count as a pass. A lookup that finds nothing mostly proves the lookup is thin. We changed it: two independent sources must both come back clean, and one of them must find a sign of the manual process. Clean and silent is unknown.
• Pain first, size second. Stage 1 asks whether the problem exists at this company. Stage 2 asks whether the company is large enough for it to matter. A big company without the problem is not a lead.
• Sizing is a soft gate. Revenue and spend are estimates. Stage 2 passes on either check and fails only when both fail with confidence. An estimate alone never parks a lead.
• There is a third verdict. A free-mail address, a failed lookup or two sources that disagree all go to Needs review. A person taking a short look beats a confident wrong answer.
• The person is checked after the account. The job title is tested against the buyer personas once the account has its verdict, so a junior person at a strong account does not sink the account.
• The company profile is bought once. One enrichment feeds three checks. Your own map is read before anything is bought.

How to build it

1. Write the checks down before you build anything. One file: each check, its sources, and what counts as pass, fail and unknown. The person who owns the definition of a good customer signs off on this file, not on the workflow.
2. Fill the identity gaps first. Email to company domain. A free-mail address stops here and goes to Needs review. Name and company to a public profile and a job title; a title already in the CRM wins.
3. Read your own map before you spend. If the company is already classified, reuse its segment. Otherwise buy one company profile (description, headcount, HQ) and use it for every check that needs it.