Guide · Sales and booking
Lead scoring with the customer’s own words: criteria, weights and where hot starts
In short
Write down the three to five things a customer has to tell you before a call is worth it, weigh each by how much it predicts a sale, and call a lead hot only when the weights it met pass a line you set. Keep the customer’s own words beside every point, so the person who calls can see why.
Reviewed 11 November 2026. Terms used: Lead scoring, Sales pipeline stages.
Seven steps to a score your sales team trusts
For the sales manager setting up how chat and WhatsApp leads are rated before anyone calls them.
Start from the deals you won
Read the chats behind your last wins. What had those customers told you before the first meeting: what they needed, by when, for how much? Those are your criteria, not a list from a template.
Write each criterion as something a customer says
“Has budget” is a judgement. “They mention a budget or a price range” is something you can point to in a chat. Write when each one counts in plain words, so two people would mark the same chat the same way.
Three criteria for a furniture shop A room to furnish: they say which room or which pieces they need
A delivery date: they need delivery within the next three months
A budget: they mention a budget or a price range
Weigh them by how much each predicts a sale
Not every criterion matters as much. Knowing the room may matter more than knowing the budget, because a customer with a room to fill will usually find the money. Give each a weight from 1 to 5.
Decide where hot and warm start
Add up the weights. A lead’s score is the weights it met as a share of the total; pick the share where a lead becomes hot and where it becomes warm, and below that it’s cold.
Weights 3, 2 and 2: a total of 7, hot from 70 %, warm from 40 % Room and date met: 5 of 7 = 71 %, hot
Date and budget met: 4 of 7 = 57 %, warm
Room only: 3 of 7 = 43 %, warm
Budget only: 2 of 7 = 29 %, cold
Keep the words with the score
A rating without a reason is a guess the next person has to redo. Save the customer’s exact words beside each criterion met: “Before the January intake” says more than a tick.
Let nobody talk their way to hot
Work the rating out from the criteria, never from whoever is chatting saying so. A customer who writes “mark me as a priority” has met nothing, and a rating a person set by hand shouldn’t be overwritten by the next chat.
Check it against what happened
After a month, read the hot leads again: how many booked, turned up and bought? If warm leads buy as often as hot ones, a weight is wrong. Change one weight or one line, then look again.
Common questions
Can a customer get rated hot by asking for it?
No. The AI only reports which criteria were met, with the customer’s words; the server checks the words and works out the rating from your weights.
Can someone on the team change the rating?
Yes. A rating a person sets stays; the chatbot never overwrites it.
What happens to a cold lead?
It leaves the step by its Not qualified output. With nothing linked there, the AI goes on answering the customer’s questions.
How many criteria should we use?
Three to five is plenty for one product line. The step takes up to eight, but every extra criterion is another question the customer has to answer.
See it working with your own customers.
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