# Qualification

The owner's criteria, stored once and reused every run. **Read this before asking anything.** Re-interviewing the owner about their criteria on every run makes a skill built for speed feel slow.

---

## Deriving criteria without an interview

If no criteria exist yet, do not start with a questionnaire. Derive a draft from evidence and let the owner correct it.

Pull from closed-won deals in HubSpot and paying customers in QuickBooks:

- What services do won deals actually involve
- What size and type of customer
- What geography, and how far out they realistically travel
- What deal sizes are worth their time
- What patterns show up in deals that were lost or refunded

Then show a draft and ask for one correction pass:

```
From your last 40 closed deals, it looks like you take on:
  Commercial, 3+ buildings, within 30 miles, jobs over about USD 2,000.
  Residential emergency calls you take but they rarely repeat.

Anything I've got wrong?
```

One question, one answer, done. That is the whole setup.

**With no CRM and no accounting connector**, the same shape still works. Two paths, in order:

1. Ask the owner for a rough sense in a couple of lines — what they take on, who they take it on for, how far they travel, and what is too small to be worth it. Two lines is enough to sort on; do not turn it into a questionnaire.
2. If they would rather not answer, draft the criteria from the inquiries themselves — the services being asked about, the locations, the sizes — and confirm the draft once.

Either way it ends the same: a written draft, one correction pass, then it lives in this file. Zero connectors is a supported path, not a degraded one.

---

## The four buckets

**Hot — route to a human now**

Fits the profile and shows urgency. Signals:

- Explicit timing: "this week," "urgent," "our system is down"
- A named budget or an approved project
- They ask about availability or start dates
- Repeat customer or a named referral
- Deal size well above the owner's average

**Qualified — reply and book**

Fits the profile, no time pressure. The default for most good inquiries.

**Unclear — reply with one question**

Not enough information to sort. The reply asks the single question that resolves it — the one whose answer changes the outcome. Not a form, not four questions.

Most common resolving questions: what service, where, and when.

**Out of scope — reply honestly, refer on**

Wrong service, outside the area, too small, or something the owner does not do.

**Still answer these.** Thirty seconds of honesty in a small market is worth more than the inquiry was. Say plainly it isn't a fit, and name someone who is when possible. Owners get real referral flow back from this, and the alternative is a public review complaining nobody replied.

---

## Sorting rules

**Urgency beats fit for routing.** A marginal-fit inquiry that says "our unit failed and we open tomorrow" is hot. Fit determines what to say; urgency determines how fast a human sees it.

**When torn between two buckets, take the more attentive one.** Treating a qualified lead as hot costs the owner one glance. Treating a hot lead as qualified can cost the job.

**Out of scope is about fit, not about tone.** A rude inquiry that fits is still qualified. Route it and let the owner decide.

**One inquiry, one bucket.** If someone asks about three things, sort on the one with the highest value.

---

## Criteria format

```
## Qualification criteria — <owner or business>
Built:   <date>  ·  From: <n> closed-won deals, <n> customers
Updated: <date> — <what changed>

Takes on:
  Services:  <list>
  Customer:  <type and size>
  Geography: <radius or area>
  Deal size: <floor, if any>

Does not take on:
  <list — this matters as much as the positive criteria>

Hot signals, beyond the defaults:
  <owner-specific — e.g. "any mention of the Riverside district">

Refer out to:
  <names or firms for common out-of-scope requests>
```

---

## Worked example

```
## Qualification criteria — Okonkwo Mechanical
Built:   2026-07-27  ·  From: 40 closed-won deals, 340 customers
Updated: 2026-07-27 — initial

Takes on:
  Services:  Commercial HVAC install, service contracts, emergency repair
  Customer:  Property managers and commercial buildings, 3+ locations preferred
  Geography: 30 miles of Salem
  Deal size: Above ~USD 2,000; smaller only for existing customers

Does not take on:
  Residential new construction
  Refrigeration (commercial kitchen) — no certification
  Anything past Eugene

Hot signals, beyond the defaults:
  System down or no heat/cooling — always hot regardless of fit
  Any mention of a multi-building portfolio

Refer out to:
  Refrigeration → Basin Cooling, ask for Teri
  Residential new build → Halvorsen Heating
```

The "does not take on" and "refer out" sections do most of the work. They turn a dead-end inquiry into a thirty-second answer that builds reputation.

---

## Keeping criteria current

When the owner overrides a sort, record why:

```
Updated: 2026-08-09 — residential emergency now qualified, not out of scope.
         Ray: "they turn into commercial referrals more than I thought."
```

An override that happens twice is a criteria change, not an exception. Update the file rather than making the owner correct the same sort every week.

---

## Criteria

*No criteria set yet. The first set gets written here.*