# Inbound lead qualification on your website, without a form

Lead qualification is not a form and not a cold-email SDR. It is the conversation a buyer is already having on your site, at eleven at night, in their own session.

## What lead qualification actually decides

Strip the acronyms and lead qualification answers four questions. Fit: is this the kind of company and the kind of problem you sell to. Need: is there a specific thing they are trying to do, or are they reading. Timing: is there a date behind it, a renewal, a launch, a budget cycle. Authority: is the person in front of you the one who decides, or one of the people who has to agree. A lead is qualified when the answers say a salesperson's half hour is worth more than the buyer's own next click, and disqualified when they say the opposite. Everything else, the scores, the stages, the letters of the framework, is a way of writing those four answers down.

The point that gets lost is that these are answers a buyer already has. Nobody arrives at a pricing page without a use case, and nobody compares two plans without a rough idea of seats. The only question is whether anything on your site asks well enough to hear it.

## Why a lead qualification form loses the buyer

A lead qualification form is qualification with the conversation removed. It asks the same six fields of everyone, in an order fixed months ago, with no way to ask the follow-up that the answer to field three made obvious. It cannot tell a reader from a buyer, so it treats both as a lead and lets a person sort them out tomorrow. And it asks for the two things a buyer least wants to hand a stranger, a phone number and a company size, before it has given them anything. Most people who reach the form close it; most of those who fill it in are answered the next working day, by which time they have read two competitors.

The other half of the market answered this by moving qualification off the site altogether. An outbound AI SDR builds a list, writes the emails, and qualifies whoever replies. That is a real product with real arithmetic, and it is the wrong tool for a buyer who is already on your pricing page. The distinction between the two halves is drawn in full in our post on [what an AI SDR is](/resources/what-is-an-ai-sdr); the short version is that inbound qualification is an answering problem, not a reach problem.

## Automated lead qualification, in the visitor's own session

Automated lead qualification usually means a scoring model run over form fields and page views after the fact. An agent that lives on the page has two sources a form never had, and it uses them while the buyer is still there. The first is what the visitor asks. A question about SSO on the Growth plan is a fit signal and a need signal in one sentence; a question about whether the renewal can start in November is timing; a question about who else at the company has been reading is authority, or the lack of it. The agent asks the follow-up a good rep would ask, in the order a good rep would ask it, and it stops asking when it has enough.

The second source is what the site already knows. Algomo discovers the endpoints your own pages call, through our browser extension while someone browses the site, and calls them in the visitor's own session. If the visitor is signed in, the agent can read what that customer can already see: their plan, their seats, their usage, the feature that is greyed out in front of them. That is why it can say a limit is on the plan the visitor is already on rather than guessing at it, and why an existing customer with a broken integration is sent to support rather than into pipeline. Anything only your staff can reach, we connect with you. On top of that, one email address is enough for company-level enrichment through Apollo, LinkedIn and Exa: the company, its size, the visitor's role. Nobody is asked which company they are from.

Because it runs in the visitor's session, the agent can also show rather than tell: filter the pricing table to their seat count, open the setting they asked about, start the trial in the tab they are in. Working the page with the buyer is a qualification signal in itself. Someone who lets you open the SCIM setting for them is not writing a comparison post.

## Lead qualification criteria, written as sentences

Most lead qualification criteria go wrong in the same three ways, so here is the rubric we recommend writing into the agent, in plain language. First, keep the sentence, not the number. A record that says 'nine sources, two on premise, Fivetran renews 4 November' is one a rep can read and disagree with; a 78 is not. Second, mark inferences as inferences. 'Budget owner: him, it is his renewal' is a good inference and should be labelled as one, because the rep will want to confirm it in the first five minutes. Third, allow 'unknown'. A visitor who would not say how many seats they have is not a zero on seats; they are a lead with one question left open, and forcing a value into the field is how a rubric starts lying.

Two more rules that cost nothing. Pages viewed are not intent; the person who read your security page four times may be a competitor, a journalist or a very careful buyer, and only a question tells you which. And an email domain is a hint about the company, not proof of it: enrichment fills in the firmographics, but nothing in Algomo verifies that the person owns the address, and we say so rather than pretend otherwise. Write your pass rules as sentences, 'enterprise if more than 200 seats or any on-premise source', and the agent applies them and shows its reasoning beside each verdict.

The four questions, what to write down for each, and the honest source of the answer.

| Question | What to record | Where it comes from |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fit | Company, size, role; the plan or product they are on | Enrichment from the email; what a signed-in visitor can already see |
| Need | The use case in their words | What they asked, and the follow-up |
| Timing | A date, if they named one; otherwise 'none given' | Said in the thread |
| Authority | Who else has to agree; 'inferred' where it is | Said in the thread, labelled if inferred |

## Lead qualification questions the agent actually asks

The questions are not a script. They are the follow-ups a good rep asks once the visitor has said something, in the buyer's language rather than the framework's, and the agent stops when it has enough. From the transcripts, these are the eight that do most of the work, with the answer each one is really after.

| What the agent asks | What it is listening for |
| --- | --- |
| Roughly how many people would be using this? | Seats, which is fit and plan in one number |
| Which systems does the data come from today, and is any of it on premise? | Source systems: the sentence the enterprise rule usually turns on |
| Is there a date this needs to be working by, a renewal or a launch? | Timing, with a date or an honest 'none given' |
| Who else would need to agree before you switched? | Authority, and whether the visitor is the signer or one of the people who has to nod |
| What are you doing about this today, and what breaks? | Need, in their words; also whether they are a buyer or a reader |
| Are you already a customer, or looking at us fresh? | Whether this belongs in pipeline or in support |
| Want me to filter the pricing table to that seat count? | Consent to work the page together, which is a signal in itself |
| Shall I find a time with the person who owns this on our side? | The close: a booked meeting if the rules say book, a handover if they say hand over |

## What a qualified lead looks like when it reaches your rep

A qualified visitor gets one of two things, and both happen inside the conversation. If the rule says book, the agent offers times the right person genuinely has free and books the meeting into a Google or Outlook calendar, and the whole exchange, with the qualification answers in the buyer's words, goes to the rep. The rep opens the meeting briefed. If the rule says hand over, or the buyer asks for something the agent will not do on its own, a bespoke price, a redline, a signature, a person on your team takes the conversation live with the whole transcript in front of them. Either way the team is told by email and Slack the moment it happens, so nobody is watching a queue.

The visitors who do not qualify get something too, which is the part most pipelines forget. A small buyer finishes the checkout on the page. An existing customer goes to support with their account open. Someone who is reading is left to read. None of those costs a rep a minute, and none of them costs you a credit either, because a conversation that went nowhere is free.

## Where it stops

Algomo qualifies on your website, in web chat, and that boundary is deliberate. It does not send email, SMS or WhatsApp to anyone, so a visitor who leaves the site is not chased. It does not verify email addresses. It does not read or write your CRM: the meeting and the transcript are what leave the conversation, into the calendar and the notification. It does not make or take phone calls. If the qualification you need happens off the site, in a sequence, on a call, in a Salesforce record, this is not the tool for that half of the job, and the vendors built for it are compared like for like on [our sales agent page](/solutions/ai-agents-for-sales-and-lead-generation), with one-on-one pages for [Algomo against Qualified](/resources/vs-qualified) and [Algomo against Docket](/resources/vs-docket). Everything up to that line, including the part nobody on your team is awake for, it does from a free plan.

## Lead qualification questions, answered

### What is meant by lead qualification?

Deciding whether a person who has shown interest is worth a salesperson's time, and how urgently. In practice it is four answers: fit (the kind of company and problem you sell to), need (a specific thing they are trying to do), timing (a date behind it) and authority (whether this person decides or is one of those who has to agree). The frameworks, BANT, MEDDIC and the rest, are different ways of writing those four down.

### What is a qualified lead?

A lead whose answers to those four questions say a rep's half hour is worth more than the buyer's own next click. The marketing and sales versions, MQL and SQL, differ on who made that judgement and on what evidence. On this site a qualified lead is narrower still: a visitor who met your pass rules in conversation and either booked a meeting or was handed to a person, with the sentences they said attached.

### How do I go about qualifying a lead?

Ask, in the order a good rep would, and stop when you have enough: what they are trying to do, how many people it is for, where the data lives, whether there is a date, and who else has to agree. Write the pass rules as sentences ('enterprise if more than 200 seats or any on-premise source') rather than as points, label inferences as inferences, and allow 'unknown'. The section above on criteria and the table of questions are the whole method.

### How much do qualified leads cost?

If you buy them from a list vendor, the price is per contact, it varies with the list and the title, and what arrives is a name, not a conversation. On Algomo a qualified lead is a booked meeting or a live handover with a buyer who was on your site, not a purchased contact. It costs the same as any conversation that actually helped someone: five credits inside a monthly amount you pick, from a free plan, then $50 to $500 on Business and Enterprise above. There is no per-lead fee; the vendors that charge one are named in the answer on cost below.

### Does it need our CRM to know who is on the site?

No, and it does not connect to one. Qualified [matches visitors against Salesforce](https://www.qualified.com/), and Docket reads your CRM history; Algomo works from what the visitor asks, what a signed-in visitor can already see on your own site, and company-level enrichment from an email address. The meeting goes to a Google or Outlook calendar and the transcript goes to your team; writing the opportunity into the CRM is still a person's job.

### What does a qualified lead look like when it reaches us?

A booked meeting or a live handover, with the criteria, the verdict on each, and the sentences the buyer said. Not a score. A rep can read why it qualified and overrule it.

### Does it reveal anonymous visitors by company?

Not on its own. Enrichment starts from an email address the visitor gives in the conversation; it fills in the company, size and role from there. Warmly's person-level reveal and Qualified's Salesforce matching do more here, and we say so on [the comparison pages](/resources/comparisons).

### What does qualifying cost?

The same as any conversation that actually helped someone: five credits, inside a monthly amount you pick, from a free plan, then $50 to $500 on Business and Enterprise above. There is no per-qualification fee; Fin charges [$9.99 per qualification](https://fin.ai/pricing) on top of its per-resolution price, and Docket [starts at $3,000 a month](https://www.docket.io/pricing), billed annually, with no trial. The amount you choose is the most you can be charged, and a conversation that went nowhere costs nothing. The numbers are on [this site's pricing page](/pricing).

### Can it follow up with a visitor who left?

No. It has no outbound channel, by design. If the buyer comes back, the conversation is there and the agent picks it up; if they do not, the lead your team received is the follow-up.

### How long before it is qualifying real visitors?

Minutes for the public side. Browse your site with the extension, write your pass rules in plain language, and test it against your own pricing page before a visitor sees it. What we cannot promise is the part that depends on your rules being right, which is why the transcripts are there to read in the first week.

## If your visitors are already asking

Algomo is our product, so weigh this accordingly. The case for qualifying in the conversation is not that forms are bad, but that the buyer has already started the conversation, on your pricing page, at an hour when nobody is in. Put the agent on your site on the free plan, give it four pass rules, and read what it does with your next twenty real visitors. [Our B2B page](/solutions/b2b) walks through the whole loop on a live account, from the first question to the briefed meeting.