Qualification logic
Qualification logic is the explicit, shared rule set that determines when a record is worth advancing, and it must resolve to the same answer in marketing, sales and the CRM.
Frameworks like BANT, MEDDICC or SPICED are vocabularies, not logic. Logic is the operational form: which fields must be populated, at what confidence, evaluated by whom, before a record changes state. It is the difference between "we use MEDDICC" and "an opportunity cannot enter Stage 3 without an identified economic buyer recorded on the record."
Qualification is the seam where the most cross-functional damage happens, because it is the handoff point between two teams with different incentives. Making the standard explicit, and enforcing it in the system rather than in the pipeline review, is what makes conversion rates comparable across periods.
Where it breaks
Marketing qualifies on engagement, sales qualifies on gut, and the conversion rate between them is treated as a performance metric rather than a definitional artifact.
Related terms
- Lead scoring
- Lead scoring is a model that ranks records by expected conversion, and it is only valid when it is calibrated against realized outcomes.
- Stage integrity
- Stage integrity is the property of a pipeline in which every stage change corresponds to a verifiable change in buyer commitment, evidenced on the record.
- Sales accepted lead (SAL)
- A SAL is an MQL that the receiving sales function has explicitly accepted as workable, creating the only honest measurement of demand quality.
- Ideal customer profile (ICP)
- An ICP is a testable specification of the accounts a company can serve profitably and repeatably, expressed in attributes the revenue system can actually evaluate.
Field notes on this
- Write the stop rule before the pilot starts
A market-entry pilot with no decision rule written before exposure cannot end. It gets extended until it is the default motion, without anyone choosing that.