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Qualify a Lead

A lead is QUALIFIED when their motivation is confirmed: they’ve told you they’re serious, and for buyers that usually means pre-approval is in hand or in progress. Moving the card to QUALIFIED is a deliberate claim. Make it when the claim is true, not when you wish it were.

What “qualified” means in this pipeline

Section titled “What “qualified” means in this pipeline”
Pipeline saysYou should be able to say
Lead is QUALIFIED”They want to buy. They’ve shown me they can.”

For buyers: pre-approval letter, conversation with a lender, or a strong cash position you’ve verified. For sellers (when seller-side ships): a listing-intent conversation with timeline.

Browsing activity alone — even a lot of it — is a temperature signal, not qualification. A Hot lead in CONTACTING is still CONTACTING until you’ve had the motivation conversation.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”
  1. Open the lead’s detail page from the CONTACTING column.
  2. Fire the state change to QUALIFIED. The trigger event is motivation_confirmed.
  3. Add a note in the payload describing what confirmed it — “pre-approval letter received,” “spoke with their lender Wednesday,” etc.
  4. Save.

Marcus Williams detail page showing the Lifecycle timeline with the Motivation confirmed event transitioning from Contacting to Qualified. The event payload — {timeline: '60-90 days', budget_range: '750k-850k', pre_approved: true} — appears as a JSON snippet below the timeline row.

What changes after the transition

Section titled “What changes after the transition”
  • The card moves from CONTACTING to QUALIFIED on the board.
  • The timeline records a Scribe entry: CONTACTING → QUALIFIED with the reason in the payload.
  • The lead becomes eligible for showing-tier outreach and matching listings work; CONTACTING-tier follow-up tactics are no longer the right cadence.
  • The legacy buyer_status field projects to searching by default (covering both searching and touring within the canonical QUALIFIED state).

A worked example

Section titled “A worked example”

Ethan Brooks is the demo CONTACTING lead. Suppose he calls you back today, mentions he met with a lender last week, and says he’s ready to start looking. That conversation is motivation_confirmed.

Log the call as activity first (so the conversation itself is on the timeline), then fire the state change with a note like “Confirmed pre-approval through Idaho Central, $400K range.” His card moves to QUALIFIED. His existing unsubscribed flag does not affect the state change — flags and state are independent dimensions.

What doesn’t change

Section titled “What doesn’t change”
  • The temperature score. Qualification is a claim about intent, not engagement. A QUALIFIED + Cold lead is a real and meaningful combination — see why state and temperature are separate.
  • Existing flag chips. Communication preferences carry forward unchanged.
  • The agent assignment. Qualifying doesn’t reassign.
Section titled “Related”