Lead scoring that fits on one page

Elaborate scoring models tend to collapse under their own weight. The useful version is much smaller than most people expect.

Two inputs, not twenty

Almost all the value comes from combining fit and intent:

Fit

Does this company match your ICP on industry, size and role? Fit is stable and knowable in advance. It is the half you can score before anyone does anything.

Intent

Are they doing something that suggests the topic is live: replying, asking questions, visiting, hiring in a relevant area. Intent changes constantly, which is why it belongs alongside fit rather than instead of it.

The four quadrants

Combining them gives an obvious priority order:

1. High fit, high intent, contact today.
2. High fit, low intent, keep nurturing, these become tomorrow's pipeline.
3. Low fit, high intent, handle carefully, enthusiasm does not create a good customer.
4. Low fit, low intent, leave them.

Why complicated models fail

A model with twenty weighted signals is impossible to explain, and anything a sales team cannot explain, it does not trust. Untrusted scores get ignored, at which point the model is just maintenance work.

If you cannot describe why someone scored highly in one sentence, simplify it.

Scoring sets the queue, not the verdict

A score is a prioritisation aid, not a gate. Treating a low score as a refusal to engage bakes yesterday's assumptions into today's decisions, and those assumptions are frequently wrong at the edges.