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KnowledgeLayer 3Scoring & Prioritization

Qualification Scoring

Your team reviews 47 support tickets, partnership inquiries, and internal requests every day. Each one looks urgent. Each one demands attention.

Six hours later, you realize half of them were never going to work out. The partnership was with a company too small. The support ticket was from a trial user who never paid. The internal request came from someone who just needed to read the documentation.

Without scoring, every request gets equal treatment. Which means your best people spend time on things that were never qualified to begin with.

8 min read
intermediate
Relevant If You're
Drowning in requests that all seem equally important
Spending hours on opportunities that go nowhere
Wishing you could filter before things reach your team
Tired of gut-feel decisions on what deserves attention

Most teams process everything manually. The ones that scale learn to score first.

Where This Sits

Category 3.2: Scoring & Prioritization

3
Layer 3

Understanding & Analysis

Qualification ScoringConfidence Scoring (AI)Priority ScoringFit ScoringReadiness ScoringRisk Scoring
Explore all of Layer 3
What It Is

The automated filter that protects your team from wasted effort

Before your team touches anything, qualification scoring evaluates it against criteria. Does this partnership inquiry come from a company in your target revenue range? Does this support ticket come from a paying customer? Does this project request have executive sponsorship?

The scoring does not replace human judgment. It replaces the tedious first-pass evaluation that wastes hours. You define the criteria. The system applies them consistently, 24/7, without fatigue or bias.

Score first, then decide. Without scoring, everything seems urgent and nothing gets filtered.

The Lego Block Principle

Qualification scoring is not just about filtering requests. It is a pattern that appears whenever you need to decide if something deserves your limited attention.

Finite Capacity Protection:

Every system has limited resources. Qualification scoring protects that capacity by testing items against criteria before they consume resources. The criteria become your defense against overwhelm.

Where else this applies:

Hiring interviews - Resume screening filters candidates before expensive interviews consume manager time.
Hospital triage - Initial assessment determines who needs immediate care vs. who can wait safely.
Code review queues - Automated checks qualify PRs before human reviewers spend attention on them.
Meeting requests - Assistants filter calendar requests based on criteria before blocking executive time.
Interactive: Build Your Scoring Criteria

Enable criteria and watch the queue filter in real-time

Toggle each criterion to see which requests qualify (score 40+) and how much time you save.

Requests need 40+ points to qualify. Each enabled criterion adds points when matched.

8
Total Requests
8
Qualified
0
Filtered Out
0m
Time Saved

Incoming Request Queue

partnershiplarge

Enterprise integration proposal

0
Qualified
supportsmall

Login issues from trial user

0
Qualified
internalmedium

New project request from sales

0
Qualified
partnershipsmall

Freelancer wants to resell

0
Qualified
supportlarge

Billing question from enterprise

0
Qualified
internalmedium

Someone asking a question from docs

0
Qualified
partnershipmedium

Mid-market agency partnership

0
Qualified
supportsmall

Feedback from free trial user

0
Qualified
Try it: Toggle some criteria above and watch the queue filter in real-time. See how many requests get disqualified before anyone has to review them.
How It Works

Three approaches, different trade-offs

Rule-Based Scoring

Define explicit criteria and assign point values

You create rules like "company revenue > $5M = 20 points" and "has budget confirmed = 15 points." The system adds up scores based on which criteria are met. Simple, transparent, and easy to adjust.

Pro: Completely transparent and easy to debug
Con: Cannot catch patterns you did not explicitly define

ML-Based Scoring

Train a model on historical success patterns

You feed the system your past data: which requests succeeded and which failed. It learns the patterns and predicts scores for new items. Can catch subtle signals humans miss.

Pro: Discovers patterns you would never think to encode
Con: Requires substantial historical data and ongoing monitoring

Hybrid Scoring

Combine rules with learned patterns

Hard rules handle the obvious disqualifications (wrong industry, too small). ML handles the subtle predictions (likelihood to close, fit quality). Best of both worlds.

Pro: Explainable rules plus sophisticated prediction
Con: More complex to build and maintain
Connection Explorer

Route the right requests to the right people automatically

This flow ensures that incoming requests get evaluated against criteria before consuming team resources. Qualification scoring sits at the decision point, determining whether items proceed to action or get filtered out, saving hours of wasted effort on things that never should have reached your team.

Hover over any component to see what it does and why it's neededTap any component to see what it does and why it's needed

Intent Classification
Entity Extraction
Qualification Scoring
You Are Here
Priority Scoring
Workflow Routing
Team Focuses on What Matters
Outcome
React Flow
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Understanding
Delivery
Outcome

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Upstream (Requires)

Intent ClassificationEntity ExtractionUrgency Detection

Downstream (Enables)

Priority ScoringWorkflow Orchestration
Common Mistakes

What breaks when qualification scoring goes wrong

Scoring Based on a Single Signal

You build a score from one data point like "has budget" or "replied quickly." But that single signal fails in edge cases. Someone replies fast because they are confused, not because they are qualified. Someone has budget but zero decision-making authority.

Instead: Use 3 to 5 independent signals. Weight them based on historical correlation with successful outcomes. A single strong signal should flag for review, not auto-qualify.

Setting Thresholds Without Data

You pick a cutoff of "75 points to qualify" because it sounds reasonable. But you have no idea if 75 is too strict or too lenient. Six months later, you have either rejected good opportunities or wasted time on bad ones.

Instead: Start by scoring everything without filtering. After 30 to 60 days, analyze which scores correlated with success. Set thresholds based on actual data, then adjust quarterly.

Ignoring Score Drift Over Time

Your scoring model worked great last quarter. But your business changed. New services, new team capacity, new customer profiles. The old criteria no longer match reality. Qualified items start failing. Rejected items would have succeeded.

Instead: Review scoring criteria monthly. Compare scored predictions to actual outcomes. When correlation drops below 70%, rebuild the model.

What's Next

Now that you understand qualification scoring

You have learned how to evaluate incoming items before they consume resources. The natural next step is understanding how to rank qualified items so the most important ones get attention first.

Recommended Next

Priority Scoring

Once items are qualified, determine which ones need attention first

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