What happens if a prospect is fully qualified by our team but then gets disputed as not qualifying?
- Cormac Repman
- 5 minutes ago
- 3 min read
When we mark a prospect as qualified and you dispute it, I personally review the evidence and make the final call. For borderline cases where the qualification criteria are genuinely unclear, we can mark them as non-qualified without impacting your SDR pod's quality metrics. This protects your team's performance while ensuring we maintain high standards across all meetings booked.
Why Do Disputes Happen?
Qualification disputes are rare, but they do occur. Most commonly, it's because your internal qualification criteria have evolved since we booked the meeting, or the prospect said something during your discovery call that contradicts what they told us during the initial conversation. Sometimes it's a genuine difference in interpretation. For example, a prospect might say they're evaluating solutions in Q3 when we spoke with them, but when you talk to them two weeks later, they reveal their budget won't be approved until Q4. Both pieces of information are true, but they paint different pictures of readiness.
How We Handle the Review Process
When you dispute a qualification, here's exactly what happens. You submit the specific reason why the prospect doesn't meet your criteria. I review the call notes or recording from our initial qualification conversation and compare it to what you encountered. I look at whether the prospect actually met your stated ICP at the time we booked them, whether they confirmed they had budget, and whether they indicated buying intent. I'm looking for clear misalignment, not nitpicking. If the evidence is solid, we mark it as a failed qualification. You get credited as if you never received the meeting, and we don't charge you.
The Borderline 50/50 Scenarios
Here's where the gray area lives. Some prospects fall right on the fence. They technically have a problem you solve and they have budget, but their timeline is fuzzy. Or they're a perfect fit for one division of your company but not the primary one we're targeting. In these cases, we evaluate whether the prospect met your qualification standards at the time of the conversation. For borderline calls where reasonable people could disagree, I have discretion to mark them as non-qualified without penalty to your team.
This matters for your metrics. Your SDR team's quality rate directly affects pricing and future performance tiers. If we applied strict interpretation to every 50/50 case, your pod's numbers would suffer even when they did solid qualification work based on the information available. We don't do that. We reserve the non-qualified mark for cases where the prospect genuinely didn't meet your criteria or where you make a compelling case for misalignment.
Protecting Your Team's Performance
Your pod leads need to hit quality targets to maintain pricing. We structure disputes as a collaborative review process, not a gotcha. The goal isn't to nail your team on edge cases. The goal is to ensure every qualified meeting we book actually meets your definition of qualified. When there's ambiguity, we resolve it fairly so your team can focus on pipeline building instead of worrying about unfair clawbacks.
Preventing Disputes Before They Happen
The best way to avoid this situation is clear communication upfront. Before we start booking meetings, we align on exactly what qualified looks like for your company. Industry, company size, budget range, decision-making timeline, and buying signal. The more specific you are, the fewer surprises you'll encounter, and the cleaner your data pipeline becomes.
If your ICP evolves mid-campaign, we recalibrate. If a new vertical becomes important or a budget threshold changes, just let me know. We adjust the qualification bar going forward so new meetings track against your current criteria.
Ready to lock in your qualification standards and start booking clean pipeline?
[Book a call](https://cal.com/nurturance)
Comments