How leads are scored, and what moves a score
Every lead carries a score out of 100 and a band — hot, warm or cold. It is worth understanding how it is built, because it decides which leads you are shown first and, if you have the outcome loop switched on, which ones Meta and Google are told to go and find more of.
It is mostly arithmetic on what the person actually told you, not a language model's impression of how keen they sounded.
Why it is not just the AI's opinion
Scoring used to be left entirely to the model, and the trouble with that is that an enthusiastic message scores well while a terse one that contains a budget, a location and a timeline scores badly. Warmth is not intent.
So the score is now computed from signals you can point at, with the model's read used only to raise the floor — it can rescue an obviously hot lead from being under-scored, but it cannot talk a lead up on charm alone.
The six fields that carry most of the weight
These are the qualification fields. The more of them the conversation has actually captured, the higher the lead scores:
Together these are worth up to 55 points — the largest single component, and the reason the assistant asks qualifying questions rather than just answering.
How the score is actually built
Where hot, warm and cold begin
A useful sanity check: someone who gives a budget, a location and a configuration, exchanges a handful of messages and asks about a visit lands comfortably in hot. Someone who sends four messages and reveals nothing stays cold, however friendly the exchange was.
What moves a score, and what does not
Moves it: the person answering a qualification question, or asking for a visit. That is essentially the whole list.
Does not move it: more messages past roughly eight, politeness, how fast they reply, or how long the conversation has been open. A lead does not decay to cold by sitting there, and it does not warm up by chatting.
A lead can be genuinely serious and score cold, because they asked two sharp questions, got their answers, and left to think. The score measures what was captured, not what the person intends. Treat cold as “we do not know enough yet”, not as “not a buyer” — that is what the follow-up sequence is for.
What to do with it
Work hot leads personally, let the assistant keep working warm ones, and let the follow-up sequence handle cold. The score is a queue, not a verdict.
It matters twice over if you advertise: with the outcome loop switched on, a qualified lead is reported back to Meta or Google with a value attached, which is what teaches the ad platform to go looking for buyers rather than for repliers. That is covered in Telling Meta and Google which leads were real.
Know which five leads to call today
Every enquiry qualified and scored automatically, so the list you work in the morning is ordered by who is actually ready.