If you’re drowning in demo requests, sales calls, or a flood of trial signups, you know the pain: not every lead is worth your team’s time. Qualifying them by hand is slow, boring, and error-prone. This guide is for B2B teams who want to automate that whole mess—using Refiner—without getting lost in a maze of settings or building a monster workflow nobody understands.
You don’t need a degree in marketing automation. But you do need a working process, a healthy dose of skepticism for “AI magic,” and a willingness to keep things stupidly simple at first. Here’s how to actually get value out of automated lead qualification, step by step.
Step 1: Get Clear on What a Qualified Lead Actually Means
Before you touch any tools, ask yourself: What makes a lead “qualified” for your business? This is where most teams get tripped up. If your answer is “they filled out a form,” you’re in for a world of pain.
What matters: - Company size (employees, revenue) - Industry or vertical - Location (are they even in your market?) - Job title or function (decision maker? intern?) - Budget or intent (are they just kicking tires?)
What doesn’t matter (usually): - How much they gush about your brand (flattery doesn’t pay the bills) - How quickly they filled out a form (bots are fast, too) - Social media follows or other “vanity” signals
Pro tip: Talk to your sales team. They know which leads are a waste of time.
Get these criteria on paper. You’ll use them to set up your rules in Refiner.
Step 2: Map Out When and Where You’ll Qualify Leads
Don’t default to “let’s qualify everyone, everywhere.” Decide: - Where: On your signup form? After they create an account? During product onboarding? - When: Immediately, or after some interaction (like visiting key pages)?
Keep it as close to the start of your funnel as possible, but don’t annoy people with a 20-question interrogation before they see any value.
Tip: Most B2B SaaS teams qualify: - Right after signup (in-app or by email) - During the first product tour - Before booking a demo
Step 3: Set Up Refiner (Without Going Overboard)
Refiner is built for lead qualification surveys and scoring, so you don’t have to duct-tape together Typeform, Zapier, and a CRM. But it’s easy to get sucked into endless customization. Don’t.
The basics:
- Create a Project: Start fresh—don’t import old junk.
- Build a Simple Survey: Ask only what you need to qualify. Stick to 3-5 questions. Examples:
- “How many employees work at your company?”
- “What’s your role?”
- “What’s your top priority right now?”
- Choose Your Triggers: Decide when the survey pops up (post-signup, pre-demo, etc.).
- Integrate with Your Tools: Connect Refiner to your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, whatever) and Slack or email for notifications.
What works:
- Short, focused surveys get way better completion rates.
- Progressive profiling: Ask for more info later, not all at once.
- Auto-tagging and scoring: Use Refiner’s scoring to flag hot leads instantly.
What to skip:
- Fancy survey logic for edge cases you don’t actually care about.
- Asking for info you can get elsewhere (e.g., company size from Clearbit).
- Custom branding tweaks that don’t move the needle.
Step 4: Define and Automate Lead Scoring Rules
Now the fun part: telling Refiner how to tell gold from garbage.
Keep it simple at first: - Assign points for each field (e.g., 10 points if “Company Size > 100”). - Set a threshold for what’s “qualified” (e.g., 25 points or more).
Refiner scoring tips: - Make your rules transparent—if nobody can explain them, you’ll stop trusting the scores. - Revisit your rules every month. Sales feedback is gold here (“Why did this lead get through?”). - Don’t try to automate “gut feel.” Stick to what you can actually measure.
What usually works: - Scoring based on hard facts (size, role, intent). - “Knockout” rules for obvious deal-breakers (wrong country, student email, etc.).
What usually doesn’t: - Overweighting fuzzy signals (“they clicked three pages in a row!”). - Getting too clever with AI scoring unless you have a LOT of data.
Step 5: Route Leads Automatically to the Right People or Tools
Automation’s point is to save time, not make you chase spreadsheets. Refiner can push qualified leads to your CRM, ping sales in Slack, or trigger emails—no copying and pasting.
Common automations: - Push “qualified” leads to your CRM with a special tag or status. - Send instant Slack or email alerts to sales reps for high-scoring leads. - Trigger onboarding sequences or demos for those who pass the threshold.
Don’t bother with: - Notifying your whole team every time someone fills out a survey. - Creating complex branching flows until you’ve proven the basics work.
Pro tip: Start with a simple “Notify sales if score > X” rule. Get feedback, then layer on complexity.
Step 6: Monitor, Test, and Adjust (Don’t Set and Forget)
No lead qualification system is perfect out of the gate. The best teams treat this as a living thing.
- Check your conversion rates: Are “qualified” leads actually converting? If not, your criteria might be off.
- Talk to sales regularly: Are they happy with the leads coming in, or are you sending them junk?
- Tweak your survey: Drop questions nobody answers, or reword ones that confuse people.
- Review scoring rules: As your business changes, so does your definition of “qualified.”
Signs you need to adjust: - Sales keeps ignoring the leads you send. - You’re getting too many “qualified” leads (your bar is too low). - You’re getting none (your bar is too high).
Automation saves time, but only if you keep it honest.
What to Ignore (Seriously)
- Over-engineering: If you need a flowchart to explain your workflow, it’s too complicated.
- Shiny AI features: Unless you have millions of leads, simple rules beat “machine learning.”
- Paralysis by survey analytics: Completion rates matter, but obsessing over every chart is a waste.
- Gathering data you’ll never use: If nobody’s acting on it, scrap the question.
Wrapping Up: Keep It Simple, Get Feedback, Iterate
Automating lead qualification with Refiner can save your B2B team a ton of time—but only if you resist the urge to make it fancy for fancy’s sake. Start with the basics: - Decide what makes a lead “qualified” for your business. - Ask only what you need, when you need it. - Use simple scoring and routing. - Keep talking to sales, and don’t be afraid to change things up.
Get something live quickly, see what breaks, and adjust. The goal isn’t a perfect system—it’s one that actually helps your team focus on leads that matter. That’s how you win back your time (and maybe your sanity).