What is a qualified meeting?
A qualified meeting is one that meets criteria written down before prospecting begins. Until those criteria exist on paper, "qualified" means nothing, and that is where every disagreement starts.
Alexandre Berthon ·
Most disagreements between a company and its prospecting provider are not about how many meetings were delivered. They are about whether those meetings counted. And that question has no answer when nobody wrote down what counting meant.
The short definition
A qualified B2B meeting is one whose characteristics were agreed in writing before the first call, and which meets all of them. Five things define it: company profile, geography, the attendee’s decision level, business context, and the accounts excluded. A meeting that satisfies all five is qualified, however the conversation felt. A meeting that misses one is not, however well it went.
So it is neither a slot in a calendar nor a promise to buy. It is conformity, and conformity is something you check rather than something you feel.
The five criteria, and how to check each one
A definition is only usable if each criterion can be verified afterwards by someone who was not in the conversation. That is the test to put your own definition through, line by line.
| Criterion | What you write down | How it is verified afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Company profile | Industry, headcount or revenue, and where relevant technical maturity or business model. | Public company record, website, registry. Checkable by a third party. |
| Geography | Country, and sometimes region or the language of the conversation. | Registered office or the site concerned, and the language of the exchange. |
| Decision level | The attendee’s function, and whether they decide alone or sit on a committee. | Job title, and the scope they state during the call. |
| Business context | What has to be true at the prospect for the conversation to have a subject: a project, a budget, a deadline, a tool in place to replace. | An explicit answer from the prospect, written down or recorded. |
| Exclusions | Accounts already in conversation, existing customers, competitors, and anything your own team is already working. | Checked against your CRM before prospecting, not after. |
The fifth is the one that gets forgotten, and it produces more rejected meetings than any other. An outside salesperson cannot guess that an account has been worked by your team for six months. The exclusion list is handed over before the first call, and kept current during the campaign.
What is not enough
- An accepted slot. Accepting an invitation says nothing about profile or context.
- Someone "interested". Interest is not verifiable: it is reconstructed afterwards, and each side reconstructs it in its own favour.
- A title that looks right. "Head of" does not mean the same thing in a 40-person company and a 4,000-person group.
- A meeting that happened. Attendance is not qualification.
- A tool’s score. A lead score tells you what a model thinks of the account, not what you asked for.
Why writing it first changes the problem
Writing the criteria before prospecting turns a judgement into a check. After the meeting the question is no longer "was that a good meeting?", which two people acting in good faith can answer differently, but "does it meet the five points?". The second one can be settled.
It protects both sides. The company does not pay for volume that looks nothing like what it asked for. The salesperson knows exactly what to book, and cannot have their work rejected on a criterion that appeared afterwards.
A criterion that is not written before prospecting is an opinion that will arrive after the meeting.
When a definition that is too strict turns on you
Every criterion you add shrinks the number of eligible companies, and the addressable volume does not fall linearly: it collapses. A target combining a precise industry, a precise headcount, a precise function and three context conditions can come down to a few dozen accounts in one country, at which point the problem is no longer finding a provider but accepting that there is no campaign to run.
The useful test: before signing anything, count how many companies meet all five of your criteria. If the count is under a few hundred, either widen one criterion or drop outbound and work those accounts by name, one at a time, with your own team.
The opposite failure exists too: a definition so broad that everything satisfies it protects nobody. If you cannot name a plausible meeting that would fail your criteria, they are doing no work.
The verdict, and who gives it
A written definition is not enough if there is only one judge. When the company decides alone and after the fact, the salesperson carries all the risk; when the provider grades its own work, the reporting stops being verifiable. Having each side record a verdict against the same criteria leaves a record both of them helped write.
It is also what makes performance comparable over time: two campaigns using the same definition produce numbers you can put side by side. Two campaigns using two definitions produce numbers you should not compare at all.
Key points
- A qualified meeting is defined before prospecting, not judged after it.
- Five criteria are enough: company profile, geography, decision level, business context, exclusions.
- Every criterion must be checkable by someone who was not in the conversation.
- Neither an accepted slot, nor attendance, nor stated interest is a verifiable criterion.
- Count your addressable volume before freezing the criteria: too strict, and there is no campaign left.
- When money depends on the outcome, a verdict recorded by both sides beats one recorded by either.
Frequently asked
Who decides whether a meeting is qualified?
The written criteria decide; the parties only observe them. In practice the most robust arrangement has the company record one verdict and the salesperson another, against the same grid. When only one side rules after the fact, the contract tips: either the salesperson carries all the risk, or the reporting stops being verifiable.
How many criteria should be written down?
Five families are enough: company profile, geography, decision level, business context, exclusions. The count matters less than verifiability: a criterion no third party can check afterwards is not a criterion, and each one you add shrinks the addressable volume faster than people expect.
Does a no-show count as a qualified meeting?
No, and it is worth writing down explicitly, because it is the most common dispute. The usual rule: a meeting that does not happen is not counted, but can be rescheduled once at no extra charge. Without that sentence in the agreement, every no-show becomes a negotiation.
Do meetings need to be recorded to verify the criteria?
Not necessarily, but recording is what makes business context checkable: it is the only one of the five that cannot be verified against a public source. Failing that, a written summary produced immediately after the call, with the prospect’s answers on project, budget and timing, does the same job. Recording requires the participants’ consent.
Is the definition the same for a setter and a closer?
No. A setter is measured on the meeting booked and its conformity to the criteria; a closer is measured on the sale closed. Holding a setter to a revenue target means paying them on a variable they do not control.
OnQuota makes that definition the starting point of a campaign: the criteria are written before the first call, the budget is committed against them, and payment follows a verdict recorded on both sides. See a campaign, step by step