Four Accounts, Two Hours
Marcus is a sales development rep at a payroll and HR compliance platform. His queue holds 380 accounts under 500 employees, all marked 'new lead,' and he has roughly two hours a day for outreach. Four accounts are competing for his morning:
- Account A: downloaded the '2025 contractor compliance checklist' twice, viewed the pricing page on four separate days in the last week, and has not replied to either of his emails.
- Account B: downloaded a generic 'HR trends' report five weeks ago, has not visited the site since, and has opened three nurture emails without clicking.
- Account C: started a website chat asking whether the platform syncs with its current payroll provider, and wrote that it is 'comparing three vendors for a Q3 go-live.'
- Account D: a former customer that churned two years ago, just clicked a re-engagement email and nothing else.
Marcus's manager wants him to 'work the top of the list in order' because the queue is sorted by lead score, and A and B both carry high scores.
1. Rank A through D for Marcus's next two hours and justify the order using active-buyer reasoning.
Read the worked answer
Rank: C, A, D, B.
C first. C has stated a need, a comparison set, and a timeline (Q3 go-live), and asked a specific technical question about integration. That is an active buyer: intent plus urgency plus a concrete evaluation in progress. Speed matters because a three-vendor shortlist closes.
A second. Repeated pricing-page visits and a second download of a compliance checklist are strong intent signals, but there is no reply and no stated timeline. Active behavior, unconfirmed intent. Marcus should change channel and acknowledge the research rather than send a third identical email.
D third. A click alone is weak, but a former customer brings prior relationship and known fit. Worth one personalized, low-effort touch that references the past relationship - not a full sequence.
B last. A generic download five weeks ago with no return visit and no clicks is a passive buyer: fits the profile, shows no active intent. High lead score reflects fit and email engagement, not buying behavior.
The order reflects recency, depth of behavior, and explicit intent - not list position.
2. What should Marcus do with Account B, and why is deleting it or ignoring it a mistake?
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B belongs in nurture, not in Marcus's two-hour outreach block and not in the trash.
Reasoning: B fits the profile (under 500 employees, HR-related interest) but has shown no active intent. One-to-one outreach now would spend expensive selling time on someone with no trigger and likely produce a polite 'not now.' Deleting the record throws away a matched account that may enter the market when a compliance deadline, audit, or headcount change hits.
What to do instead:
- Keep B in a segmented nurture track aimed at awareness and problem framing, not demo requests.
- Set a behavioral trigger - a pricing visit, a second download, a return visit after a gap, a chat start - that promotes B back into Marcus's active queue automatically.
- Add a low-cost, low-frequency check-in, such as a quarterly compliance deadline reminder, that is useful whether or not B buys.
The principle: passive buyers are not bad leads, they are mistimed buyers. The queue should sort by intent, and nurture should hold everyone else until intent appears.
3. Marcus's manager sorts the queue by lead score. What is wrong with that, and what criteria would you propose instead?
Read the worked answer
Lead score typically blends fit (company size, industry, title) with engagement volume (emails opened, pages viewed, forms filled). That blend hides the two things that actually predict a near-term deal: how recent the behavior is and how deep it goes.
Problems with score-only sorting:
- It rewards accumulated activity. B's opens can outscore C's chat even though C is evaluating vendors for Q3.
- It decays badly. A pricing visit yesterday and one three months ago may score the same.
- It treats all behaviors as equal. Pricing-page visits, demo requests, and integration questions signal far more than a generic ebook download.
Proposed active-buyer criteria, applied in order:
- Explicit intent: stated timeline, evaluation, or request for a meeting or quote.
- Depth: pricing, demo, integration, security, or contract-related pages.
- Recency and frequency: multiple high-intent actions within days.
- Direct contact: a reply, chat, or call - a two-way signal.
- Fit as a tiebreaker, not the driver.
Score can still rank within a tier, but intent tiers should decide who gets the morning.