How do I use AI for lead qualification?

AI lead qualification automates the scoring and routing of incoming leads by analyzing form submissions, email content, behavior patterns, and external data to determine fit and intent. Implementation: 1) Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) in structured criteria — company size, industry, role, budget signals, technology stack. 2) Build a classification prompt that evaluates leads against ICP criteria. Feed the lead data (form fields + enriched data from Clearbit/ZoomInfo) to the LLM. 3) Output: fit score (0-100), qualification tier (hot/warm/cold), recommended action (route to sales/nurture/disqualify), and reasoning. 4) Integrate with your CRM — create lead, set score, assign owner, trigger appropriate workflow. Cost: ~$0.001-0.005 per lead qualification (using GPT-4o-mini or Haiku). At 1,000 leads/month = $1-5/month. The AI qualification replaces a human process that costs 5-15 minutes per lead. Accuracy: properly configured AI lead qualification matches human accuracy at 85-90% agreement. The 10-15% disagreement cases should route to human review. Start by running AI qualification in shadow mode — score leads with AI but do not act on scores. Compare AI scores against human decisions for 2-4 weeks. Calibrate, then deploy.