Qualify the job before the account
A promising procurement software lead needs more than a company in the right sector. Confirm the job: purchase requests arrive without a clear budget owner or approval record. Identify department staff requesting purchases and managers approving them as the possible user group, then find who can authorize a pilot; the working buyer hypothesis is a procurement manager responsible for purchasing controls.
Ask about the current workaround, email threads and an approval spreadsheet, and what would make changing it worthwhile. Do not assign a budget or procurement timeline from company size, funding, or job title alone.
Use a category-specific qualification rubric
Use the calculator below to organize your judgment after reading the source. Unknown evidence should remain unknown. Its weights are a transparent prioritization convention, not a prediction of purchase probability.
| Dimension | Evidence to seek | Reason to pause |
|---|---|---|
| Problem | Which amount, category, or department changes the required approver? | The person cannot describe a recent instance of the problem. |
| Product fit | Can you route one purchase category through named budget owners and approval thresholds? | teams expecting supplier discovery or financing from an approval-only workflow |
| Timing | new departments are gaining purchasing authority | The proposed change has no confirmed date or relevance. |
| Implementation | Where does an approved request become an actual purchase order? | approval software must fit the accounting and purchasing systems already in use |
| Value | an approved request produces a complete handoff record for purchasing | The buyer and user disagree on what success looks like. |
Work through an illustrative assessment
Suppose the source says: “We cannot tell which laptop requests are approved before the invoice arrives. Looking for a request-to-approval workflow.” That supports investigating the problem, but it does not yet settle purchasing authority or technical compatibility. A reviewer should ask the two discovery questions above and preserve the answers beside the source.
Compare that with: A vendor lists procurement as a target audience on its homepage. This weaker example should not receive the same pain or timing score. A relevant public topic is not evidence of a current evaluation.
Even a strong problem signal should be rejected when the need belongs to teams expecting supplier discovery or financing from an approval-only workflow. Qualifying out prevents a misleading promise and preserves time for a prospect the product can help.
Create a reviewable handoff
A qualified opportunity should contain the original evidence, a summary of the job, confirmed and unknown constraints, the buyer/user distinction, and an agreed next step. Keep a score attached to those facts so another teammate can challenge the conclusion.
Propose a pilot only when the critical gap is addressed: approval software must fit the accounting and purchasing systems already in use. Evaluate the pilot through a real observation that an approved request produces a complete handoff record for purchasing, and keep that observation separate from the initial qualification score.
About these playbooks and examples
Prepared by DemandBolt with AI assistance as practical planning resources for people building and selling software. The category scenarios and message examples are illustrative, not quotations from real prospects or claims of customer results. Adapt the hypotheses to your product, verify original sources, and review capabilities before making an offer.
The workflow follows our first-customer guide and buying-signal review method. Our PyInvesting and Rae records distinguish actual internal work from targets. Published .