Qualify the job before the account
A promising time tracking software lead needs more than a company in the right sector. Confirm the job: hours cannot be connected to the scope that consumed them. Identify staff recording time against client work as the possible user group, then find who can authorize a pilot; the working buyer hypothesis is a service delivery or agency owner reviewing project effort.
Ask about the current workaround, weekly timesheet spreadsheets and a separate project plan, 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 | What decision needs more detail than the current timesheet provides? | The person cannot describe a recent instance of the problem. |
| Product fit | Can you track one agreed project phase using a short, transparent task taxonomy? | buyers seeking hidden surveillance or automatic productivity judgments from time alone |
| Timing | fixed-fee projects begin overrunning without a clear explanation | The proposed change has no confirmed date or relevance. |
| Implementation | Which task categories can staff apply consistently with minimal effort? | tracking must be understandable to staff and useful enough to justify logging effort |
| Value | the team can explain effort against that phase without guessing from memory | The buyer and user disagree on what success looks like. |
Work through an illustrative assessment
Suppose the source says: “We know a project ran over budget but timesheets only say client work. How do we track useful detail without making logging painful?” 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 manager asks for covert employee monitoring. 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 buyers seeking hidden surveillance or automatic productivity judgments from time alone. 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: tracking must be understandable to staff and useful enough to justify logging effort. Evaluate the pilot through a real observation that the team can explain effort against that phase without guessing from memory, 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 .