The CRM Lead-Scoring Cheat Sheet

+15 points. Founder, CEO, MD, VP, Director, or Head of [relevant function]. Anyone who can say yes without a committee meeting. Drop to +5 for Manager-level, 0 for Coordinator and below.

+10 points for companies in your target headcount range (set this to match your ICP, e.g. 10 to 200 employees). +5 for slightly outside. 0 for too small to afford you or too large to close without procurement.

+10 points for your primary vertical. +5 for secondary verticals. 0 for out-of-scope industries. In HubSpot this maps to the Industry property on the Company record, not the Contact.

+5 points for your primary market (UK, US, Israel, or wherever your delivery model works best). 0 for markets you cannot serve well. Do not penalise international leads unless timezone or legal constraints block the deal.

+40 points. This is the single highest-value signal in the model. Anyone who books time to talk to you is, by definition, in-market. Trigger an immediate internal notification to the owner when this threshold is hit.

+20 points per reply (cap at 40). A reply beats a click every time. Two genuine replies puts a lead in the top tier of your queue regardless of their demographic score.

+15 points per visit (cap at 30). This is the clearest buyer-intent page on your site. Set the trigger in HubSpot using the Page View activity filter. Do not score blog visits the same way.

+10 points for the first download, +5 for each subsequent one. Resource downloads show they are solving a real problem, not just browsing. Give more weight to resources that match your paid offer (e.g. a lead magnet on HubSpot scoring is a stronger signal than a generic AI tips list).

+8 points. Three opens in the same sequence means they are reading, not just receiving. A single open could be a preview pane accident. Three cannot be.

+10 points per click (cap at 20). Clicks show intent that open rates never will. The specific link clicked matters too: a click on 'See how it works' scores higher than a click on 'Unsubscribe' (which should trigger an immediate score reset to zero).

+12 points. Return visits within a short window signal active research. Set this as a workflow trigger in HubSpot: 'Contact visited site more than 2 times in 7 days' fires the score increase automatically.

Subtract 10 points for every 30-day window of zero activity after the first 60 days. HubSpot can automate this with a time-based workflow. A contact who was engaged three months ago and has done nothing since is not a hot lead, whatever their total score says.

-30 points immediately. Set a 'Disqualified' property and suppress from scoring workflows. In HubSpot, use a Contact exclusion list to keep them out of any active sequences.

-10 points. Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and similar with no Company Name, no LinkedIn URL, and no website are almost always non-buyers. Not a hard disqualifier (some SME founders use Gmail), but a signal worth penalising until they provide more data.

-20 points. They have told you they do not want to hear from you in that format. Respect it and reduce their priority. Do not re-engage via email unless they opt back in.

Keep in automated sequences. No manual outreach yet. Let content do the warming. Review this segment monthly to see if any contacts are stuck and need a different sequence.

Assign an owner if not already done. Set a HubSpot notification so the owner sees every new activity. No cold outreach, but if they engage with something specific (e.g. a pricing page visit), that triggers a personal email from the owner the same day.

Move to 'Sales Qualified Lead' status. Owner sends a personal, short email within 24 hours. Reference the specific thing they did ('Saw you were looking at the services page'). No pitch in the first message. Open with a question.

Hot lead. Trigger an internal Slack or email alert to the owner immediately. This contact goes to the top of the call queue. If they booked a call themselves, confirm it within the hour. Response speed at this tier is a closing variable.

HubSpot's built-in HubSpot Score property (Contact record) handles positive and negative scoring natively. Go to Settings, then Properties, then search 'HubSpot Score'. Edit the criteria there. Do not build this in a custom number property unless you need multiple parallel scores.

Workflows can enrol contacts when their score crosses a threshold. Build one workflow per tier (30, 60, 85). Each workflow: changes Lifecycle Stage, assigns an owner if blank, creates a task, and sends the owner a notification. Keep the workflows simple or they break under edge cases.

Look at your last 10 closed deals. What was their score at the point they became a paying client? If your best customers had scores of 40 and your model says 85 is hot, your thresholds are wrong. Adjust quarterly based on real closed-deal data, not gut feel.

A contact who filled in a pop-up for a discount code is not the same as one who visited your pricing page twice. Separate passive data capture (form fills, list imports) from active intent signals (page visits, email replies, booking behaviour). Giving form fills high scores pollutes your queue with people who wanted a freebie.

Booked a call: +40. Replied to email: +20 per reply (cap 40). Visited pricing or services page: +15 per visit (cap 30). Clicked email CTA: +10 (cap 20). Downloaded resource: +10 first, +5 after. Return visits within 7 days: +12. 3+ email opens in sequence: +8. Job title match: +15. Company size match: +10. Industry match: +10. Geography match: +5.

Competitor or disqualified: -30. Unsubscribed: -20. Free email domain with no company data: -10. No activity for 30 days past the 60-day grace period: -10 per 30-day block.