Zevari
Zevari

Outbound Academy · Guide

Why ICP scoring comes first

Fewer wasted invites, fewer messages to people who were never going to buy, and a campaign that reaches the people most likely to say yes.

The most common outbound mistake is starting with the message. You build a list, write a sequence, and send it to everyone on the list. Then the reply rate is low, and you blame the copy. Usually the copy wasn't the problem. The list was.

A title match is not a lead

A list built from job titles looks great on paper. "Head of Operations at a 50-person logistics company" sounds exactly like your buyer. But a matching title tells you nothing about whether that person has the problem you solve, right now.

Keep a lead only when you have a reason to believe they need you. That reason is usually one of these:

  • Pain evidence: they posted or commented about the problem you solve.
  • A trigger: they're hiring for the role your product supports, they just raised money, or they just changed jobs.
  • Tool context: they use something your product replaces or works with.
  • Recent activity: they're active on LinkedIn and talking about your topic.

When teams research their lists properly, they typically remove 20 to 50 percent of the leads. Lead data goes stale quickly: people change jobs, companies shrink, and titles drift. Cutting those leads before you start costs nothing. Sending to them costs your LinkedIn limits, your time and your reputation.

The five disqualifiers

Drop a lead the moment any one of these is true:

  1. Not a fit. Wrong industry, wrong company size, wrong region for what you sell.
  2. Can't pay. The company is too small or too early to afford you.
  3. Wrong problem. They're a fit on paper, but they don't have the problem your product solves.
  4. No authority. They can't make or influence the buying decision.
  5. Wrong channel. You can't realistically reach them where they are, for example a LinkedIn-only plan for someone who never logs in.

One disqualifier is enough. A lead that is a great fit except for "can't pay" is not a lead.

Score before you write

Score every lead from 1 to 5 before a single message is written. Zevari shows each score with its band: Strong fit (4 or 5), Moderate fit (3) or Weak fit (1 or 2).

  • 5 (Strong fit): your ideal customer, with a clear reason to talk now.
  • 4 (Strong fit): a good fit, without the urgency of a 5.
  • 3 (Moderate fit): a maybe.
  • 2 or 1 (Weak fit): not worth contacting.

The rule is simple: 5s first, 4s second, 3s maybe, 2 and below never.

Scoring first matters for three reasons:

  • Your LinkedIn capacity is limited. The Safety Center paces every action your account takes, so every connection request you spend on a weak lead is one you can't spend on a strong one.
  • Your attention is limited. While you review drafts before they send, every draft for a poor-fit lead is time you didn't spend on a good one.
  • Fit decides the campaign. A 5 deserves every channel. A 3 deserves a light email check. You can't route leads until you know their score. See Routing by fit.

How it works in Zevari

ICP Scoring is the specialist on your AI team that scores every new lead from 1 to 5 against your ideal customer profile. You train it by reviewing the leads it scores: approve the ones it got right and reject the ones it got wrong. It learns from every review, so its scores get closer to your own judgment over time.

Before anyone is scored, check your Exclusions. Add the people and companies you should never contact: existing customers, people who said no, competitors, and anyone a teammate is already talking to. You can exclude a LinkedIn profile, an email address, a whole email domain or a company name, for one campaign or for the whole workspace.

When you choose who goes into a campaign, each person shows their fit and score. Add only the scores that belong in that campaign. If a score looks wrong, review that lead in ICP Scoring. A wrong score you correct now trains ICP Scoring for every list after this one.

A good habit: before you scale a new list, look through the first 20 or 30 scored leads yourself. If you disagree with more than a few of them, review those leads in ICP Scoring first. Training on 30 leads now is faster than cleaning up a campaign of 300 later.

Templates that use this

Every template assumes the leads going in are already scored. These ones are built around a specific score:

  • Fit check: three emails (score 3)
  • LinkedIn-active core (score 4)
  • 5/5 MVP and 5/5 quiet: InMail + email (score 5)
  • InMail, then email (your top named accounts)
  • The full stack: every channel (your best fits)
Next: Routing by fit: what a 5, a 4 and a 3 each getYour best leads hear from you on every channel, your good leads get a full LinkedIn effort, and your maybes never use up the LinkedIn capacity your best leads need.