The 5-Pillar Qualification Framework, explained
Most sales qualification frameworks (BANT, MEDDIC, CHAMP) were designed for outbound calls in the 1990s. Here's the modern, inbound-first version that actually maps to how SaaS buyers behave today.
Every B2B founder eventually meets a qualification framework. The classic ones — BANT, MEDDIC, CHAMP, GPCT — were elegant in their day, but they share a quiet assumption: a salesperson is on the phone with the prospect, asking questions in sequence.
That's not how 2026 buyers behave. They land on your site, skim, ask a question in chat, and either convert in 90 seconds or close the tab forever. There's no time for "what's your annual revenue?" — they're gone before you finish typing.
So we built a qualification framework for the way inbound actually works. Five pillars, ordered by what a visitor reveals fastest.
1. Identity
"Who am I talking to?"
The first thing a useful AI chat extracts is *who the person is*. Not their name (they'll often skip it), but their role, their company stage, and the department they sit in. A CTO of a 200-person fintech asks different questions than a solo founder, and a useful chat picks up on that within two messages.
Signal: They mention their company, their job, or the problem space ("we're a Series B…", "I run growth at…").
2. Need
"What problem are they actually trying to solve?"
The lazy version is "do they want what I sell?" The useful version is "what's the underlying job to be done?" A founder who says "I'm looking at chat widgets" might really mean "my landing page converts at 0.4% and I need that to be 2%." The need is the problem, not the product category.
Signal: They describe a pain point, a goal, or a current workaround they're frustrated with.
3. Timeline
"When does this become a fire?"
You don't need an exact date. You need to know if this is *now*, *quarter*, or *exploration*. The right answer determines whether the rep should call them within 5 minutes (now), within a day (quarter), or just drop them into a nurture sequence (exploration).
Signal: They mention an event ("we're launching in April"), a deadline, or the absence of one ("just looking around").
4. Authority
"Can this person actually buy?"
Not authority in the old "VP-level only" sense — modern SaaS sales are messy committees, and the person in chat might be a champion, a researcher, or the buyer themselves. The useful question is "what does the buying process look like for them?"
Signal: They mention a team, a budget owner, "I'll need to show my CFO", or "I make the call myself."
5. Action
"Will they actually take the next step?"
The whole point of qualification is to find the people who will *act*. The AI's job isn't to label everyone — it's to surface the visitors who are willing to book a call, request a demo, or start a trial *right now*. Everyone else goes to nurture.
Signal: They accept the CTA ("yes, let's book it"), counter with a specific time, or hand over an email for follow-up.
How it composes
The magic isn't in any single pillar — it's in the combination. A visitor who hits all five gets pushed to your inbox with a 🔥 tag. A visitor who hits three goes into nurture. A visitor who hits two gets a polite goodbye and a link to your blog.
That's the framework. The widget does the extraction; you decide what to do with each tier. And if you're ready to put it on your site, start free — Convrt qualifies every visitor against these five pillars automatically.