A qualified lead is a named person at a company that fits your buyer profile, who has a problem you solve, a reason to solve it now, and either the authority to decide or direct access to whoever has it. Anything missing one of those is a contact, and calling it a lead is how reporting stops meaning anything.
The four questions
Every conversation should answer four things. What are they trying to fix, in their own words. Is there a project, a budget cycle or a deadline. Do they decide, influence or research. What was agreed, by whom, and by when.
Those are deliberately not scored out of ten. A grade somebody has to calculate will not be filled in on a show floor or at the end of a long call. Four plain answers written in a sentence each is a thing a tired person will actually record.
Grade it, do not score it
A is a real problem, a timeframe, access to the decision and an agreed next step with a date. B is a right fit and a real problem, but no timing or no access to the decision yet. C is neither, or nothing beyond a scan of a badge.
Only A and B count. C is a contact, and recording it as a lead is what produces a pipeline nobody trusts and a forecast that falls apart in the second quarter.
Who decides is the part that causes the argument
If marketing grades its own output, the grade inflates. If sales grades it alone, the grade deflates whenever the team is busy. The workable answer is that the definition is agreed jointly before the campaign starts, and the person who had the conversation records the four answers rather than the grade.
The grade then follows from the answers mechanically, which takes the judgement out of the number and the politics out of the meeting.
Why the definition has to come first
Agreed afterwards, the definition becomes a negotiation about whose quarter it was. Agreed beforehand, it is a shared instrument, and an underperforming month becomes a diagnosis rather than a dispute.
It also changes behaviour upstream. A team that knows a lead needs a next step with a date will ask for the date in the meeting, which is the single cheapest improvement available to most pipelines.