Qualifying leads

Every lead you create in Tandem has a qualificationMetric. It is one whole number that you choose, and it answers a single question: is this lead small enough to set up automatically, or big enough that a person should look at it first?

Tandem does not care what the number measures. It only compares it with a threshold.

What it does

When a lead is created, Tandem compares the metric with a limit. The default limit is 15.

Metric	Status	What Tandem tells you
15 or lower	Automated_Setup	shouldStartCheckout: true
Above 15	Manual_Review	requiresHumanReview: true

That is the whole rule. The metric can be any whole number from 0 up. It cannot be negative, and it cannot have decimals.

import { qualifyLead, defaultTandemConfig } from "tandem-crm";

qualifyLead({ qualificationMetric: 8 }, defaultTandemConfig);
// { status: "Automated_Setup", requiresHumanReview: false, shouldStartCheckout: true }

qualifyLead({ qualificationMetric: 40 }, defaultTandemConfig);
// { status: "Manual_Review", requiresHumanReview: true, shouldStartCheckout: false }

What to put in it

Pick something that tells you how much work or risk a lead brings. The same number should mean the same thing for every lead.

Your business	A sensible metric
Fleet or logistics software	Number of vehicles
Team software	Number of seats
Services	Expected hours per month
Insurance	Number of policies

A small customer with 5 vehicles can be set up on its own. A customer with 80 vehicles probably needs a conversation before anything is switched on.

If you do not want this step at all, pass 0 for every lead. Zero is always under the limit, so every lead is set up automatically.

Change the limit

The limit is the only setting that changes the rule. Define your own config and pass it to qualifyLead.

import { defineTandemConfig, qualifyLead } from "tandem-crm";

const config = defineTandemConfig({
  qualification: { automatedSetupMaxQualificationMetric: 25 },
  commission: { holdDays: 30 },
});

qualifyLead({ qualificationMetric: 20 }, config);
// Automated_Setup

What Tandem does not do

Tandem only reports the result. It does not start a checkout, send an email, or assign a person. Your app reads shouldStartCheckout or requiresHumanReview and decides what happens next.

Why the result is saved with the lead

The lead.created event stores the metric and the status it produced. If you change the limit later, existing leads keep the status they were given, and replaying the history gives the same answer as before. This is the same reason every other decision in Tandem is saved in the event instead of recomputed. See How Tandem records change.

A note on the name

This field started life as a vehicle count, in the fleet software Tandem came from. It was renamed to qualification_metric once it was clear the idea works for any business. If you see vehicleCount in an old note or commit, it is the same thing.