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Hard Disqualification

Hard disqualification removes a lead from your sales pipeline entirely, instead of just lowering their score. It is the right tool when a lead cannot be worked, should not be worked, or must not be worked, regardless of how engaged they are.

This guide is for marketing operations and revenue operations practitioners who configure scoring inside kenbun. It covers when to use hard disqualification, how to set it up, what happens to a disqualified lead, and the cases where a soft negative score is the better choice.

Why Hard Disqualification Matters​

Most scoring problems are gradients. A lead who downloaded a whitepaper is warmer than one who only visited the homepage, but neither is worthless. Negative weights and engagement levels handle that gradient well.

Hard disqualification is different. It is for the cases where a lead simply does not belong in the pipeline at all:

  • No contact path. The lead has no email and no phone number. There is no way for an SDR to reach them, no matter how high their score climbs.
  • Competitors and existing customers. A VP from a competitor company looks like a perfect-fit lead on paper. They are not.
  • Hard-bounced emails. The lead's email address has already failed delivery. Sequencing them again wastes sender reputation.
  • Suppression list matches. Leads who have unsubscribed, opted out, or filed a deletion request must be kept out of outreach surfaces.
  • Out-of-territory leads. A lead from a region your team does not sell into should never appear in their queue.

The business win is concrete. SDRs stop wasting hours on leads they cannot work. Sales-facing dashboards stop showing leads that should never be there. And because every disqualification is recorded with the rule that fired it, the timestamp, and the reason, you have a clean audit trail that satisfies GDPR Article 22 requirements around automated decisions.

How Hard Disqualification Differs From Soft Negatives​

It is worth being explicit about the distinction:

BehaviorSoft Negative ScoreHard Disqualification
Lead's scoreLowered by the rule's negative weightPreserved as-is for audit
Visibility in lead listsVisible, ranked lowerHidden by default, shown only when toggle is on
Segment membershipCounted in segmentsExcluded from segment counts by default
TriggersWill fire if score crosses thresholdsWill not fire, even if score crosses thresholds
ReversibilityScore recovers as new positive events arriveCleared automatically when the underlying condition no longer matches
Audit trailScore history shows the changeRule, reason, and timestamp captured separately

If the question is "is this lead a fit," soft negatives are the right tool. If the question is "should this lead exist in my pipeline at all," hard disqualification is the right tool.

Configuring a Hard-Disqualification Rule​

Hard-disqualification rules live alongside your other scoring rules in the Configure > Scoring area. They are available on the Profile and Account scoring tabs in V1.

To create one:

  1. Open Configure > Scoring and switch to either the Profile or Account tab.
  2. Click Add Rule. The rule slideout opens.
  3. At the top of the slideout, change Rule type from Add points to Hard disqualify.
  4. Configure the conditions that should trigger the disqualification (see the next section for compound AND/OR conditions).
  5. Click Save Rule.

The rule fires immediately. Within seconds, every lead in the active Organizational Unit that matches the new rule is flagged as disqualified. You do not need to wait for the nightly refresh.

Because the rule type is a first-class field on the rule, hard-disqualification rules are listed alongside your other rules with a clear "DQ" label. They participate in rule priority ordering and can be paused or deleted like any other rule.

Compound Conditions (AND/OR)​

The most common hard-disqualification use case is "no email AND no phone." Both conditions must be true for the lead to be unreachable. A lead with one or the other can still be contacted.

Compound conditions are available only on hard-disqualification rules in V1. To use them:

  1. In the rule slideout, click Use multiple conditions. The single-condition row is replaced by a condition group.
  2. Add two or more conditions. Each row has its own property, operator, and value.
  3. Toggle the group operator between AND (all conditions must match) and OR (any condition matches).
  4. Save the rule.

For the canonical "no contact info" case, set the group operator to AND and add two conditions: email equals "" and phone equals "".

V1 supports flat condition groups only. You cannot nest a group inside another group. In practice almost every disqualification case is flat, so this rarely matters. If you do need a more complex shape, split it into two separate hard-disqualification rules. A lead matching either rule is still disqualified.

Templates​

The Configure > Scoring > Disqualification tab includes a Templates section with pre-filled rule shapes for the most common cases:

  • No Contact Info. Two-condition AND group: email empty and phone empty. Catches leads with no way to be reached.
  • Personal Email Domain. Single condition matching common consumer email domains (gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc.). Useful for B2B teams who only want to engage business emails.
  • Hard Bounce. Single condition matching the lead's bounce status field. Pairs with a profile mapping that captures bounce events from your email platform.

To use a template, click Use template on the card. The rule slideout opens pre-filled with the template's conditions. You can edit anything before saving. Templates are not hardcoded into kenbun, they are starting points for rules that you own and edit. Once saved, the rule belongs to your tenant and you can change it freely.

What Happens When a Lead Is Disqualified​

When a hard-disqualification rule matches a lead, several things happen automatically.

The score is preserved. The lead's engagement score, profile score, and account score are not zeroed out. They remain in the database for audit purposes. This means that if the disqualification is later reversed, the lead's history is intact.

The lead is hidden from default views. The Analyze > Leads list, the Analyze > Accounts list, segment-leads pages, and segment counts all exclude disqualified leads by default. Sales-facing dashboards stay clean.

Triggers do not fire. A milestone trigger that fires at 75 points will not fire on a disqualified lead, even if their score is 90. A sequence trigger that watches for a specific event pattern will not fire either. This prevents disqualified leads from being routed to SDRs, having tasks created in your CRM, or showing up in Slack alerts.

The lead detail page shows a banner. When you open a disqualified lead, a banner appears at the top of the page explaining why. The banner shows the rule name, the reason, the timestamp of disqualification, and a link to the rule itself so you can review or edit it.

Reviewing Disqualified Leads​

There are two ways to see disqualified leads inside kenbun.

The "Show disqualified leads" toggle. The Analyze > Leads, Analyze > Accounts, and segment-leads pages all include a Show disqualified leads toggle. Turn it on and disqualified leads appear in the list with reduced opacity and an amber DQ pill next to their name. Hovering the pill shows the rule name and reason. This is the right view for auditing your disqualification rules or investigating a specific lead's status.

The Disqualification tab. The Configure > Scoring > Disqualification tab lists every active hard-disqualification rule in the active Organizational Unit, alongside its current match count. Click into a rule to see the leads it has disqualified. This is the right view for measuring the impact of a rule. If the count is much higher or lower than you expected, the rule conditions probably need adjusting.

Reversibility​

A lead can come back from disqualification. If the underlying condition stops matching, kenbun clears the disqualification flag automatically.

For example, suppose a lead was disqualified by the "no contact info" rule because they had no email when they first appeared. A week later, they fill out a webinar form and provide their email. The next nightly refresh re-evaluates every active hard-disqualification rule against every lead. The "no contact info" rule no longer matches this lead, so the flag is cleared. The lead reappears in default views and is once again eligible for triggers.

There is no manual undo button. The system is designed so that the lead's eligibility is always derived from current data, not a one-time decision. This is the right model for compliance: a lead's status reflects the rules in force right now, not the rules that happened to be in force the moment they were ingested.

If you need to remove a disqualification immediately rather than waiting for the nightly refresh, edit the rule that disqualified the lead. Saving any change to the rule re-evaluates it across the OU within seconds.

When NOT to Use Hard Disqualification​

Hard disqualification is a strong tool. It is the wrong tool in several common situations:

  • "This lead is low priority." Use a negative-weight scoring rule, or rely on engagement levels and segments to surface the leads worth working. Hard disqualification removes the lead from view entirely, which is overkill for low priority.
  • "This lead does not match our ICP yet." Lower their profile fit weight, or place them in a "Poor Fit" engagement level. They might become a fit later, and you want them visible while you nurture them.
  • "We are not ready to call this lead." Sequence triggers and routing rules handle timing. Disqualification is for leads who should never be called, not leads whose call timing is wrong.
  • "We get a lot of low-quality form submissions." Use Velocity Based Filters or Attribute Based Filters under Configure > Filters to suppress the events at ingestion time. Hard disqualification still creates a lead record. Filters prevent the record from being created in the first place.

The right framing is this: hard disqualification answers "is this lead in the pipeline at all," not "where in the pipeline does this lead belong." If you are answering the second question, use soft negatives, levels, segments, or filters.