Sales follow-up: qualify every inbound lead within the hour

What this is

Speed to first reply is the cheapest thing a small business can improve in sales, and the hardest to keep up. This playbook puts a small team on the inbound queue so that every lead gets researched, answered in your voice and logged, while you remain the person who decides what is sent.

Who it helps

Owners and small sales teams in services, e-commerce and software who get inbound leads by form, email or chat and lose some of them to slow replies. It is not a cold-outreach engine, and it is not meant to be.

The team

• Revenue Lead (manager). Watches the queue, assigns each lead, and sends you the daily digest.
• Researcher. Before anyone replies, builds a short picture: who the company is, what they seem to want, whether they are already in your CRM.
• Outbound. Drafts the reply in the tone you set, with the two or three questions that qualify the lead. It cannot send; it can only propose.
• CRM Steward. Creates or updates the record in your CRM, logs the reply and the next step, and keeps the pipeline stage honest.

Sample assignment

Illustrative. Give this to the Revenue Lead and change the specifics.

Objective. Every inbound lead gets a researched, personal reply within one hour during business hours, and a record in HubSpot the same day.

Context. Leads arrive at sales@ and through the website form, which forwards to the same inbox. Our offer, tone guide and qualifying questions are in the Sales room. We sell to owner-managed firms; we do not serve enterprises.

Rules. Never send an email without my approval. Never quote a price; say that I will follow up with one. Do not research individuals beyond their public professional profile. If a lead is outside our market, draft a polite decline and route it to me.

Done looks like. For each lead: a research note, a drafted reply in Needs You, and a HubSpot record with the stage set. A daily digest at 5 pm: leads in, replies sent, replies waiting on me, anything stuck.

What happens for one lead

1. A form submission arrives at 10:12.
2. The Researcher reads it, checks the CRM for an existing record, looks at the company's public site, and writes four lines: who they are, what they asked, what they probably need, and whether they fit.
3. The Outbound worker drafts a reply that answers the question, asks two qualifying questions and proposes a call. The draft appears in Needs You with the research note attached.
4. At 10:31 you read it on your phone, change one sentence, and approve. It sends from your address.
5. The CRM Steward creates the contact and the deal, logs the reply, sets the stage to "Replied, awaiting answer", and adds a follow-up task for three days out.
6. If no answer arrives in three days, the Outbound worker drafts a short follow-up. It waits for you again.

Example output

An illustrative draft, as it would sit in Needs You:

To: Jordan at Fairview Physio Subject: Re: Scheduling software for two clinics

Hi Jordan, thanks for getting in touch. Two clinics with a shared front desk is exactly the setup we built for. Two quick questions so I can point you at the right plan: do both sites share one patient list today, and do you need online booking for patients, or staff-side scheduling only? Happy to walk you through it on a 20-minute call this week; would Thursday morning suit? Best, Sam

The lead, the company and the reply are made up.

Requirements and availability

• Available in Korps. Teams, assignments, approvals with the draft attached, routines for the digest, and Activity naming every system touched.
• Connections. Gmail and Outlook, HubSpot and Salesforce, and Slack or Teams for the digest are Korps connections you sign in to once. Your website form needs to reach the inbox or a tool a worker can read; a form vendor's own API is not automatically a Korps integration. See integrations.
• A worker needs a runtime (Hermes Agent comes bundled) and a model on your account.
• The free account is open now; the app that hosts workers opens at launch.

Limitations and approval points

• Sending is the approval point. Keep the email connection on "requires approval" for the Outbound worker. Reading and drafting need no approval; sending always does until you decide otherwise.
• Do not let the worker quote prices, discounts or contract terms. That is a rule in the assignment and a review point for you.
• Research is limited to public professional information and your own CRM. Decide that boundary explicitly; it is easy to overstep and hard to undo.
• A reply drafted in your voice is still sent by you. The record in Activity will show that you approved it.