Hot, Warm, or Cold: Scoring a Real Badge-Scan Sheet Before It Goes Stale
Objective: Given an 18-row badge-scan export with booth notes, title, and time spent, apply the lesson's hot/warm/cold scoring criteria to correctly tier every row and flag which ones need a same-day sales call.
You're the field marketing coordinator at Freshworks, the Chennai-founded, Nasdaq-listed B2B SaaS company (FRSH). Your booth at a regional SaaS conference just closed, and you have a spreadsheet of 18 badge scans with the notes reps typed in during conversations.
Score every row hot, warm, or cold using the signals actually written in the notes, then hand sales a same-day call list instead of a 300-row dump nobody opens.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, no account friction, works from a booth laptop
Paid upgrades (optional, faster/deeper)
Removes the manual copy-paste step from Sheets into a rep's task list
The process
2 steps
Step 01 of 02
The lesson defines hot as a pricing/timeline/integration question or a decision-maker title staying 5+ minutes, warm as genuine interest with no urgency signal, and cold as a swag grab or no-fit visitor.
Given these 18 rows of raw booth notes, which ones are hot (sales call today), which are warm (personal email in 24h), and which are cold (nurture only)?
Procedure
- Import the 18-row export and freeze the header row
- Read each row's notes field for a pricing, timeline, or integration question
- Check the title field for a decision-maker title (VP, Director, Head of, Founder)
- Tag each row Hot, Warm, or Cold in a new Tier column based on those two signals
Row Title Notes (verbatim) Tier 3 VP Marketing Asked about API pricing tiers, stayed 8 min HOT 7 Marketing Coordinator Liked the demo, no questions on cost WARM 11 Student Grabbed a t-shirt, walked off COLD 14 Director of Ops Asked if it integrates with their current CRM HOT 16 Marketing Manager Good questions on features, no urgency signal WARM ...13 more rows
Healthy
Every Hot row has either a buying-stage question or a decision-maker title backing the tag, not a gut feeling.
Unhealthy
Tagging a row Hot because the rep 'had a good vibe' about the conversation with no pricing, timeline, or title signal in the notes.
What this means
The tier is only as reliable as the two signals it's built from. A tag with no textual evidence behind it is a guess wearing a label.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Half the Hot tags have no pricing/timeline/title evidence in the notes column | Re-score using only the two documented signals, downgrade anything without evidence to Warm | 30 min |
Step 02 of 02
The lesson's decay data shows a 5-minute response converts 21x better than a 30-minute one, and connection odds fall 10x after 48 hours, so the SLA has to be attached to the tier immediately, not decided later.
Using your Hot/Warm/Cold tiers from step 1, what SLA (call today, email in 24h, nurture in 48h) does each tier get, and which 3 rows are you personally calling before lunch?
Procedure
- Add an SLA column: Hot = 'Call today', Warm = 'Email in 24h', Cold = 'Nurture in 48h'
- Add a Due-By column with a real timestamp, not just 'today'
- Sort the sheet by SLA so all 3 Hot rows sit at the top
- Copy the 3 Hot rows into a separate 'Call Now' tab for sales
Row Tier SLA Due-By 3 HOT Call today Today, 4:00 PM 14 HOT Call today Today, 4:00 PM 9 HOT Call today Today, 4:00 PM 7 WARM Email in 24h Tomorrow, 11:00 AM 16 WARM Email in 24h Tomorrow, 11:00 AM 11 COLD Nurture in 48h +2 days, auto-enroll
Healthy
The 3 Hot rows are called before the sales team leaves the show floor, not emailed to them for 'whenever.'
Unhealthy
The whole 18-row sheet gets forwarded to sales as one flat list with no SLA column, and they work top to bottom by row number.
What this means
A tier without an attached deadline is just a label. The SLA column is what actually protects the 21x response-speed advantage.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Hot leads sit in the same queue as Cold leads with no visible deadline | Split Hot rows into their own 'Call Now' tab the moment scoring is done | 5 min |
Final deliverable
A tiered, SLA-stamped badge-scan queue ready to hand to sales before the team leaves the show floor.
See a reference example
Zendesk, Regional CX Summit badge-scan queue (excerpt) CALL NOW (3 rows) Row 2 VP Customer Experience Asked about SSO and pricing tiers Call today, 3:30 PM Row 9 Director of Support Wants a 2-seat pilot next month Call today, 3:30 PM EMAIL WITHIN 24H (6 rows) Row 5 Support Ops Manager Liked the AI ticket routing demo Email tomorrow, 10 AM NURTURE (9 rows) Row 12 Student Grabbed swag, no fit Auto-enroll, +2 days
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- All 18 rows are tagged Hot, Warm, or Cold with a documented signal, not a guess
- Every Hot row has an SLA and a real Due-By timestamp attached
- The 3 Hot rows are isolated into a separate call-now list for sales