Method

A qualification method you can audit

SCOUT is not a filter over a database. It is a research and qualification process with a written standard, a recorded evidence trail and an accountable human at the end of it.

Method

The five stages

  1. 01 Define

    Onboarding produces three written artefacts: your ideal client profile, the qualification criteria SCOUT will apply, and the disqualification standard that says what must cause an account to be rejected. You approve all three before anything runs.

    This is the step most lead generation skips. It is also the step that makes every later decision defensible.

  2. 02 Discover

    SCOUT assembles a candidate account set from firmographic data and the public web. Industry classification alone is treated as a weak signal, because company categorisation is frequently wrong. Candidate accounts are screened on what the business actually appears to do, not only on how a database has labelled it.

  3. 03 Qualify

    Every candidate is assessed against your approved criteria across fit, problem intensity, timing, buyer accessibility and commercial soundness. Findings are separated into fact, inference and unknown. An inference is never presented as a finding, and an unknown is never quietly filled in.

    Accounts that fail are recorded with the reason. You receive the rejections as well as the shortlist, because the rejections tell you whether the criteria are working.

  4. 04 Identify

    Qualified accounts are mapped to the roles that own the decision, the budget and the problem. Contact details are supplied where they are lawfully available and verifiable. Where a contact cannot be verified it is delivered as unverified and labelled as such, never presented as confirmed.

  5. 05 Govern

    A human reviews the run before you see it: the evidence trail, the qualification decisions, the data quality flags and any source that failed during the run. Nothing is released on the strength of the system saying it worked.

Evidence discipline

Three labels, applied without exception

Fact

Directly supported by a named source we can point you to. Facts carry the source with them.

Inference

A reasoned conclusion drawn from facts, labelled as reasoning rather than as evidence, with the logic shown so you can disagree with it.

Unknown

Material information we could not establish. Reported as a gap. This is the label most tools do not have, and it is the one that protects you.

Data quality

How contact data is handled

SCOUT supplies business contact details for named decision-makers at qualified accounts, sourced from licensed B2B data providers and the public web, and only where that is lawful under UK GDPR on a legitimate interests basis. Verification status travels with every record. Unverified is reported as unverified.
  • Business contact data only. We do not supply personal or consumer contact data.
  • Every record carries its verification status rather than an implied guarantee.
  • Known failure modes are flagged proactively. For example, where a contact sits under a global parent domain, provider matching can return the wrong entity, so those records are held for manual review rather than shipped.
  • Senior title matching is treated as unreliable at volume. Where a leadership name cannot be corroborated, it is delivered as unverified rather than asserted.
  • Opt-out and erasure requests are actioned across live client deliveries.

See the privacy policy for the full lawful basis and data subject rights position.

Onboarding

What happens after you pay

Stage What happens Typical timing
Payment and confirmation Onboarding fee and first period settled. Engagement confirmed in writing. Day 0
ICP intake Structured intake covering market, proposition, deal profile and exclusions. Days 1 to 3
Criteria approval You approve the written ICP, qualification criteria and disqualification standard. Days 3 to 7
Calibration run A first bounded run, reviewed together, so the criteria can be tuned on real output. Week 2
Steady state Recurring qualified delivery with review cadence agreed at your subscription tier. From week 3

Timings are indicative and depend on how quickly the criteria are approved. Standard service delivery does not begin before payment and the onboarding gates are satisfied.

Next step

See the method applied to your market

The pilot is the cheapest way to test whether this approach holds up against accounts you already know.