Northstar Growth runs paid acquisition and demand programmes for B2B SaaS companies. Nine people, retainer-based, calendar open to anyone on the site.
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Today, anyone can book a 45-minute strategy call from Northstar’s site, and qualification happens on that call. This Blueprint moves the decision earlier: who is in, who is out, how the leads that pass are ranked, what is asked before anything is booked, and what happens next in each case.
The following are the conditions a lead has to meet to enter the sales process. All of them must be met. If even one is missing, the lead is disqualified. They are listed in the order they are evaluated, and the first one to fail is the one the lead is answered with.
Northstar does not run acquisition in adult entertainment or gambling, whatever the fit, spend or urgency. Policy rather than a judgement on the business, and it would not change with a larger budget or a longer timeline. There is no question for it, because nobody volunteers the answer and asking it insults everyone it does not apply to. The evidence is what the company says it does, and the address it does it from.
The company has to be the one buying acquisition, not the one selling it. Outside the bar: marketing, advertising, design, development and consulting agencies, and contractors sourcing on a client’s behalf. Held apart from the business-model criterion below because the two are not the same company and each has earned its own answer. In practice it is the most common failure of any criterion here, because the first website an agency owner reaches for is their own.
What the company wants has to be work Northstar sells: paid acquisition or conversion optimization at the core, with conversion tracking and attribution, performance reporting, and lifecycle demand programs alongside. Outside the bar: SEO, content programmes, website builds, brand work, PR, outbound sales, and one-off projects or audits. Wanting paid acquisition and also mentioning SEO is not a failure; coming for SEO is. The test is what they mainly want, and their own words have to say so plainly.
A B2B SaaS company selling subscription software to other businesses. Outside the bar: physical goods and e-commerce, consumer apps, marketplaces, hardware, and local or service businesses.
This is the one criterion that is looked up rather than asked. The company names its website, the page is read and the web searched alongside it, and the answer is one of four: B2B SaaS, an agency, something else, or unknown. Unknown is a first-class answer and costs one extra question, because a great many seed-stage companies are too new or too quiet to be found — and a wrong no turns a real customer away in writing. Size, stage, funding and headcount are explicitly not part of this test; they are scoring matters, not bar matters.
Where the lookup cannot decide, the company is asked outright, and the record keeps which of the two happened. A fact read off a homepage and a fact a prospect asserted about themselves are not worth the same.
At least $5,000 a month of total marketing investment — ad spend, tools, agencies and contractors together. Outside the bar: anything below that.
The floor sits on total spend rather than on fees, which is the number the engagement is actually priced from. Under $5,000 in total cannot carry a $9,000 monthly fee, whatever the fee answer would have been, so the question that gates is the one a company can answer early and honestly. The fee floor itself stays on Northstar’s side of the conversation: a price quoted to somebody being turned away is a number they can only argue with. The decline says the range is wrong, and stops.
The factors below determine how strong a qualified lead is as a sales opportunity. They apply only to qualified leads (those that passed the qualification criteria).
Whether what the company wants is the engagement or a piece of it. Presence of a core service decides this and breadth does not: asking for paid acquisition alone scores the same as asking for all five, because for a performance agency the core service is the engagement. Conversion tracking and attribution on its own is real work but not the reason anybody hires Northstar, so it scores partial. Reporting or lifecycle work with no core service attached scores low.
What Northstar would be walking into. Scored by adding up what is already in place, and the five items are not worth equal points, because they are not equal. A missing landing page or missing creative is work Northstar sells; a missing pixel or no campaign history is risk it cannot bill for — a slow, blind start while the account learns what it is doing. Nothing here disqualifies: a funded company with real spend and nothing in place is a low score and a real lead.
Total monthly investment across ads, tools, agencies and contractors — evidence that an engagement this size already sits inside normal spending rather than being a new line item somebody has to win approval for. Deliberately not a question about fees. A large media budget with a small fee budget has repeatedly produced Northstar’s worst-margin accounts, and that comparison is only possible if the total is known. The bottom bin of this factor is the disqualifier in Section 01; every bin above it scores.
Urgency and willingness to start, not politeness about it. The spacing is deliberately steep: a 90-day timeline converts at a fraction of a 30-day one, so the low bin sits well below half the high bin rather than proportionally beneath it. A company still exploring scores zero rather than failing a rule — it stays in the model and lands Weak on the arithmetic, which is the more honest version of the same outcome.
How fast a real decision can be reached — asked as who would join the call rather than who signs, because the softer question is the one people answer honestly. Weighted below the rest because a colleague inside a company with spend, urgency and the right shape still closes more often than a decision-maker with none of those. Somebody not in the room yet has to be brought in, which is a recommender in all but name, and an undefined answer scores zero rather than failing.
How much to trust everything above. A referral arrives with the spend and timeline already sanity-checked by someone who has paid Northstar; a cold paid click arrives with self-reported answers and nothing behind them. It multiplies the subtotal rather than adding to it, because it is a statement about the quality of the evidence and not another piece of evidence. A lead whose attribution is unknown is treated as organic, neither credited nor penalised for something nobody recorded.
Each factor is scored and weighted, and the formula resolves them into one number that sets the priority for each qualified lead.
Score = ( Σ weight × factor ÷ Σ weight present ) × source
The Formula
Each of the five additive factors scores 0–100 against its bins and is multiplied by its weight. The weighted scores are summed, then divided by the weight actually present rather than by 1.0 — a factor nobody answered is unknown, not nil, and must not quietly drag a lead toward zero. With all five known, that division is by 1.0. The source multiplier is then applied to the subtotal, and the total rounded.
Operational readiness is scored by addition rather than by bin: tracking and analytics 30 · past or current paid campaigns 25 · a converting landing page 20 · a target CPA or ROAS 15 · creative ready to use 10 — exactly a hundred points, so all five is full marks without a cap.
| Factor | Weight | Low | Mid | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service fit | 25% | Reporting or lifecycle only → 30 | Tracking only → 60 | Any core service → 100 |
| Operational readiness | 20% | Nothing in place → 0 | Tracking only → 30 | All five → 100 |
| Marketing spend | 20% | $5–10k → 50 | $10–25k → 80 | $25k+ → 100 |
| Timeline | 20% | 60–90 days → 45 | 30–60 days → 70 | Within 30 days → 100 |
| Authority | 15% | Loop in someone else → 50 | Me and colleagues → 80 | Just me → 100 |
| Source | — | Cold / paid → ×0.8 | Organic → ×1.0 | Referral → ×1.25 |
The Range
Tier Thresholds
| Tier | Threshold | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Strong | Above 78 | Highest claim on selling time |
| Moderate | 58 to 78 | Worth a conversation, standard priority |
| Weak | Below 58 | Qualified, but does not earn a strategy slot |
Worked Example — Lumen Analytics
B2B SaaS analytics platform, Series A. Wants paid acquisition and conversion optimization. Spends $18,000 a month on marketing today, with conversion tracking live and nothing else in place, and wants to be running inside three months. The VP of Marketing submitted the form and would bring a colleague to the call. Referred by a current Northstar client.
| Factor | Value | Raw | Weight | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service fit | Paid + conversion | 100 | 0.25 | 25.0 |
| Operational readiness | Tracking only | 30 | 0.20 | 6.0 |
| Marketing spend | $18,000 / month | 80 | 0.20 | 16.0 |
| Timeline | Inside three months | 45 | 0.20 | 9.0 |
| Authority | Me and a colleague | 80 | 0.15 | 12.0 |
| Subtotal | 68.0 | |||
| Source multiplier, referral ×1.25 | 85 | |||
These are the decisions available on a lead once it has been qualified and scored. The choice depends on whether it qualified, what priority it carries, and how much sales capacity is available at the time.
Disqualified Leads
Qualified Leads
Met every condition. The tier sets the default claim on time, and the action is chosen from below.
This is the context collected on each lead for qualification and scoring, and where each part of it comes from. Six are asked of everyone, one only when the website could not be read, and the last comes after the decision rather than before it.
What can we help you with?
Paid acquisition · Conversion optimization · Conversion tracking & attribution · Performance reporting · Lifecycle demand programs · Something else. Up to three.
Something Northstar does not sell → decline.
What’s your company website?
Required. The page is read and the web searched alongside it: the company’s name, what it sells, who buys it, and what kind of company it is.
An agency, a business model outside B2B SaaS, or an excluded category → decline.
Does your company primarily sell subscription software to other businesses?
Yes · No. Asked only when the website could not settle it, and recorded as self-declared.
No → decline.
Which do you currently have in place?
Tracking & analytics · A landing page that’s converting · Past or current paid campaigns · Target CPA or ROAS · Creative ready to use · None of the above
How much do you currently invest in marketing each month, including ad spend, tools, agencies and contractors?
Under $5,000 · $5,000 to $10,000 · $10,000 to $25,000 · Over $25,000
Under $5,000 → decline.
When are you looking to get started?
Within 30 days · 30–60 days · 60–90 days · Still exploring
Who would join the call?
Just me · Me and other colleagues · I’d like to loop in someone else · Not sure
Your name and email, so we can follow up.
Name · Email. Asked after the decision has been made, and never scored.