Definition · rule v1
What Zevari counts as a qualified conversation
A qualified conversation is a thread with someone outside your company who, after outreach Zevari sent on your behalf, replied with genuine interest in what you offer and kept talking. Four conditions must all hold: Zevari caused it, they responded substantively, they are plausibly a buyer, and the exchange went beyond a single dismissal. It is not a booked meeting and not every reply. The rule is versioned as v1, ratified 23 July 2026.
- Rule ratified
- 23 July 2026
- Thresholds locked
- 29 July 2026
- Page updated
- 16 September 2026
Maintained by the Zevari product team. The rule is stamped on every verdict Zevari records.
The rule
Four conditions, all required.
Condition 1
Zevari caused it.
A specific Zevari-sent touch is traced as the cause. Conversations we cannot trace to a touch are reported separately and are never merged into the headline number.
Example: A prospect replies to the connection note Zevari sent on Tuesday. That qualifies on this condition. The same person messaging you after meeting you at a conference does not.
Condition 2
They responded substantively.
At least one of their replies expresses real business interest. Someone pitching you does not count, however enthusiastic.
Example: "We are looking at this for Q4, how does it handle multiple seats?" counts. "Love what you are doing, want to see our lead-gen service?" does not.
Condition 3
They are plausibly a buyer.
They fit your stated ideal customer profile, or there is enough evidence to believe they might. Someone assessed as a clear non-fit is excluded outright and cannot be reinstated by any other signal.
Example: A head of sales at a 40-person software company you sell to counts. If you do not sell to students, a student asking for career advice does not, however long the thread runs.
Condition 4
It is a conversation, not a bounce.
Either they replied at least twice, or their single reply contained an explicit forward-looking ask.
Example: "Thanks, not right now" is a reply. It is not a qualified conversation, and counting it would inflate the number. "Can you send me pricing?" in a single reply counts.
Exclusions
What is explicitly excluded.
| Excluded | Why |
|---|---|
| Someone pitching you | They are selling; the direction is inverted |
| Support or troubleshooting | An existing relationship being serviced, not new buying intent |
| Lead-magnet requests | They want the free asset, not the offering. Tracked as its own metric, never folded in |
| Auto-replies and out-of-office | Not a human response |
| Recruiters, vendors, students, job seekers outside your ideal customer | Excluded for fit, not for the persona. If you sell to recruiters or students, they can qualify like anyone else |
| Internal colleagues | Not a buyer |
| Warm engagement without intent | "Great post!" is not a buying conversation |
| Pre-existing relationships | Zevari did not create it |
Boundaries
What a qualified conversation is not.
- Not a booked meeting.
- A qualified conversation may become one. Zevari does not report them as the same thing and does not use the terms interchangeably.
- Not every reply.
- Replies are counted separately.
- Not a guarantee of revenue.
- It is an early-funnel outcome measure.
- Not retroactive.
- Thresholds are versioned. Changing one mints v2; historical verdicts are never recomputed in place, so a threshold change can never silently improve a past number.
Method
How it is measured.
Each conversation is traced back to the Zevari-sent touch that caused it. When a conversation cannot be traced to a touch, it goes into a separate, labelled bucket that you can see. It is never counted in the headline number and never quietly discarded.
The Reply Qualifier specialist assesses each reply against the four conditions and stamps the verdict with the rule version that produced it. You do not have to reply for a conversation to be assessed.
Versioning and change policy
The thresholds behind the rule are fixed for each version. Changing any of them mints a new version rather than editing the current one, and verdicts already recorded keep the version they were made under. A past number can therefore never improve because a threshold moved. Every figure Zevari publishes that uses this metric names the rule version it was counted under.
| Version | Status | Ratified | Thresholds locked |
|---|---|---|---|
| qualified_conversation_v1 | Current | 23 July 2026 | 29 July 2026 |
Limitations
What this definition cannot do.
- Attribution coverage is imperfect. Some real conversations cannot be traced to a touch; they are shown in their own bucket rather than counted or thrown away.
- Fit with your ideal customer is an assessment, not a fact. The public wording of condition 3 is deliberately less detailed than the internal scoring bands.
- The public definition is faithful to the internal rule but not complete: some implementation boundaries, such as how many recent messages are evaluated, are kept internal because they change with tuning.
- It measures an early-funnel outcome. It does not measure revenue, pipeline value, or meetings.
Next step
See the team that counts them.
Zevari is a full outbound department for LinkedIn and email. Six specialists take a prospect to a qualified conversation, and you approve every send. $87 a month, or $497 a year (save 52%).