the 0-9 score that decides which DMs get your time
(most setters skip this and burn their best hour on the worst leads)
I know a guy who works at a sneaker authentication desk in a resale shop.
People walk in with bags and boxes of shoes. Jordans. Yeezys. Travis Scotts.
The authenticator doesn’t eyeball them. He runs a 9-point check on every single pair.
3 points for stitching. The Nike stitch pattern is specific. The thread color, the count per inch, the angle where it crosses the swoosh.
He checks three places: the toe box, the heel collar, the swoosh seam.
3 points for materials. Real leather has a smell. Real suede has a nap that moves a specific way under his thumb. Real outsole rubber feels firm and bounces back.
Fakes have a chemical bite or a sponginess that gives them away in 4 seconds.
3 points for glue. Authentic glue jobs are clean and yellow-white. Fakes have brown overflow, gaps near the midsole, or a smell like a vinyl pool floatie.
9 points total per pair. The authenticator runs through every pair in under 90 seconds.
7-9 = listed at full price. The shop sells these inside a week.
4-6 = pulled aside for a second authenticator and a black-light test. Some pass. Some don’t.
0-3 = back in the grocery bag or box. The would-be seller leaves with their fake Yeezys and a polite “we can’t take these.”
He told me a story about a guy that walked in with 14 pairs. His first read said 3 were 9s, 4 were in the 4-6 zone, and 7 were obvious fakes. He scored all 14 in 18 minutes.
Without the scoring system, the shop would either accept all 14 and tank their reputation by listing fakes, or reject all 14 and lose the 3 legit pairs the guy actually owned.
The 9-point check is the only thing that lets them say yes to the 3 and no to the 7, without spending 90 minutes per pair.
Your setters should be doing this exact thing in the DMs.
Typical setter opens LinkedIn Sales Nav at 9am. Pulls a list of 200 prospects from a saved search. Starts writing openers. By 11am they’ve sent 30 messages and the morning is gone.
What they didn’t do:… score the 200 first.
Some of those 200 are 9s. Most are 3s. A handful are 4-6s worth revisiting in two weeks when a new signal hits. But the setter treated them all the same.
Wrote the same opener. Sent it to whoever happened to be at the top of the list. Burned the best hour of the morning on the worst leads because the scoring didn’t exist.
You spent May reading the autopsy of Reid’s $2K sequence. 7 messages. 3 months in his sent folder. Zero replies.
One of the reasons that sequence died… he never scored his prospect list before sending.
You built the DM ICP on Day 1. You built the 4-Minute Research Protocol on Day 2.
Today, I’m walking you through:
→ The 3-dimension, 9-point scoring rubric every prospect runs through before your setter touches the opener
→ How to score 200 prospects in 90 minutes (and why scoring is the highest-leverage hour of your sales week)
→ The 3 tier-based routing rules that decide which prospects get the message today, which get watched, and which get cut
Let’s start with the fake Yeezy’s…
🏗️ Today’s Build | The 0-9 Prospect Scoring Matrix
Every prospect on your DM list gets a score across 3 dimensions before your setter writes the opener. Each dimension is worth 0-3 points. Total: 0-9.
1️⃣ ICP FIT (0-3 points)
This is where your Day 1 DM ICP becomes most useful. You built a notecard with 5 specifics: trigger event, buying role, platform behavior, internal language, recent failure. Now you check each prospect against those 5.
4-5 specifics match = 3 points
2-3 specifics match = 2 points
1 specific matches = 1 point
0 specifics match = 0 points (and the prospect is out, no need to score the other dimensions)
✅ Check the actual specifics. “Agency owner $1-5M” is not a specific. “Hired their first VP of Sales in the last 90 days, posts about hiring on LinkedIn weekly, uses the phrase ‘we’re scaling outbound’” is a specific. The notecard you built on Day 1 is your scoring sheet.
❌ Don’t grade on title alone. A VP of Sales at a $50M company is not the same prospect as a VP of Sales at a $3M company even when the title matches. The notecard prevents this collapse.
2️⃣ AWARENESS LEVEL (0-3 points)
This is where your Day 2 research protocol matters. You pulled the prospect’s most recent content. You read the last 30 days. Now you place them on the awareness ladder.
L3-4 (named a goal or frustration in the last 30 days) = 3 points
L2 (signal of attention but no named goal) = 2 points
L1 (documenting their situation, no friction surfaced) = 1 point
No content in the last 90 days = 0 points (and the prospect is out)
✅ Quote the exact phrase that earned the L3-4 score. “We need to fix our onboarding before Q4” is L3-4. Save the quote in the prospect card so the setter can drop it directly into the opener tomorrow.
❌ Don’t guess at the level. If the last 30 days are blank, score them L0 and skip. The point is to bet morning hours on prospects who fit your offer, not on prospects you’re projecting onto.
3️⃣ REACHABILITY (0-3 points)
This is the dimension most teams skip. It’s also the one that decides whether your message gets seen at all.
Active on the platform AND posts touch your pain area = 3 points
Active on the platform but content is generic to their industry = 2 points
Sporadic posting (once a quarter or less) = 1 point
Inactive 60+ days = 0 points
✅ Check the date stamp on their last post or comment. LinkedIn’s “Activity” tab tells you everything. If their last comment was 4 days ago, they’re checking their inbox.
❌ Don’t score someone a 3 because their headline is impressive. Headlines don’t reply. Active users with recent content reply.
The scoring math.
ICP Fit (0-3) + Awareness Level (0-3) + Reachability (0-3) = Prospect Score (0-9)
Once you have the score, the routing rules decide what happens next.
7-9 points = SEND TODAY.
These are your morning. The opener gets written using the exact L3-4 quote from their content. The message goes out before lunch.
4-6 points = SCHEDULE.
Watch the prospect for 14 days. If a fresh L3-4 signal appears in that window, they bump to a 7-9 and get the message. If nothing changes, drop them to a quarterly revisit list.
0-3 points = CUT or REVISIT QUARTERLY.
These don’t get your morning. They might get a touch in 90 days when you re-pull the list and re-score from scratch.
Your setter scores prospects quickly, then have a list of maybe 30 to 50 sevens, eights, and nines that get the morning. The others get watched, skipped, or queued for a future quarter.
That’s the matrix.
The scoring matrix sits between the research you did yesterday and the message you’ll write tomorrow.
Without it, every prospect gets the same morning attention and your reply rate stays flat. With it, your morning bets get smaller and your reply rate climbs.
🔨 I’m running a free 7-day challenge
You’ll build a complete DM sequence from scratch, one message per day, scored against every diagnostic from this series.
A Notion workspace with daily build instructions.
A Telegram group for feedback. The DM Sequence Grader to score every piece.
No course login. No replays. No upsell on Day 3.
→ Join the 7-Day Build Your Reply-Worthy Sequence Challenge for free here
Here’s how to fix it in your own DMs:
1️⃣ Build the scoring sheet in a single spreadsheet column-by-column, then run your next 100 prospects through it.
Open a Google Sheet. Columns: Prospect Name, Company, ICP Fit (0-3), Awareness Level (0-3), Reachability (0-3), Score (auto-sum), Routing Tier, Evidence Quote (for L3-4), Trigger Event (from research). Add a SUM formula for the score column. Add a conditional format that colors 7-9 green, 4-6 yellow, 0-3 red.
Pull 100 prospects. Score them in two 50-prospect sittings. Your first 50 will take 90 minutes because you’re learning the scoring. Your second 50 will take 45.
The sheet becomes your daily working file. Every morning your setter sorts by score, descending. Top of the list gets the morning. The rest gets the calendar.
2️⃣ Replace your “send to everyone on the list” workflow with a tier-based morning routine.
✅ The old workflow: setter opens Sales Nav, sends opener #1 to whoever is at the top, sends opener #1 to the next person, repeats for 30 messages by 11am.
❌ The new workflow: setter opens the scoring sheet, sorts by score, sends ONLY to 7-9s in the morning.
Writes a custom opener for each 7-9 using the L3-4 quote already in the sheet. Maybe sends 8 messages by 11am instead of 30. Every one of those 8 is calibrated to a prospect whose conversation is already running.
8 calibrated messages will beat 30 generic ones on reply rate, response quality, and call booking-rate. Every single time.
3️⃣ Re-score your list every 30 days because awareness levels migrate.
A prospect who scored a 4 in March can score a 7 in April because they posted three pieces of L3-4 content in between. A prospect who scored a 9 in February can drop to a 5 in April because they hired the role and the trigger event closed.
Re-pull awareness signals and re-score every 30 days.
The sheet stays alive. The morning queue stays fresh. The 4-6s that bumped to 7-9 are your best new leads of the month. You would have missed them if you scored only once.
That’s it.
Here’s what you learned today:
→ Every prospect gets scored across 3 dimensions before your setter writes a message: ICP Fit (0-3), Awareness Level (0-3), Reachability (0-3). Total 0-9.
→ The score routes them: 7-9 gets today’s morning, 4-6 gets watched for 14 days, 0-3 gets cut or queued for quarterly revisit.
→ Re-score every 30 days. The list is alive. Awareness levels migrate and the rubric catches the migration before your morning queue goes stale.
Start with just one:
Open a fresh spreadsheet. Pull your next 20 prospects from Sales Nav.
Score each one across the 3 dimensions using the Day 1 DM ICP and the Day 2 research protocol. Sort by total score, descending. Look at how many 7-9s you have versus how many 0-3s.
If 80% of your list is 0-3, your list is the problem before your DM ever was.
Fix the list. Then send.
Today’s mega-prompt scores your prospect list for you.
Paste your DM ICP notecard (from Day 1) and up to 50 prospects, and it runs the 9-point check on each one: ICP Fit (0-3), Awareness Level (0-3), Reachability (0-3).
You get back a scored, sorted list with tier routing your setter can use tomorrow morning.
Paid Members Get:
→ The Prospect Scoring Matrix Mega-Prompt
→ Paste your DM ICP notecard + prospect list. Get back every prospect scored 0-9 and routed to a tier.
→ 7-9 = send today. 4-6 = watch for 14 days. 0-3 = cut or quarterly revisit.
→ Includes the L3-4 evidence quote for every high scorer so your setter drops it directly into the opener.
→ Ends with a List Health Read that tells you if your list is the problem before your DM ever was.
→ Plus a 30-day re-score prompt you save and re-run when awareness levels migrate.
Stop sending 30 messages to whoever’s at the top of the list. Score the whole list in 90 minutes. Send 8 that matter.
