AI Lead Scoring: How AI Filters Out Junk Leads (Automatically) – Dan Sanchez

Let’s be honest— not every lead that comes through your funnel is worth your time. If you’re like me, you’ve seen everything from fake email signups to shady characters trying to hack your free resources. It’s a headache. But once I started using a blend of automation tools and AI, everything changed. Let me walk you through how I use AI to filter out the junk, protect my business, and focus on the leads that actually count.

Clearing Out Dead Weight: Three Types of Leads You Don’t Want

In my experience, there are three categories of leads you should immediately filter out:

Bad Actors: People (or bots) who enter fake or suspicious information or try to game your system.
Tire Kickers: Folks who are just browsing with no intent to buy—time-wasters, basically.
Incomplete Data Providers: Those who fill out your forms with “N/A”, “.”, or other placeholder nonsense just to skip ahead.

Getting rid of these types early not only keeps your funnel clean but also boosts your chances of closing real deals.

My Favorite Tools: HighLevel and OpenAI

I’ll cut to the chase—I’m all in on HighLevel as my CRM, partly because it plays so nicely with AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. With a bit of automation wizardry, you can have every lead run through a thorough AI vetting process before it ever touches your main pipeline. No more time wasted on bogus entries or risky behavior sneaking through the cracks.

Why It Matters

Your sales team only talks to qualified leads.
Your analytics stay clean—no more distorted funnels from junk data.
You’re protected from embarrassing or even legally tricky situations where your systems accidentally respond to malicious prompts.

Personalization at Scale—Safely

AI is amazing for personalizing content. Suppose you’re running a course—each participant tells you about their company and their market, and ChatGPT tailors their emails and action steps accordingly. It feels magical… until you realize that bad actors might use open fields to dump in profanities, prompt injections, or weird hacking attempts. Suddenly, your automation could be sending out things you’d never want your brand associated with!

This is where careful lead vetting becomes absolutely essential.

How I Built an AI Lead Vetting Sequence

Here’s my practical approach, so you can try it yourself:

Collect the Data: When someone fills out a sign-up or lead form, the data gets pushed straight into a HighLevel workflow.
AI Review with ChatGPT: As the first automation step, the form info is passed through an AI-powered check. This is where the magic happens—a custom prompt tells ChatGPT (nicknamed “LeadGuard 1.0” in my case) exactly what to look for.
Strict Output Rules: The AI can only respond with YES or NO—nothing in between, no explanations, just a straight verdict.
If-Then Logic: The workflow branches based on the AI’s answer:
- YES: The lead is tagged and progresses to your next sequence (e.g., nurture emails, your course, etc.).
- NO: The automation stops dead, tags the lead for review, and prevents downstream headaches.
- Misfire (anything unexpected): You get a notification, plus the raw data, so you can tweak your system if needed.

This process alone saves me hours every week, not to mention a lot of potential legal and brand risk.

Crafting the Right Prompt: The Secret Sauce

The trickiest part? Building a prompt for the AI that’s air-tight. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Be ultra-specific. Tell your AI exactly what a good lead looks like and—more importantly—what’s definitely not allowed.
Include rules like: ban placeholder or incomplete data, flag suspicious email domains, block profanity, and ignore code injections.
Keep the temperature low. Setting ChatGPT’s “temperature” to 0.1 tells it to stick to the rules, with zero creative wiggle room.
Test, test, and test some more. Try as many curveballs as possible. If you find a loophole, revise the prompt and repeat until it’s solid.

Don’t just copy someone else’s prompt. Collaborate with ChatGPT itself. I ask it questions and let it ask me questions back—sometimes the AI will highlight gaps in your thinking you’d never have spotted!

Taking It Further: Scoring, Labelling, and Customization

While my system uses a simple YES/NO response, you’re not limited to binary answers. Depending on your sales process, you could have AI:

Assign a score (e.g., 1-5) based on fit.
Label leads as “good,” “better,” or “best.”
Apply custom criteria for job titles, business size, or location.

The flexibility here is off the charts—you can tailor your lead scoring strategy to whatever works best for your business.

Hidden Benefits You Don’t Want to Miss

Cleaner Funnels: Your reporting and analytics reflect reality, not rubbish.
Happier Sales Teams: They focus their talent where it matters—with real prospects.
Automated Troubleshooting: If the AI ever stumbles, you’ll get an alert and can fix it before anything slips through.

Bottom line: The time you save, the risk you eliminate, and the confidence you gain are all worth the setup.

Your Next Steps

Curious to try this out? Start simple. Open up your favorite AI tool, grab your lead capture form, and work through a collaborative session with ChatGPT or whatever LLM you like. List your must-haves and definitely-nots for lead quality, and keep testing until it’s bulletproof. Then hook your AI filter into your CRM’s workflow.

I promise—you’ll wonder how you ever did it the old way. Here’s to cleaner pipelines, more productive teams, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing the junk leads are taken care of—automatically!