Version 1.0 · September 2026 · in force

The Millesimal Standard

A public definition of a qualified outbound meeting. Anyone may use, cite or adopt it without permission, licence or attribution.

Adoption pack (PDF)

Seven criteria No partial credit Never applied retrospectively

Why this exists

Nobody had defined a qualified meeting.

Buyers pay agencies for each qualified meeting, yet almost nobody defines the term. When the invoice arrives, the two sides find they meant different things.

The dispute is rarely about bad faith. The term was simply left open until money was owed.

This Standard is a definition both sides can agree before work starts. It is public and versioned, and its author has no stake in whether any meeting is booked.

The rule

A meeting is Qualified if, and only if, it satisfies all seven criteria below.

There is no partial credit: six out of seven is a fail. A yes or no test gives the same answer whoever applies it. A graded score does not.

Role

right person #c1

The attendee holds a role with documented authority to make decisions, or direct functional responsibility, in the category being sold into.

The role itself is assessed, not the person’s claims about budget or seniority.

Passes: A Head of Revenue Operations at a meeting about sales tools. A VP Engineering at one about developer infrastructure. A procurement manager at a vendor evaluation in their own category.
Fails: A junior analyst with no stated remit, there only because their director forwarded the email. An office manager at a meeting about enterprise data governance. A founder who has explicitly delegated purchasing to someone not present.

What “documented” means. A title checkable on LinkedIn, the company website, an org chart, an email signature or a company directory. A role definition published by the company takes priority. If the role is unclear or undisclosed, the attendee must state their authority in the meeting, and this is recorded.

Budget and purchase timing are left out on purpose. “We have budget” or “we’ll be buying in Q2” on a first call cannot be verified, and establishing either is the closer’s job. A real timing requirement goes into the profile at campaign start and is tested under criterion 2.

Evidence: attendee name, verified job title, and the company’s own listing of that role.

Fit

right company #c2

The account matches the Ideal Customer Profile agreed in writing before outreach began.

The ICP must be recorded at campaign start and cannot be changed retrospectively. A buyer who widens it later cannot reject earlier meetings against the new version. An agency cannot claim an account outside it was “close enough”.

Passes: ICP: SaaS businesses headquartered in the UK, 50 to 500 employees. Account: a UK SaaS business with 200 staff.
Fails: ICP: 50 to 500 employees. Account: 12 employees. Or the ICP was vague and the agency read it generously.

Timing requirements belong here. A buyer may add a timing condition to the profile, such as contract renews before June, currently in an RFP or has posted a role for this function. It is tested like any other attribute, against the record rather than the prospect’s stated intentions. It must be agreed in writing before outreach and checkable against something other than the prospect’s own forecast.

An ICP too loose to judge against is itself a finding: the campaign should not have launched.

Evidence: the written ICP from campaign setup, plus the account’s checkable attributes.

Awareness

they knew who they were meeting #c3

Before or at the start of the meeting, the attendee could state in their own words what the vendor does.

The test is whether a real person knowingly agreed to talk to a specific company about a specific thing, impressed or not.

Passes: “You’re the compliance monitoring people. Sarah mentioned you handle the FCA reporting side.”
Fails: “Sorry, remind me who you are again? I just accept most of these.”

This covers recognition only. Knowing it was a sales conversation is criterion 5, kept separate because a prospect can recognise the vendor and still be misled about the meeting’s purpose.

Evidence: the meeting report records what the attendee understood the vendor to do, or states plainly that they could not say.

Need

they said it themselves #c4

The attendee described a problem, situation or objective that falls within the vendor’s solution space.

The need does not have to be urgent, funded or prioritised, only real and relevant. “We’re fine, but tell me more” is not a need. “Our renewals process is manual and it’s becoming a problem” is.

Passes: The prospect describes a current manual process the vendor automates.
Fails: The prospect took the call as a favour, has no relevant problem, and says so.

Compare criterion 1. Need rests on what the prospect said about their present situation, which is observable. Budget and timing are claims about the future, so they are left out.

Evidence: the need as described, in the attendee’s own framing, recorded in the meeting report.

Consent

they agreed to a sales call #c5

The attendee knowingly agreed to a sales conversation with the vendor.

They were not misled about the nature, subject or host of the meeting.

Passes: The prospect replied to outreach and agreed to a call about the vendor’s product. The calendar invitation named the vendor.
Fails: The meeting was secured by offering a gift card. The invitation described “a short research interview” or “an industry benchmarking chat” and became a pitch. The prospect believed they were meeting a different company.

This protects the buyer’s brand as well as their invoice. A meeting won by misdirection is a liability even if someone attends.

Evidence: the booking mechanism, the wording of the invitation, and any incentive offered.

Attendance

they turned up #c6

The meeting took place, with the qualifying attendee present, for long enough to hold a real conversation.

Passes: The meeting took place and the qualifying attendee joined and took part.
Fails: The attendee did not turn up. They joined for two minutes and left. Only a delegate attended, who does not meet criterion 1 in their own right.

Rescheduling. A meeting rebooked before its start time does not fail and keeps its original submission. Up to two reschedules are allowed. After that the meeting is void and counts neither way.

Missed meetings. If the same attendee is rebooked and attends within fourteen days, a missed meeting may be resubmitted once as a new meeting.

Evidence: the vendor confirms attendance, and the attendee confirms it independently if they respond. Silence is recorded but does not on its own fail the criterion.

Novelty

new to the buyer #c7

The account was not already in the buyer’s active pipeline, and was not on the suppression list supplied at campaign start.

The buyer must supply a suppression list before outreach begins. An account not on that list, and not otherwise in an active sales process in the previous 90 days, is novel.

Passes: The account has had no contact with the buyer, or the last contact was over 90 days ago and closed.
Fails: The account was in an open opportunity. It was on the suppression list. It already produced a meeting on this campaign within 90 days.

A buyer who does not supply a suppression list cannot later reject meetings on novelty grounds.

Evidence: the suppression list from campaign setup, plus the buyer’s CRM record.

Rules of application

How the criteria are applied in a dispute.

Rule	What it says
Objection window	A meeting that took place is Qualified unless the buyer objects within three business days, in the buyer’s own timezone. Silence means the meeting stands.
Burden	The agency evidences the meeting. The buyer evidences any objection against a named criterion. “It felt weak” is not an objection; “Criterion 2: 15 employees against an ICP minimum of 50” is.
Adjudication	Each criterion is decided separately. One failure fails the meeting. The record names the criterion, since a Fit failure and a Consent failure mean very different things.
Contemporaneous record	Where accounts conflict, a record made at the time outweighs either party’s later description of it.
Held over	A truly borderline criterion may be held over a week to a second sitting, with no provisional view recorded at the first.
Versioning	Rulings use the version in force when the meeting took place. Later versions never apply to earlier meetings.
Amendment	Changes are published with the reasons for them and a period for comment.
Recordings	Call recordings and transcripts are never accepted. Rulings rest on the written record both parties agreed to produce.

Versioning

How versions change.

Change	What it means
1.0.1	Wording clarified. Nothing that passed now fails, and nothing that failed now passes.
1.1	A criterion’s threshold, evidence or scope changes. Published in draft with its reasons and open for comment for at least 30 days before it takes effect.
2.0	A criterion is added or removed, or the rule that all seven must be met changes.

Old versions stay published at their own addresses, so past rulings can be read against the exact text used. The repository changelog holds the full history, including open arguments against v1.0.

Open the changelog

Evidence annex · guidance only

The Meeting Receipt.

This annex lists one type of evidence accepted under v1.0. It changes no criterion or version number, so citations of v1.0 stay valid.

A Meeting Receipt is the prospect’s own confirmation to Millesimal, at millesimal.uk/r/ before the meeting, of who they are meeting, that it is a sales conversation, and their role. It is accepted evidence for Criterion 1 (Role, checked externally), Criterion 3 (Awareness) and Criterion 5 (Consent). Their confirmation after the meeting counts for Criterion 6 (Attendance).

Criteria 2 (Fit) and 7 (Novelty) are checked against the ICP and suppression list agreed in writing before outreach. Criterion 4 (Need) is still decided on the vendor’s notes and anything the prospect volunteers.

A Receipt is never required. Its absence never counts against a meeting, and not answering costs nobody anything.

The Millesimal Rating

Qualified meetings per thousand submitted.

An agency rated 870 delivers 870 qualified meetings for every thousand it books. It is plain arithmetic, so it can be published.

The name comes from hallmarking. Before precious metal is sold in Britain, an independent Assay Office tests it and stamps its purity out of a thousand. Sterling silver is 925. For centuries buyers have trusted the stamp over the seller’s word.

Industry sources put healthy B2B show rates at 70 to 80%. As attendance is only one of seven criteria, an agency’s rating should sit below its show rate, and the gap is informative.

What this Standard does not do

It does not measure whether a meeting produced revenue.That depends on the vendor’s sales execution, not the setter’s work.

It does not measure whether a meeting was good.A qualified meeting can still go badly.

It does not assess budget or purchase intent.Those are the closer’s job. A timing condition agreed in writing before outreach is tested under criterion 2.

It does not rank agencies on anything else.Only on the share of submitted meetings that met the definition.

Leaving these out keeps the seven criteria reliable.

Adopting it

You can use it without us.

Cite it as the Millesimal Standard v1.0 in a contract, or copy the seven criteria into your own terms. Attribution is welcome but not required.

Agreeing a definition before outreach matters more than which one you choose. If a criterion is wrong, unfair or unworkable in your market, tell us. Those arguments shape version 1.1 and are published with it.

Join the v1.1 review panel Adoption pack

Contract clause

A meeting is a Qualified Meeting for the purposes of this agreement if, and only if, it satisfies all seven criteria of the Millesimal Standard v1.0 (Role, Fit, Awareness, Need, Consent, Attendance, Novelty), as published at millesimal.uk/standard. The Ideal Customer Profile and the suppression list shall be agreed in writing before outreach begins and shall not be varied retrospectively. A Qualified Meeting is deemed accepted unless the Buyer contests it, against a named criterion, within three (3) business days of the meeting. Where the parties do not agree, either may refer the meeting for independent determination against the version of the Standard in force on the date the meeting occurred.

Citation

Millesimal (2026). The Millesimal Standard v1.0: a public definition of a qualified outbound meeting. millesimal.uk/standard.html

A starting draft, not legal advice. Ask your solicitor to review it before use.

Millesimal maintains the Standard independently of any agency, platform or vendor. It is not paid for meetings, does not book them, and gains nothing from how any meeting is judged.