How Meghan Stevenson Books qualifies 3,000+ leads without adding headcount

Since 2020, Meghan Stevenson and her team have helped entrepreneurs, experts, and creators earn more than $7,000,000 in book deals from Big 5 traditional publishers. What's made her business and clients so successful is a client qualification process that's both razor sharp and empathetic.

Typeform helps Meghan to:

• Qualify 3,000+ leads through an automated quiz
• Process 100 leads/week without increasing headcount
• Maintain the premium brand positioning that nets her clients six-figure book deals, without losing herself in the process details 

"Before Typeform, we had to educate all the time, often in one-on-one settings. But when you have thousands of leads coming in, that's just impossible." - Meghan Stevenson, Founder Meghan Stevenson Books

Challenge: Qualifying 100 leads per week (without burning out) 

For years, Meghan used 1:1 coffee chats as her most reliable pipeline. These were more like mini consulting sessions than sales calls. She'd assess whether someone had the goods for Big Five success: a marketable book idea, the ability to sell 20,000 or more books, and the willingness to invest six figures in a potentially lengthy editorial process.

When her business was small, those conversations were manageable. Then she started running LinkedIn ads, and her boutique consultancy exploded. She went from one or two leads to 100+ per week. "When I turned on the engine in 2020, I got blasted.” Meghan recalls, “It became crystal clear to me that I had to have some kind of automation.”

"If you asked a room of 100 people ‘who wants to write a book?’ I think 98 people would raise their hand and 20 would have already self-published. So, it's tough trying to understand who is right for us." 

Meghan needed to filter ruthlessly to find the best books from the most viable authors, while maintaining the "accessible luxury" brand promise that supports premium pricing.

Solution: Building a quiz that says "no" gracefully (and "yes" strategically)

She'd tried cheaper alternatives. They all felt wrong. "In the SaaS space, it’s either big solutions like Salesforce which are totally inappropriate for the volume of leads we get and the size of our business, or it’s micro-cheap solutions that don't vibe with our brand." 

Meghan knew that her ideal clients—6, 7, 8 and 9-figure entrepreneurs—weren’t going to mess around with lead gen materials that felt anything less than premium. “I wanted us to be really obvious and communicate our price points from the get-go,” says Meghan, “whether through our website, our social, or Typeform."

What began as a standard form—a detailed author application with open-ended questions—soon evolved. After landing the first of several six-figure author deals, Meghan’s team upgraded to Typeform Business. From there, they built what Meghan calls her "three-bucket system"—an automated quiz using logic scoring to land prospects in one of three distinct buckets.

Bucket 1: The referral bucket (the compassionate "no")

"When I first decided to use Typeform, I wanted help eliminating the people we definitely weren't going to work with," Meghan says. Meghan Stevenson Books has a 60-65% referral rate—factor that into the room full of 100 people with 100 hands raised, and there are a lot of “nos” to hand out. 

As a book-lover and ghostwriter herself, Meghan understood the emotional weight of rejection, and she wanted to find a way to not leave authors out in the cold. 

Instead of dead-ending prospects, their Typeform quiz automatically serves the “referral” prospects a downloadable PDF with curated resources organized by category: Children's book editors; Memoir specialists; Entrepreneurs who work with self-published authors.

"What Typeform allows us to do brilliantly is tell those people ‘no’ in a kind way, then give them resources that point them to those who can help them. It’s a reflection of our goal to always operate with integrity and generosity." - Meghan Stevenson, Founder Meghan Stevenson Books

Bucket 2: PCP (paid consult prospects)

Prospects with strong ideas, but an underdeveloped way to market and sell their future books, get funneled into Meghan Stevenson Books’ $499 consultation offers. These are curated strategy sessions that help future authors build their audience and proof of concept, before they put pen to paper. To date, these conversations have led to at least three Big 5 book deals. 

Bucket 3: ECP (editorial client prospects)

"These are people whose answers on the quiz have shown us they have the ability to land a book deal with our help.” Meghan explains. "These entrepreneurs, experts, and creators have potential, platform—and are ready to work on a book proposal."

ECP prospects get Calendly links to book directly with Meghan. No multi-email nurture sequences. Her high-value prospects don't have time for that.

Each bucket triggers automated sequences through Kit (Meghan's email platform). The integration routes prospects seamlessly, but Meghan still reviews every application manually to catch what the logic misses.

"It's not always perfect, the form, but it's pretty damn accurate."

So many use cases, so little time

In addition to lead gen, the team at Meghan Stevenson Books uses Typeform for onboarding (employee and client), feedback, team operations, and even gifting. 

"Typeform supports our team and our customers, providing this white glove service. I like to call our brand “accessible luxury,” and Typeform helps us reflect that.”  - Meghan Stevenson, Founder Meghan Stevenson Books

When Meghan onboards new clients, she asks them to fill out a form with their preferences—coffee, treats, dietary needs. When they hit a milestone, her team sends a gift: flowers for a literary agent, “Meghan Stevenson Books” branded champagne for a book deal, a custom mug on pub day, filled with treats she knows they’ll love.

This system lets Meghan’s four-person team deliver experiences that feel handcrafted with care. Automations make the experience stress-free.  

The results: Less time sorting leads, more time courting book deals

Since launching the three-bucket quiz, Meghan and team have qualified 3,000+ leads. They can process 100 leads per week without scaling headcount, meaning Meghan can spend her time tackling high-value editorial work instead of drinking endless mugs of lead-gen coffee.

The business has closed multiple six-figure book deals from Typeform-sourced prospects, and lived up to their mission of ferrying high-value books into the world. The accomplishments of Meghan’s clients are impressive:

• Caitlin V's book, Harder, Better, Longer, Stronger, currently holds the number one spot on Amazon in Men's Sexual Health. 
• Jamie Sears’s, How to Love Teaching Again, has earned rave reviews from teachers who credit it with keeping them in the profession.
• Rae McDaniel won the AASECT Sexuality Professionals Book Award for their book, Gender Magic.

Meghan has maintained a 30% sales conversion rate over the last five years with a qualification system that ensures she's only talking to genuinely ready prospects. The system has allowed them to maintain a premium brand experience—by adding intelligence, not bodies.

Taking it, running with it, generating from it

Meghan's system works because she knows automation doesn’t mean “hands-off.” Typeform handles the volume, and Meghan handles the nuance. The quiz filters thousands of leads so she can focus on the few who are at the right stage. For those who make it through every gate, she’s able to deliver a premium experience that justifies every dollar of a six-figure engagement. For a boutique business, that's an operational model worth stealing.