MQL

Without a written definition, marketing and sales argue. Marketing says it delivers plenty of leads, sales says they are poor, and neither can prove it. A shared MQL definition gives marketing a target worth hitting and gives sales a promise about what arrives. It also lets a team measure how many MQLs become opportunities, which shows whether the bar is set right.

• Write down the fit and engagement rules, with weights, and show them to sales.
• Set a response time for sales, since interest fades fast.
• Route MQLs automatically to the right person from the CRM.
• Review the share of MQLs that sales accepts each quarter. Tighten the bar if it is low, loosen it if sales is starved.
• Keep leads below the line in nurturing instead of discarding them.

Not every contact is ready for a call. A name on a newsletter list is a lead, but a person from the right type of company who has read the pricing page and booked a demo is something more. A marketing qualified lead, or MQL, is the stage between: marketing has judged the lead worth passing to sales, based on rules set in advance.

Most definitions combine two kinds of signal. Fit asks whether the lead resembles the ideal customer profile: company size, industry, role, region. Engagement asks what they have done: visited the pricing page, attended a webinar, replied to an email, started a trial. Each signal gets points, and crossing a set score makes the lead an MQL.

The next stage is the sales qualified lead, a lead that sales has accepted as worth pursuing. The abbreviation SQL is also the name of a database query language. That is a different thing and has its own page. In a sales context, SQL means the lead stage.

Scoring on volume of activity. Email opens are an unreliable signal because privacy features in some mail apps open messages automatically. Treating every form fill as an MQL. Setting the definition once and never revisiting it. Small teams, or product-led businesses, may do better with product signals, as in a product-qualified lead.