SQL

Without a clear line between the two, reps spend hours on hopeful maybes and marketing claims credit for volume that never turns into revenue. The SQL line also settles who owns what. Marketing owns the work up to the handover, and sales owns everything after it. A small batch of genuine SQLs forecasts revenue far better than a large count of unchecked leads.

• Write the criteria down once, for example the four checks in BANT, so every rep applies the same test.
• Make the key fields required before a deal can move into the SQL stage, so nobody promotes a lead on a hunch.
• Send leads that fail the check back to nurture or mark them as disqualified, with a reason.
• Tell the assigned rep the moment a lead becomes an SQL, so it does not sit unseen in a queue.
• Track the conversion at each handover: MQL to SQL, then SQL to closed deal. A weak figure at either step shows where to look first.

A lead is anyone who has shown interest. Most of them never buy. An SQL is a lead that has passed a check by a person in sales: the person has the budget, the authority to decide, a real need and a realistic timeline. Once that check is done, the record stops being a name on a list and becomes a deal in the pipeline.

The step before it is the MQL, a lead marketing has judged promising from signals such as pages visited or content downloaded. An MQL is a guess based on behaviour. An SQL is a fact confirmed by a conversation.