Every time I start a RevOps project with a new team, one of the first questions I ask is: What do you consider as MQL and SQL?
Invariably, I get mixed answers from the team. Or worse, I get no answers, because these terms aren’t centrally defined across the marketing and sales teams. This post is an attempt to help RevOps teams establish those definitions so they can move forward with confidence that automations and marketing/sales cycles won’t break as complexity grows.
Why is the distinction so important?
The marketing team needs to know at what point MQLs should be handed over to the sales team to start the sales cycle. If there is no established delineation between the two, unqualified leads get handed over to the sales team and chaos ensues. Here’s a worst case scenario:
- Poorly qualified leads are sent to SDRs—marketing is happy their lead gen is so good
- SDR team’s conversion rate drops—sales reps are putting in more work for less results, they’re unhappy
- Sales manager is unhappy because SDRs aren’t performing well
- Sales talks to Marketing which says we need more budget to get hyper-targeted leads
- Someone gets laid off to produce the budget
This is obviously an exaggeration. What’s more likely to happen is that after a few weeks of trial and error, Marketing and Sales teams finally realize they need to define MQL qualification better.
That’s why I start my projects with the question: What do you consider as MQL and SQL?
To skip over this process and get a head start.
It’s all about Intent
Here’s a very general funnel for a B2B SaaS business. As intent gets stronger, the leads move further down the funnel.
What is a Marketing Qualified Lead - MQL?
A marketing qualified lead is anyone who has shown slight interest in making a transaction with your business. They clearly find your solution interesting, but we don’t know how strongly they’re interested. They could be just checking out different solutions in the market, and your solution might be a potential fit for their problem—but they need more info to start considering it and taking positive action.
This is where marketing teams need to step up and give them more info to tip them over from the Solution Aware to the Consideration stage in the customer journey. There are many ways to give them more info:
- Marketing emails (Hey, we saw you checked us out—here’s why we’re cooler than our competition)
- Retargeting ads
- WhatsApp/SMS campaigns
- Free trial/intro offers
- All with the final CTA being book a discovery call with your sales rep
Few examples of actions that leads might take for your CRM to mark them as MQL:
- Downloaded a white paper
- Joined your newsletter
- Joined your community (Discord, Slack, Skool, etc)
What is a Sales Qualified Lead - SQL?
An SQL is anyone who has shown a signal that they are actively considering your solution. They are no longer in the Solution Aware stage, and want to take action.
SQLs are people who have indicated that they’re ready to hop on a call with your sales rep and learn how exactly your solution fits into their business, what the TCO (total cost of ownership) is, etc.
Typical indicators include:
- Filling out the Contact Us form
- Booking a meeting with the sales team
- Sending an RFQ
I hope this helps. If you have any questions, or differing thoughts, shoot me an email at hello at website domain—open to learning!