Here is a problem that too many B2B businesses still struggle with today. A lead registers for a webinar or downloads the one piece of content that actually matters, at exactly the right moment. For a few hours, interest is high, and marketing would deem these as qualified leads that are ready for follow-up. But all too often, the momentum stalls before a business development representative (BDR) can act.

Across the industry, only 13% of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) become real sales opportunities. This isn’t because of the quality of the remaining leads. It’s the loss of valuable context and insights that occurs during the transition from marketing qualification to BDR outreach. Time passes, and interest fades, as BDRs start cold on accounts that marketing spent weeks warming up.

That gap is exactly what Marketo Qualifier was built to close. This AI-first application was built to help BDRs build and accelerate sales pipelines, both inbound and outbound. It provides automated research and insights, prospect prioritization, and personalized outreach — complete with full-funnel analytics to help them work faster and more effectively at scale.

The problem: A manual, ineffective, and unscalable BDR qualification workflow.

Most B2B organizations split go-to-market into two functions — marketing and sales. On paper, both are working toward the same goal of generating revenue. But they get there in completely different ways. Marketing is data- and technology-driven, built to engage at scale. Sales is person-to-person, selective, and high-touch. It’s built for depth on a much smaller number of accounts.

To unlock revenue, these two operating models must hand off to each other seamlessly. Unfortunately, they don’t in most organizations. Instead, marketing generates a qualified lead, passes it off, and from there, it usually goes dark. The valuable personalization and context that marketing built up doesn't travel with it. When, how, and if the lead is contacted isn’t visible to marketing. And when follow-up occurs, whatever information a seller learns along the way — such as an objection or why a deal went cold — stays buried in the seller's inbox instead of being shared with the marketing team. All the while, buying intent is cooling.

Most organizations try to close that gap with a BDR function. It’s the right idea, but one that comes with a long list of additional challenges. This approach adds manual processes and disconnected systems, less product and buyer expertise, outreach that drifts out of step with what marketing is actually running, and so much administrative work that BDRs simply can’t keep up. This happens especially when inbound motion falls short and outbound prospecting has to happen manually, on top of everything else. Traditional BDR tooling simply doesn't move fast enough to catch a lead while it's still hot or help a BDR effectively prospect on their own, in a way that’s timelier and at scale. It wasn't built for this new reality.

Marketo Qualifier gives BDRs an AI-first way to build and grow a better pipeline, faster.

Picture a BDR's morning today. A list of accounts is available — half of them cold and most of them unfamiliar. Before they can say anything useful to a prospect, they have to dig through company sites, LinkedIn, CRM notes, and any other context they can piece together in the ten minutes they have to spare. If that list runs dry, finding the next account to pursue is yet another manual task.

Now picture that same morning with Marketo Qualifier at work. The BDR opens an account to see that it’s already been researched. They have an executive summary, recent news, buying signals, and an intent score, all compiled from Marketo Engage, their CRM, and web data. It’s organized into a single view and ready for them to review before they even ask.

What’s more, prospects have already been prioritized based on real-time signals, and Marketo Qualifier lets BDRs generate on-brand outreach, personalized to each prospect in just a few clicks, which they can edit or send for immediate action. But the BDR isn't limited to that prospect list. They can build new pipeline opportunities in parallel — working dormant accounts, event attendees, and other audiences who haven't yet raised a hand.

With Marketo Qualifier, the BDR can reach out to the right person, with the right message, while interest is still there — so no good lead goes cold. The ultimate result is an accelerated pipeline and increased revenue. That's the power of this new offering.

5 capabilities that make it all possible:

1. Agentic outbound prospecting. A BDR sets an engagement goal, such as booking a meeting or re-engaging a dormant account. Next, they pick a target audience, like dormant leads or event attendees. Marketo Qualifier then auto-enrolls those prospects in a personalized, omnichannel sequence that is fully editable and tracked until the lead is qualified. This lets BDRs build new pipelines beyond just working the inbound marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
2. Prioritization. The most engaged inbound prospects are surfaced automatically, with the list staying current as new signals come in. Now, BDRs can work leads based on the latest signals from Marketo Engage and CRM data, not a flat list.
3. AI-led research and insight generation. BDRs can view every account through a single, AI-generated view — buying signals, intent scoring, account research, and opportunity history — grounded in data from Marketo Engage, CRM, and web, so they start every call already informed.
4. Personalized engagement. Marketo Qualifier builds a one-to-one outreach sequence using insights from existing data sources, then delivers a self-serve booking link or routes inbound chats to the right BDR, preparing them with pitch points and discovery questions ahead of time.
5. Reporting and analytics. Engagement metrics such as opens, clicks, and replies are tracked in real time, giving BDRs and leaders full visibility into outreach performance. These insights become sharper over time as the AI learns from what prospects engage with and how.

The payoff is real and measurable — faster pipeline creation, outreach that earns replies, and better-qualified opportunities that quickly reach the sales team — all from a single application that keeps human touch at the center.

Better together — and part of a bigger story.

Marketo Qualifier is built to work seamlessly with all Marketo applications. This includes Marketo Engage and Marketo Optimizer — our AI-native application for marketers that layers agentic workflows, continuous contextual profiles, and AI optimization with your existing Marketo Engage marketing automation. Together, they create a more unified, modern approach to driving demand, qualifying leads, and creating pipelines.

Since Marketo Qualifier uses your existing Marketo Engage data, your team can stand it up in mere days, not months. There’s no need to spend time building a new data foundation or configuring your existing one. You can put your existing investment to work immediately.

We're excited to welcome Marketo Qualifier to the Marketo family of products, and we look forward to seeing how this AI-first extension of business development helps you build and grow your pipeline.

Learn more about Adobe Marketo Qualifier or book a demo to see how its AI-first capabilities can help reinvent sales qualification for your organization.

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