Optimizing the funnel and closing more business means nurturing every lead appropriately. But digital transformation and omnichannel strategies are creating more opportunities than ever and making it difficult for sales and marketing teams to manage a greater variety of leads.
The first big step is to separate marketing qualified leads (MQLs) from sales qualified leads (SQLs).
But the two terms are easily confused. In this guide, you’ll discover the main differences between marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads so you can optimize your marketing and sales efforts, deter leads from going to competitors, and ultimately build a base of happy, loyal customers.
In this guide:
What is the difference between an MQL and an SQL?
An MQL is a marketing-qualified lead, or someone who has expressed interest in your products or solutions. An SQL is a sales-qualified lead, or someone who is interested and intends to make a purchase. The primary difference between a marketing-qualified lead and a sales-qualified lead lies in their intent to buy, so each type requires distinct ad campaigns, outreach strategies, and other brand messaging.
What is an MQL?
A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is an individual or organization that has engaged with your marketing efforts and could become a customer with proper nurturing.
A marketing-qualified lead might be a prospect who visits your site, clicks on a programmatic ad, or downloads an eBook about a high-level topic in your industry. Their behavior doesn’t indicate direct purchase intent — often because they lack sufficient information about solving their problem or about your solution. However, their behavior does put them at the top of the marketing funnel, indicating that they may be open to hearing more from your brand.
What is an SQL?
A sales-qualified lead (SQL) is a contact or account with buying intent that appears interested in your company as a potential candidate for their purchase. They have likely engaged with the brand multiple times and have demonstrated interest in more advanced content, such as case studies, product comparisons, and pricing charts.
A lead becomes sales-qualified when they have:
- The information they need to make a decision
- The budget and resources to make the purchase
- Executive buy-in
After several engagements, the marketing team determines when it’s time to pass that buyer to the sales team to nurture through the bottom of the funnel. When a marketing-qualified lead transitions to a sales-qualified lead, a one-on-one consultation with a sales representative can turn these leads into revenue opportunities.
Why the difference between an MQL and SQL is important.
Understanding the MQL and SQL classifications is essential for your marketing and sales teams, as it enables them to operate efficiently. Marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads are both leads in different stages of their buyer journeys, and knowing how to qualify them helps determine which marketing or sales messaging each one should receive.
A system of marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads aligns your sales and marketing teams by defining a lead scoring system or a benchmark that indicates a lead is ready to pass to sales. Teams will also need to communicate regularly to hand off leads and evaluate the metrics that they’re using.
How to map MQLs and SQLs to the sales funnel.
Marketing-qualified leads are in the awareness and interest stages, and sales-qualified leads are generally in the decision and action phases. Identifying where marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads are in the sales funnel starts with examining two particular data sets — lead behavior and lead scores.
Lead behavior.
Lead behavior is all the actions a prospective customer takes while engaging with your brand. Observing how a prospect interacts with your website, social media channels, and other platforms can reveal a great deal about their position in the buyer’s journey.
You can pull behavior analytics from your website tracking platform and examine specific actions like:
- What pages has the lead visited, and in what order
- How much time they’ve spent on your website
- What forms they’ve filled out
Once you know a lead’s site habits, you’ll be able to identify whether they fit one of your buyer personas and if they have the potential to become a sales-qualified lead.
One way to make this determination is to use the BANT evaluation system, which stands for budget, authority, need, and timeline.
- Budget. Does the prospect have the budget to make a purchase?
- Authority. Does the prospect have the authority to make purchasing decisions?
- Need. Does your solution address the prospect’s pain points and fill a need?
- Timeline. How long will the prospect’s organization take to make a purchase decision?
Some marketing tools can even help you automate these steps so you don’t have to do them manually.
Lead scoring.
Lead scoring is the process of ranking a lead’s sales readiness by assigning points based on a list of qualifications and actions they take. Once a contact reaches a certain lead score, they’re ready to hand off to sales.
Not every lead is sales ready. But leads can be nurtured. If your marketing team starts sending every inquiry to the sales team, you will only waste your sales team’s time which makes for a not-so-great customer experience. Sometimes, those leads are just students who want to read your eBook for an assignment or to study for a test. Sometimes, they can be job seekers who are frantically seeking to gather as much information as possible.
Hence, it is crucial to carefully analyze the intent of each lead. To interpret this intent effectively, you need to have an accurate behavioral yardstick — detailed lead scoring metrics.
Assign lead scoring points based on:
- Demographic information
- Company information
- Other online behavior
- Email engagement and subscription status
- Social engagement level
For example, a decision maker in one of your target companies would start with more points than a lead from a smaller company or with a more entry-level position. A website visit would add a few points to the lead’s score, and downloading an eBook would add even more.
High interest activities should trigger a transition from prospects to marketing-qualified leads. Examples include revisiting the spec page for the product or service , visiting the pricing page, reading most of your emails, leaving items in the cart, and so on. While most of your time will be spent creating accurate metrics around marketing-qualified leads, the transition from marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads is simpler to identify. It might look like signing up for free trials or setting up a discovery call with the sales personnel, or a similar activity.
It’s important for the sales and marketing teams to agree on the scoring criteria that would indicate that a lead should transition from an MQL to an SQL. Sit down with both teams and determine the lead scoring metrics for qualification. You’ll also need agreement on how to score both a lead’s demographic fit as well as the behaviors or actions that would indicate an intent to purchase. These actions might involve website activity, the number of downloads, email activity, or social media interactions.
You can make use of your marketing automation software to set up a lead-scoring system that assigns a value to each action. You assign points to different criteria and behaviors, and the software will track scores for every lead in your system.
How to transition a lead from an MQL to an SQL.
A common mistake when transitioning an MQL to an SQL is sending leads too soon. Sometimes marketing teams see much engagement from a lead and send it to the sales team based on the number of interactions — but if most of those touchpoints are answering questions early in the buyer’s journey, that lead isn’t ready for sales yet. On the other hand, a purchase intent download might send a lead to the sales team — but if that lead downloaded pricing information as one of their first engagements, they’re not really for sales either.
Consider a lead’s overall behavior with your brand when determining whether they're ready to be handed off.
Once a prospect has reached the ideal lead score, customer relationship management (CRM) automation can deliver the new sales-qualified lead to sales via an email notification or task. Even with automation, marketing and sales teams should still collaborate regularly to discuss sales-qualified leads and whether to adjust the handoff process or lead score threshold.
It’s essential to nurture and manage leads effectively first to ensure they progress through the sales funnel. Offering helpful content throughout the sales funnel is the most practical approach to operating efficiently, hitting your lead targets, and creating a loyal customer base that looks to you as a trusted partner.
Get the right data to develop leads into customers.
A clear understanding of the differences between marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads is a significant first step in optimizing your marketing and sales funnel. A streamlined process for nurturing and handing off leads will also help your sales and marketing teams build alignment.
When you’re ready to get started, get sales and marketing team members together and start outlining a profile of a sales-ready lead. Decide what criteria and qualifications need to be met to indicate a true purchase intent.
Then make sure you have the software you need to optimize all of your lead nurturing efforts. Adobe Marketo Engage offers sales and marketing teams advanced lead management to create custom scoring models that update in real time, automate nurturing based on persona and buying stage, and lots more.
Watch the Marketo overview video or take an interactive tour to see how Adobe Marketo Engage can help you turn MQLs into SQLs and SQLs into customers.
