Best Practices in Lead Qualification: Defining a Marketing Qualified Lead

In our previous posts, we discussed what to look for in a new prospect and how to determine interest vs. intent. Once you’ve outlined what qualifies as showing interest and which actions show a more serious intent, the marketing team and the sales team should work together to define a marketing qualified lead (MQL). This means that you set a threshold at which you both agree a lead should be passed on to sales.

You may have a few different levels for your MQLs. For example, you may agree that someone who requests a test drive or fills out the contact me form should instantly be assigned to sales. You also may have a certain level of interest-based activities that push a person to sales, such as viewing three white papers, viewing both a white paper and a case study or returning to the website within a certain time period. Even things such as search terms can help play into your definition of a MQL.

The most important part about this definition is that both marketing and sales agree on the criteria. This will prevent sales from complaining about ‘junk leads’ and also give marketing a solid platform for assessing campaign success. Once the plan is set in place, it can also be helpful to set up an internal service level agreement (SLA) regarding how new leads should be handled. This would include communication standards on the sales end, usually tied to a time line like, “Sales will follow up with all new qualified leads within 48 business hours.” It may also specify the process for rejecting a lead to marketing as unqualified or putting leads in a nurturing campaign if they express they aren’t quite ready to purchase at this time.

Creating a common goal helps unify sales and marketing throughout the entire sales cycle and results in a more efficient, less leaky sales funnel.