Sales systems are intricate. If you are growing a business or building a team, you’ll eventually have to put processes in place that will sustain growth.

Instead of a couple of hardcore reps handling all elements of the sales process, you begin to add elements and team members that enhance your ability to sell. That said, it also increases the likelihood of confusion if you’re not careful.

Identifying roles and responsibilities are a crucial part of building a growth environment where marketing and sales work seamlessly together.

Part of the process is defining the stages of your funnel so clearly that every sales facing person understand where each lead rests.

One of those terms is the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Defined:

Well, according to the fine folks over at HubSpot, you’ll find this definition:

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): a lead judged more likely to become a customer compared to other leads based on lead intelligence, often informed by closed-loop analytics.

In simpler terms, it’s any lead that demonstrates a certain level of interest in or engagement with your brand that alerts the marketing team that the lead could become a customer.

What level of interest or engagement, you ask? That depends on your metrics.

Measuring leads through lead scoring or even during the prospecting process will help you determine those that are likely to move down the funnel. Unfortunately, it’s different for everyone and takes some effort (which we’ll discuss further down).

From this point on, I will refer to a Marketing Qualified Lead as an MQL.

It’s important to note what a MQL is not.

Each MQL could be a suspect or prospect but is not a sales qualified lead (SQL).

A person that has been thrown into your funnel via filling out a form, attending a webinar or other means may not be interested in purchasing at all.

They are a suspect and need to be weeded out before wasting a sales call.

Prospects, on the other hand, are genuinely looking for a solution like the one you offer. Prospects should be measured, qualified and sent through to the sales team—once an MQL hits the criteria to be moved, they become an SQL.

The MQL’s start as newly entered leads into the funnel and remain MQL’s until they are:

• Qualified for sales
• Sent to an email cadence (when they aren’t sales qualified after a period of time)
• Eventually taken out of the funnel

Depending on your sales process, this should shed some light on who you’re sending to sales.