Do you have crappy engineering leads or lazy sales people? The Battle of MQL vs SQL

Maybe your marketing team should take over qualifying the sales leads

It happens all too often.  Your marketing team hits their quarterly MQL target, but the sales team doesn’t convert them into opportunities.  Fingers get pointed. 

There is inherent tension between marketing and sales.  Nowhere is that more apparent than in the hand-off between a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). 

At a minimum, a MQL has to:

1. Be in your target industry
2. Have the right role within the target company
3. Demonstrate that they have the problem your company can solve
4. Show that they have interest in the solutions your company provides
5. Be willing to accept a telephone call

To go from MQL to SQL, somebody has to speak with the prospect on the phone.  In industrial companies, it’s usually the sales team that makes the call. 

To get to a SQL, they try to uncover whether the MQL 

1. Has a budget
2. Has authority to spend the money
3. Will confirm that their need fits your solution
4. Has a time-frame consistent your industry’s sales cycle

If your business is driven by quarterly flows, then your sales people may not focus on new business in the last weeks of any quarter.  After all, they need to close business to make their numbers.  Meanwhile, all of those fresh marketing qualified engineering leads get cold. 

Maybe your marketing team needs to take over the job of telemarketing lead qualification?  It would sure give your team better insights into what makes a lead sales qualified.  You could use that knowledge to design better future campaigns

I think this is the way of the future for industrial marketers.  What do you think?

 

John