Before understanding the complex mechanism of MQL, SQL and how they work it is paramount to understand what a lead is. A lead is essentially a potential consumer who has shown interest in one or other form of promotion. The marketing and sales team are pillars of any organization as they analyze and covert leads into potential buyers. The process of converting a lead to a consumer is a process and often leads to differences between the sales and marketing teams.
Most of the quarrels between sales and marketing revolve around leads. Around 61% of B2B marketers send all their leads to the sales, however only 21 % are qualified. The leads covered by the marketing team are the MQLs(Marketing Qualified Leads) while the leads covered by the sales team are the SQL(Sales Qualified Leads). The marketing team analyses a lead(MQL), if the MQL qualifies as a potential customer, it is forwarded to the sales team as an SQL. While marketing teams are found forwarding irrelevant or dis-interested leads, sales team on the other hand fails to capitalize on a certain lead and tend to ignore around half of the marketing leads.
While there are a number of influencing factors to help speed up the process of transition from an MQL to SQL and eventually a consumer, keeping note of small things could do wonders and bring unexpected boost. The image below shows a few influencing factors and a lead scoring system according to a study from SnapApp:
Lead Scoring is an essential if you want your business to grow. The scoring helps the lead team avoid bothering leads who are not ready to turn into customers yet. It helps in identifying the leads which need attention from the marketing team and helps the sales team identify leads who are ready to buy.
It’s evident that the transition from MQL and SQL is time sensitive. Thorough study and analysis of the buyers or visitors’ journey and qualification cycle could massively help a sales team. Intense auditing and scrutiny of MQLs by the marketing team could also increase efficiency and success rates. Knowledge about the target markets, profiles of existing and potential customers and their behaviours should be updated and analysed regularly. A sync between the sales team and marketing team could lead to better strategy and growth.