MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
A lead that marketing judges ready for sales follow-up.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead who has demonstrated sufficient interest and fit — through behavioral signals (content downloads, demo requests, pricing page views) and firmographic criteria (ICP match, company size) — to be worth a sales conversation.
Context
MQL definitions vary widely between companies, which makes benchmarks almost useless. An 'MQL' at one company might be a pricing-page visitor; at another it requires a demo request. The definition has to be agreed between marketing and sales locally.
The meaningful downstream metric is MQL-to-SQL conversion rate (typically 20–40% in healthy B2B) and MQL-to-closed-won (typically 1–10%). Low conversion at either stage signals MQL criteria are too loose.
A typical B2B SaaS defines MQL as: (a) ICP-fit company (from enrichment data), AND (b) job title in target persona, AND (c) behavioral signal (>3 pricing page views, OR demo request, OR content download + 2 return visits).
MQLs are a marketing construct that often doesn't match sales reality. Sales teams increasingly prefer to skip MQLs and work directly from account-level intent signals. When sales 'doesn't trust MQLs,' the problem is usually the definition, not the concept.
Related terms
Services that apply this
More B2B & SaaS terms
Pipeline (Sales Pipeline)
The total value of open sales opportunities at each stage of the sales process.
Intent Data
Signals indicating a company is actively researching products like yours.
ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
The normalized annual value of all recurring subscription revenue.
NRR (Net Revenue Retention)
The percentage of last-year cohort revenue retained this year, net of churn and expansion.