MQL

An MQL is marketing’s promise to sales: this person has shown enough fit and intent that a conversation is worth the time. The threshold is usually a lead score — points for firmographic fit (industry, company size, role) plus points for behavior (pricing-page visits, webinar attendance, repeated returns) — agreed between the two teams and revisited as deals close.

The danger is optimizing for the count instead of the quality. MQL targets are easy to hit with gated ebooks and giveaways, and easy to hit in ways sales resents. The fix is to define the MQL backward from revenue: start with closed deals, find the signals their early engagement shared, and score those.

MQLs are created at the capture stage and warmed in nurture; the ones sales accepts become SQLs. To see how many MQLs a revenue goal implies, work backward with the pipeline goal calculator.