Define an MQL your sales team will accept
An MQL is a person marketing has decided is worth a salesperson’s time. The definition only works when sales agreed to it, when it is written as rules a tool can apply, and when one field records the moment it was met. This article gives you the standard shape, the rules most B2B teams start from, how to set it up in HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce and Pipedrive, and how MarqIQ tells you whether it is working. For where your own MQLs are stuck, open the Funnel analysis.
The shape every working definition has
Fit AND intent, never one alone. Fit is who they are: company size, industry, region, job title. Intent is what they did: the form they filled in, the pages they read, the emails they clicked, how recently. A person who fits but has done nothing is a target account, not a lead. A person who did a lot but does not fit is a fan, not a buyer.
| Part | What it means | Where it usually lives |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | They match who you sell to: industry, size, region, title | Company and contact fields — the ones your firmographic enrichment fills |
| Intent | They did something a buyer does: a demo request, a pricing visit, a content download, repeated email clicks | Form submissions, page views, email engagement, the lead score |
| Recency | The intent happened in the last 30 to 90 days | The date of the last engagement |
| Exclusions | Competitors, students, existing customers, partners, personal email addresses | A suppression rule that runs first |
A lead is an MQL when all four hold. Most definitions that fail skipped recency or exclusions.
The rules most B2B teams start from
- Fit: the company is in a target industry and above your minimum size, or the person holds a buying title. Write the list of titles down; “marketing leader” is not a rule.
- Intent, any one of: requested a demo or a call; visited pricing twice in 30 days; downloaded two pieces of content in 30 days; reached your scoring threshold.
- Recency: the qualifying action is within 90 days. Older intent decays; the person goes back to nurture.
- Exclusions first: a personal mailbox (Gmail, Outlook and the like), a competitor’s domain, a current customer, a student. MarqIQ’s mailbox rule tells business addresses from personal ones.
- One person becomes an MQL once. Re-qualifying after a long silence is a new MQL; a second form fill next week is not.
Make it stick: the three agreements
- Sales signs the rules. A definition marketing wrote alone is ignored within a quarter. Put the rules in one page both teams can point to.
- A service-level agreement: sales acts on an MQL within a set time (one working day is common), and either accepts it (SQL) or sends it back with a reason from a short list. The reasons are your feedback loop.
- A monthly review: how many MQLs, how many accepted, how many closed, by source. Tighten the rule that produces MQLs sales keeps rejecting; loosen the one that produces MQLs that close.
Set it up in your tool
Pick the one field that records the stage.
HubSpot: Lifecycle Stage (Marketing Qualified Lead). Marketo: the Lifecycle Status / revenue-cycle model stage. Salesforce: Lead Status with an MQL value, or a lifecycle picklist. Pipedrive: a lead label or a custom stage field. One field, not two.
Write the qualifying rules as a workflow, smart campaign or flow that sets that field.
The rule reads fit fields and intent signals and moves the stage forward only. Nothing else writes the stage.
Stamp the date.
HubSpot sets Became a marketing qualified lead date itself. In Marketo and Salesforce add a date field the same flow fills once. The date is what every funnel report rests on.
Route the MQL to an owner and start the clock.
Assignment rules or a round-robin, plus a task or notification. The SLA is measured from this moment.
Add the send-back path.
A status value such as Recycled with a required reason picklist: not a fit, no budget, wrong timing, could not reach. These reasons drive the next rule change.
How MarqIQ checks it
The Funnel analysis reads your lifecycle field and shows how many people sit at each stage, how many move on, and where they stall — including how long sales takes to touch a new MQL. The Field intelligence screen shows whether the stage field and its date are filled on new records. Ask “how many MQLs did we create last month” or “how long do MQLs wait before sales touches them” to see your own numbers.
A definition with no records behind it cannot be judged
If nobody in your data is marked as an MQL, MarqIQ says so rather than guessing. Set the stage field first, then judge the rule after a month of records.
Next steps
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