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When does a lead become a Marketing Qualified Lead?

When does a normal lead become a “Marketing Qualified Lead”?

I am a data scientist trying to understand the way lead scoring is done. So, can someone give a simple explanation on how the above process is done?

I the scoring process/mechanism company dependant?

Answer 8506

Its a bit company dependant and there are several techniques. You can look at BANT for guidance. BANT technique says, that to qualify a lead you must identify: what budget your lead has, authority (who will make purchasing decision), need (pain points of the customer) and time frime (during which the purchase will be done)

Then it depends on the company structure and your sales process who will do this qualification - marketing or sales guys. Sometimes marketing can do all of the BANT qualification, sometimes they only check if the lead is in your target market and then sales do the rest.

Answer 8510

Marketing qualified leads (MQL) are potential customers who have expressed more interest in your product than other prospects. An MQL is by no means someone who is guaranteed to buy your product.

In fact, you may find after further exploration that several of your MQLs are not good fits for your product and your sales team should waste no time on them.

MQLs could come from several ways, like filling a contact form on your website, talking to you on an event, calling your company asking more info about your product, clicking on a link in an e-mail campaign, etc...

Explaining the "hierarchy"

So, before MQL, you have the..

Leads - They're essentially worthless.. are individuals/companies around the world who do not even care you exist.

MQL - Marketing Qualified Leads - Already explained.

SAL - Sales Accepted Lead - are leads that are ripe for sales interaction. They've not only shown an interest in your product, but have shown interest in getting your product.

Moving on in the sales cycle, your SAL will become SQL.

SQL - Sales Qualified Leads - An SQL has displayed intent to buy a company's products and has met an organization's lead qualification criteria that determine whether a buyer is a right fit.

The label is applied to a prospect that has gone past the engagement stage and is ready to be pursued for conversion into a full-fledged customer.

Like our friend @Andrius has already mentioned, you could use the BANT approach in order to properly qualify a lead.

Once in the sales cycle, leads will, at least hopefully, then be converted into an Opportunity and finnally into a Closed Won deal (customer).

For those who enjoy a graph during explanations:

enter image description here

All of this is called Lead Nurturing Program.

And yes, you should use a CRM to help you navigate through all those stages..

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