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Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

The count of leads that meet a predefined engagement and fit threshold (score, firmographic match, behavior) indicating readiness to be passed toward sales.

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Business Question Answered

“How much sales-ready demand is marketing generating?”

What This Tells You

Volume of demand that marketing has qualified as worth sales attention.

What It Does Not Tell You

Whether those leads actually convert to pipeline or revenue — MQL volume can be gamed by lowering the scoring bar.

Formula & Example Calculation

Count of leads crossing the MQL scoring threshold in the period

Numerator

N/A (count metric)

Denominator

N/A (count metric)

Example

Of 8,000 net-new leads this month, 620 cross the lead-scoring threshold of 80+ points. MQLs = 620.

Recommended Dimensions & Segments

Source/channelCampaignLead score bandSegment

Recommended visualization: Funnel chart from lead → MQL → SQL

Technical Implementation Notes

MQL definition must be jointly owned by marketing and sales (SLA), with the scoring model version-controlled — changes to scoring weights should be logged, since they silently shift MQL volume.

Data Quality Checks

Deduplicate leads across form fills, chat, and event scans before counting
Confirm scoring model hasn't changed unnoticed mid-period

Common Pitfalls

Lowering the MQL bar to hit a volume target, which erodes SQL conversion rate and sales trust
Reporting MQLs without ever closing the loop to sales-accepted or pipeline outcomes

AI Explanation

Get a conversational, stakeholder-friendly explanation of this KPI, generated on demand.

Metadata

Funnel StageAcquisition

Owner RoleDemand Generation Manager

CadenceWeekly

Data Sources

Marketing Automation Platform (Marketo/HubSpot)CRM