Qualified leads: What they are and how to identify them

Sales pipelines and processes can get very complicated very quickly. Part of the complication involves identifying your ideal target audiences, how to attract them, and how to sift through your leads to find the good ones.

Understanding the definition of a qualified lead and, more importantly, how to easily identify them is key to developing an efficient, revenue-driving sales funnel.

What is a qualified lead?

A qualified lead is a lead that has been deemed worthy of pursuing by the marketing and sales team on the basis of multiple predefined indicators. These indicators include the:

• Profile and buying power of the contact or lead
• Profile of the lead’s organization
• Level of need for your product and service
• Amount of engagement the lead has had with your brand

This qualified lead definition mostly applies to B2B companies, particularly in the technology market. It also gets a little more complicated when you apply the concept of a qualified lead to the entire sales and marketing funnel.

Both marketing and sales have a vital role to play in identifying and progressing qualified leads through your pipeline.

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

Marketing teams create high-quality content, websites, and digital ads to attract leads to your brand. But it’s not an exact science. So, inevitably, the marketing team ends up with a large number of leads, and only some of them are suitable to be passed on to the sales team.

To sift through the leads and identify those that are worth nurturing and pursuing, marketing will define some parameters that determine whether that lead is qualified. Those that fit these parameters are known as “marketing qualified leads.” They are passed on to the sales team for further discovery and qualification.

Deciding whether a lead passes as an MQL includes tactics such as:

• Developing content that, when downloaded, shows a high purchase intent or problem-solution fit between the lead and your product
• Assessing whether the lead themselves and their organization align with your ideal customer base

Sales accepted leads (SALs)

Since they haven’t had a direct conversation with the lead, marketing is often limited in how much information they can uncover. So, once marketing has qualified the leads, the sales team will perform further analysis and discovery.

This could include using sales automation software to scrape more detailed information from the internet. They will look in more detail at factors such as the lead’s industry and position to see whether there’s a good fit.

Once the lead has passed through this process, they are defined as a “sales accepted lead.” The sales team has now determined that this is a lead worth pursuing to close a deal.

Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

Often, a business development representative will make efforts to schedule an initial discovery call to learn more about the lead’s current situation and whether they indicate an immediate need for your product.

If this is the case, the lead becomes defined as a “sales qualified lead.” Now, the sales team will actively nurture and pursue the lead with the aim of closing a deal.

How marketing can identify qualified leads

Marketing generally takes a higher-level view of qualification factors for leads. Identifying qualified leads for marketing means:

• Having a deep understanding of your target audiences, buyer personas, and ideal customer profile (ICP) and creating your marketing campaigns accordingly
• Defining clear and identifiable factors that make a lead qualified
• Creating content and ads that attract leads with a high purchase intent

Developing a highly integrated sales and marketing technology ecosystem ensures that generating, qualifying, and passing leads on to sales becomes much more straightforward and efficient.

How sales can identify qualified leads

In a perfect world, you’d have all the following information on a lead before investing time with them. But the reality for most sales teams is that, even when a lead has been qualified by marketing, you need to do a little more discovery to find out if they’re truly a good fit.

Whether it’s your business development reps or your account executives, someone will likely need to book a call to find out if the lead/prospect:

• Has the budget to purchase your product
• Is authorized to make the final purchasing decision
• Intends to purchase within a reasonable timeframe
• Fits the criteria of your ICP and is not likely to churn

Leveraging technology to nurture qualified leads

Driving engagement is at the heart of effective lead qualification. When you know when and where your leads are interacting with your brand, it becomes much easier to serve them the right content at the right time.

With Lytics’ Decision Engine, you’ll receive actionable insights on your leads and be empowered to serve highly targeted, personalized content to nurture qualified leads. Want to see for yourself? Book a demo here.