MQL and SQL
Also called Marketing qualified lead, Sales qualified lead.
Two stages a lead can reach before it becomes a deal. A marketing qualified lead (MQL) looks like a fit on paper; a sales qualified lead (SQL) has been checked by a person, usually on a call, and is worth a sales team's time.
Why it matters
They are the milestones between a form fill and a sale, and each one is evidence about what a lead is worth. The question for bidding is not whether a stage exists but whether leads reach it fast enough for Google to still take the news.
What goes wrong
Google stops acting on changes to a conversion's value seven days after the conversion. A stage most leads reach inside that week can sharpen the value while it still counts; a stage reached in the third week can only teach the next model. Many B2B teams mark SQL well after the first call, which puts it outside the window even when the call itself happened on day two.
The stage also has to mean the same thing every time. When reps move deals between stages in bulk, days later, the dates stop describing when anything happened.
What this product does about it
The report looks at every stage in your pipeline, and uses one as an early gate only when at least 60% of the leads that reach it do so inside seven days, and its dates look genuine rather than backfilled.
How to check it on your own account
For your last hundred leads that reached SQL, count how many got there within seven days of arriving.
Next to this
- Early gateA pipeline stage that reliably fires soon enough after the lead arrives to still sharpen its value inside the platform's adjustment window.
- Conversion windowHow long after a click a platform will still credit a conversion to it.
- Lead scoring vs lead valuationA score ranks leads against each other, usually 0 to 100.
How it applies in your trade
The same method, worked through for each kind of business: what a lead is worth, what is known on arrival and what to prepare.
The rest of this step
Measure this on your own data
The diagnostic reads a CRM export in your browser and reports your volume, your match rate and the spread between your leads against the thresholds in this glossary. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.