Why Mqls Fall Short for Sales

𝗠𝗤𝗟𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗲. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. For years, Marketing celebrated MQLs like tiny revenue trophies. Someone downloaded a whitepaper. Attended a webinar. Clicked three emails. Visited a pricing page once at 11:43 pm. Boom. “Qualified.” Sales received the lead. Opened the record. Read the notes. Sighed quietly. Moved on with life. And then we called it a sales-marketing alignment problem. It wasn’t. It was a measurement problem dressed up as a handoff problem. MQLs can show interest. Engagement. Curiosity. What they often cannot show: 𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺, 𝘣𝘶𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘵, 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯, 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨. And yet, GTM teams still behave as if a content interaction equals commercial readiness. That worked when buyers had fewer channels and fewer ways to self-educate. Today’s buyer lurks. Compares. Asks peers. Reads analyst reports. Ignores your emails. Returns three months later with five stakeholders. Disappears again. The buying journey is not a funnel. Stop measuring it like a school attendance sheet. The future isn’t “no MQLs.” It’s better signal intelligence. Not just “who engaged?” But: Why might this account care now? What changed in their business? Which stakeholder is showing interest? What pain is becoming urgent? That’s where Marketing needs to go. From activity scoring to account signal reading. From “look, we got leads” to “here’s why this account may be ready.” Sales doesn’t need more names. Sales needs context. Leaders don’t need prettier MQL dashboards. They need to know whether Marketing is creating commercial momentum. The MQL isn’t dead. But the belief that an MQL equals demand? That needs a proper funeral. Preferably with no webinar follow-up sequence. 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗤𝗟𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗼𝗿 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰? #GTM #DemandGeneration #B2BMarketing #RevenueGrowth #SalesMarketingAlignment

Head of Marketing: I want to eliminate the MQL. CEO: That's literally how we measure marketing. What are you going to report to the board? Head of Marketing: Pipeline. Revenue. The things that actually matter. CEO: MQLs lead to pipeline. Head of Marketing: Do they? Last quarter we generated 4,200 MQLs. Sales accepted 600. Of those, 43 became opportunities. 9 closed. We threw a party when we hit the MQL goal. Sales missed quota by 35%. CEO: So the problem is lead quality, not the metric. Head of Marketing: The metric creates the quality problem. My team is incentivized to get someone to download a PDF. That's it. The moment they download, we've "won." What happens after that is sales' problem. CEO: So change what counts as an MQL. Head of Marketing: I've redefined it 4 times in 2 years. Every time, we game it. Marketing always hits the number. Pipeline never moves. Because we're not optimizing for a buying signal. CEO: What do you want to measure instead? Head of Marketing: Opportunities sourced by marketing, pipeline dollars, and closed revenue with marketing attribution. Things my team can't game by running another ebook campaign. CEO: Sales is going to say they don't have enough leads. Head of Marketing: Sales says that now. They have 4,200 MQLs and they're complaining because 90% of them are garbage. They don't want more leads. They want better ones. They've told me this directly. CEO: The board is used to seeing MQL numbers. Head of Marketing: The board is used to seeing a number go up while revenue stays flat. They're going to ask why eventually. I'd rather explain the change now than explain the failure later. CEO: What happens to the demand gen team? Head of Marketing: They'll stop optimizing for form fills and start optimizing for qualified meetings. When we give them a different target I'm confident they will hit it. Half of them have told me privately they're relieved. CEO: If pipeline drops... Head of Marketing: If pipeline drops I'll bring the MQL back. But when sales starts hitting quota because they're finally getting leads who actually want to talk to them, you'll forget MQLs existed. CEO: One quarter. Head of Marketing: When the sales team stops ignoring our leads and starts thanking us for them, you'll give me four. PS - MQLs measure marketing activity. Pipeline measures marketing effectiveness. One makes your team feel good. The other makes your company money. Choose. I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social media at ClickUp. Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

Enough theorizing about MQLs being dead. Who's actually cut them from their corporate dictionary? Marketing keeps burning premium fuel on MQLs while sales drives pipeline on regular outbound, and we're all pretending this makes sense. Time and time again, marketing leaders acknowledge MQLs might be outdated. No amount of lead scoring changes someone who downloaded a "State of the Industry" report into a sales-ready conversation. Yet, marketing teams are still heavily invested in optimizing for MQL volume (that's right, volume, not quality, not impact). The breakdown? Marketing doesn't own MQL to SQL conversion rates. It's "sales' responsibility" to convert. But sales? They'll cherry-pick every bad lead as proof your system's broken. Doesn't matter if 80% are solid - they'll wave those 20% bad ones in your face. Truth is, sales engagement with MQLs should mirror cold outbound - same research, same relationship building, better results. Today? MQLs get treated like demo requests, or dumped into generic nurture programs, blasting educational content at an audience that never asked for it. Look at your engagement rates - there's a reason those CTRs keep dropping. The solution? Marketing needs to refocus on driving hand-raisers, engaging the target accounts sales would outbound anyway, while driving education of the solution space and awareness of the brand (that's what demand is really about). Yes, this means accepting some unmeasurable activities. That MQL KPI won't have a clean replacement. But keeping a broken system just because it's familiar and measurable? That's premium fuel down the drain. Is anyone doing this in reality? There are pockets testing it. From media mix modeling's comeback to GTM teams bridging sales and marketing, to the endless ABM conversation. These signals point to one truth: generating and scoring MQLs isn't how marketing wins deals anymore. The real question: who's actually made the switch? And how's their pipeline performing since ditching premium fuel for electric?

CEO: “Our marketing team hasn’t generated any revenue in the last 6 months.” Me: “What metric are you using to measure their success?” CEO: “MQLs. Tracking webinar attendance, inbound hand-raisers, lead magnet downloads.” Me: “That’s likely the problem. How’s that working out for ya?” CEO: “None of it’s qualified. We get mistagging of leads to inflate numbers... and sales hasn't been able to convert them to sales-qualified opportunities” Me: “Times have changed. You’re focusing on the wrong metric” CEO: “Go on..” Me: “You should be measuring your entire team on Sales Qualified Leads.” CEO: “What? Why?” Me: “Do that and you won’t have your problems with mistagging or the lack of alignment between sales and marketing because everyone is rowing towards the same metric.” - This is one of the most common GTM breakdowns I’m seeing right now. The intention behind MQLs and SQLs made sense 10 years ago. But the way GTM teams operate in 2025? Totally different game. Most MQLs today will need weeks (if not months) of nurturing before they’re even close to booking a meeting. Let alone converting. And here’s the real cost of grading marketing on outdated metrics like MQLs: - Reps chasing leads that will never convert - CRM full of noise - Marketing playing the tagging game to hit quota - Sales frustrated, pipeline empty Leadership wondering why revenue targets keep getting missed. That’s not a system. That’s a slow leak. When marketing is held to a metric that doesn’t tie to revenue, misalignment is guaranteed. Sales gets half-baked opportunities. Marketing gets defensive. Everyone loses. So what’s the bullish fix I’m proposing? Measure your entire GTM team on just two metrics: - Sales Qualified Leads - Closed Revenue That’s it. Yes, it might mean adjusting marketing quotas. Yes, it’ll require a modern tech stack that helps move prospects from LinkedIn, SEO, and paid into booked meetings. But it’s how you eliminate finger-pointing and build a team that actually ships pipeline. And before you say, "But isn’t that sales’ job?" Not anymore. In 2025, roles are blurred. Teams are lean. And everyone’s tied to revenue. Like Shopify’s CEO said: "Easy is out. Hard is the new normal." This is what it takes to build a marketing function that’s productive, profitable, and aligned, even with fewer heads. Because revenue teams work best when they share a clear target that actually drives a business outcome. And it’s the only way to protect your P&L. Let’s stop playing the MQL game. Let’s marry sales and marketing and build systems to win together. Remember KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. - Did this land for you? Reshare this with your network and follow me (Luke Shalom) for daily posts on founder-led marketing, GTM and sales.

Marketing hits MQL targets every quarter. Sales misses pipeline every quarter. The two teams aren't disconnected. The metric is. The pattern is the same in every mid-market team between £1-50M ARR. → Marketing hits MQL targets every quarter. → Sales rejects 60-70% of those leads. → Pipeline coverage falls. → Revenue misses. → Both teams blame each other. The problem isn't lead volume. It's that MQL is a marketing-defined metric, measured against a marketing-defined goal, with no accountability to revenue. Three reasons MQL targets break in mid-market B2B: 1. The threshold is set by what marketing can deliver, not what sales can close. → "500 MQLs per quarter" is a delivery commitment, not a pipeline forecast. → The team optimises for volume, not fit. 2. Lead scoring rewards engagement, not buying intent. → Downloaded a guide = +10. Visited pricing page = +15. → Neither correlates with closing inside 90 days. 3. Marketing reports stop at MQL handoff. → The dashboard ends where the deal begins. → Nobody traces which channel, message, or list actually paid the company. What to track instead: → Qualified pipeline contributed (the only number sales agrees on) → Closed-won by source, monthly (the channel truth) → Cost per closed-won, not cost per lead → Sales accept rate of MQLs (the alignment metric) What's the metric your team measures that the CFO has never asked about? ♻️ Save this if you're rewriting your marketing scorecard for Q3.

Most marketing teams are not underperforming. They are operating within a broken model. In one instance, a revenue review showed marketing celebrating record MQLs while sales reported a flat pipeline. The data was the same, but the outcomes told a different story. The issue was not alignment. It was a lack of integration across systems. The conventional funnel is no longer enough. The real challenge is fragmentation. Data sits in dashboards that lack trust. Automation runs without context. Forecasting becomes guesswork. Marketing is still expected to prove revenue impact using disconnected inputs. The teams moving ahead are building a different model. Marketing, data, and automation operate as one system. They rely on shared data structures, predictive decision-making, and closed-loop processes. Performance is tied to pipeline movement, not isolated metrics. This is not a small adjustment. It is a structural shift in how growth is managed. This week’s newsletter outlines what a modern revenue operating model looks like, why older approaches fail, and how to start building a system that supports consistent growth. For teams rethinking how marketing contributes to revenue, it is worth a read.

A CMO recently asked me a question I hear all too often: “How do I help my CEO and CFO understand we need to move beyond MQLs and short-term tactics?” Here's what I said. THE PROBLEM WITH YOUR CURRENT METRICS MQLs measure activity, not buying intent. More MQLs don’t mean more active buying cycles. They focus on individual leads instead of buying groups. They create turf wars over “marketing-sourced” vs “sales-sourced” pipeline. Worse, the attribution model behind MQLs is a logical fallacy. Marketing is not a gumball machine, e.g., insert budget, get leads. It’s a complex, non-linear system where multiple stakeholders interact over unpredictable timeframes. A deal that closes today was influenced by brand awareness built over months, content consumed 8 months ago, sales conversations, competitive dynamics, and interactions across 6-16 buying committee members. Trying to isolate marketing’s “contribution” is like determining which raindrop caused the flood. WHAT TO REPLACE YOUR METRICS WITH ✅ Brand: • Awareness, consideration, preference in target segments • Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) • Compare to industry benchmarks • Measure over 6-12 month horizons ✅ Demand: • Pipeline quality: coverage, deal velocity, win rates • New and expansion • Account and buying group level engagement (MQA, QBG) • Investment $ / pipeline $ [note: investment, not cost!] ✅ Overall System: • Net Revenue Retention • CAC Payback Period • Net Promoter Score HOW TO GET THERE Build credibility first. Fix obvious operational leaks in 30-60 days: lead response time, MQL quality, marketing-sales handoff friction. Quick wins buy permission for bigger changes. Reframe the risk. Show what status quo is costing: CAC rising, win rates declining, deals lost to competitors with stronger brands. Make inaction feel riskier than change. Build your coalition. Form a cross-functional “GTM Evolution Council” with Sales, CS, RevOps. When the CFO hears multiple department heads say “our model is broken,” it becomes a business problem, not a marketing complaint. (Let me know in the comments if you want more tips!) THE RESULTS WHEN YOU GET THIS RIGHT One B2B SaaS company moved from attribution battles to shared team metrics. Results after one year: pipeline up 32%, win rate increased from 29% to 36%, CAC down 18%. Another B2B SaaS company had 11% brand awareness versus competitors at 35-40%. So they shifted from 70/30 demand/brand to 60/40, and after four quarters awareness reached 28%, win rate jumped from 23% to 31%, and CAC dropped from $18K to $14.5K. THE JOB TO BE DONE Your job isn’t to prove marketing “sourced” a specific percentage of pipeline. Your job is to improve the performance of the entire revenue system. CFOs don’t need perfect attribution. They need confidence that marketing is improving system performance. Give them that, and you'll get the support you need. What’s worked for you in getting buy-in for the new playbook and better metrics?

Your CEO doesn’t care about clicks, impressions, or even MQLs—because none of those pay the bills. Here’s what they actually want to see from marketing. CMOs, let’s be honest: Your marketing team is generating leads, running campaigns, and building brand awareness. But when you walk into the boardroom, the first question you get is… “How is marketing driving revenue?” And if your answer is “we increased MQLs by 30%,” you’ve already lost the conversation. The Hard Truth: Most Marketing Metrics Don’t Translate to Business Impact. Your CEO and CFO don’t care about vanity metrics. They care about pipeline, revenue, and profitability. Here’s what they actually want to see: ✅ Marketing-Sourced Revenue – What percentage of total revenue came directly from marketing efforts? ✅ Pipeline Influence – How much of the sales pipeline is marketing contributing to? ✅ Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) vs. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) – Is marketing spending efficiently driving profitable growth? ✅ Sales Cycle Acceleration – How is marketing shortening the path from lead to closed deal? Yet, many marketing leaders struggle to prove these numbers because: ❌ They’re stuck reporting on engagement instead of business outcomes. ❌ They lack the right AI-driven attribution models to connect marketing efforts to revenue. ❌ They haven’t aligned with Sales & Finance on shared success metrics. So, How Do You Fix This? 1️⃣ Start With Revenue, Not MQLs. Shift the conversation from “leads generated” to pipeline & closed revenue influenced. Ensure every marketing initiative is tied to a measurable business outcome. 2️⃣ Use AI to Track Full-Funnel Attribution. AI tools can now analyze customer journeys, showing exactly which marketing efforts drive conversions. No more guesswork—just clear, data-backed ROI insights. 3️⃣ Align with Sales on Shared KPIs. Marketing should be measured alongside sales, not separately. If Sales wins, Marketing wins. The goal? Revenue impact, not just lead volume. Bottom Line: If you want a bigger budget, a stronger seat at the table, and long-term career growth as a marketing leader… Stop reporting on what marketing does. Start reporting on how marketing drives revenue. How are you proving marketing’s impact on revenue today? Let’s discuss. 👇

A CMO showed me his dashboard last month.  𝟒𝟕 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬.  He couldn't tell me which three actually moved revenue. That's when I realized I'd been doing the same thing for years. So I killed 5 metrics from my own reports. Here's what went and what replaced them: 👉 Impressions. My team once celebrated a campaign with 2.3M impressions. It drove 14 sales calls. Now I track qualified attention, which is defined as time spent over 30 seconds on the page that matters. 👉 Email open rates. Apple's privacy update broke this in 2021 and we all kept pretending. I look at the reply rate. A 4% reply rate beats a 60% open rate every single time. 👉 Follower count. I have a client with 80k followers and 11 monthly active commenters. Their competitor has 9k followers and 400. Guess who's winning deals. 👉 Bounce rate. Half my "bounces" were people who found the answer in 8 seconds and left happy. I track return visits within 30 days now. That's real interest. 👉 MQLs. The most expensive lie in B2B. My last team scored 2,400 MQLs in a quarter. Sales accepted 71. I only track SALs and pipeline influence now. If sales won't touch it, then marketing didn't do the job. Here's the thing nobody says out loud: most dashboards exist to make marketers feel safe, not to make the business grow. Pick the 3 metrics your CFO would actually fight for.  Delete the rest. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭? Follow #socialJJ to read more of my posts #marketing