The buyer's journey has never been more complex. With new technologies radically revolutionizing the way we market and buy products, it's no longer as simple as a customer walking into your store and buying something they need. Consumers these days are inundated with advertisements on the employee contact list their phones, laptops, televisions, and of course, billboards. More choice for them means more competition for you. To stay competitive, companies need to employee contact list be very strategic about how they identify and engage with their prospects. This is where MQL (marketing-qualified leads) and SQL (sales-qualified leads) come in.
Chances are you've heard of these two acronyms before. But what differentiates the two? And why are they even important? Throughout this article, we'll also the employee contact list explore why lead qualification and lead scoring are such critical business practices, the essential criteria that distinguish MQLs and SQLs, and how to feed an MQL into an SQL. What are MQLs? If you haven't already, read our in-depth guide to employee contact list MQLs here. But if you're short on time, here's the gist. Marketing-qualified leads have demonstrated an interest in your business and products. They've usually intentionally interacted with your brand by participating in some sort of quid pro quo exchange.
They leave their contact information in exchange for promotional emails, downloading resources, or signing up for a webinar. But not everyone who shows an interest in your business automatically becomes an MQL. In some cases, these aren't the right leads to employee contact list look for (more on that later). However, if they meet your lead qualification criteria, they may be accepted into the sales funnel and classified as qualified leads for marketing. Once a marketing qualified lead has been identified, it is now up to the marketing team to guide them further down the funnel until they are ready to employee contact list speak directly with the sales team (and , hopefully to buy).