What is a Sales Qualified Lead?
The Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is the fourth of six stages in a customer's buying journey. It happens to be both one of the most important and most difficult stages for a company to define because it's where the marketing team hands over a lead to the sales team.
When a lead becomes an SQL, it's the sales team's responsibility to work with this lead and move them further down the sales funnel. Leads in the SQL stage are in the discovery phase of the sales process. They have not yet researched your company well enough to know if your product or solution is the right one.
Therefore, in this part of the phase, both parties need to gather more information about each other before moving on to an actual sales conversation. The customer to research the company's product or service and the salesperson to offer the customer the best product or solution to meet their needs.
Typically, a meeting is involved before a lead becomes an SQL. This meeting can either be a product demonstration or simply a conversation about what products or solutions the company can offer the customer. A lead only becomes an SQL if during this conversation the customer shows interest in continuing the sales process and potentially making a purchase. Of course, this procedure may look different from company to company.
A Sales Qualified Lead can, of course, be defined differently depending on the company in question. This is because leads for different products and services mature differently and should therefore be treated differently. This means that companies define SQLs differently, as there may be a difference between when a company considers a lead to be interested and a potential good match.
Sales Qualified Lead - a good lead
Defining when a lead becomes an SQL depends on the company in question. Perhaps a lead is considered an SQL if they meet a number of criteria such as; gender, age, industry, etc. In the case of B2B companies, it might be based on industry, number of employees and revenue.
That being said, there are many variables that can be used to define whether a lead is a good match and can therefore be defined as a SQL. Ultimately, however, it boils down to what types of customers provide the most value to your business. Finding the variables that customers tend to have will help you identify your SQLs. By working with those variables and knowing them well, they can help you evaluate your leads moving forward.
