What Is an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)?

The MQL is one of the stages of the Demand Waterfall, the B2B funnel model that SiriusDecisions introduced in 2006 and that Forrester now owns. Forrester itself wrote in 2022 that the MQL-based process has been in use since the late 1990s.

Timeline, according to Forrester:

• 2006: SiriusDecisions launches the Demand Waterfall, with the stages and handoff points of lead management.
• 2012: a rearchitected version follows.
• 2017: Terry Flaherty and Kerry Cunningham unveil the Demand Unit Waterfall, which measures buying groups with a specific need and attaches each person's inquiries to them.
• 2019: Forrester completes its acquisition of SiriusDecisions in January.
• 2021: Forrester releases a new version of the B2B Revenue Waterfall, formerly the Demand Unit Waterfall, which covers renewal and expansion opportunities with existing customers.
• 2022: Flaherty, now a Forrester analyst, calls on the firm's blog for an end to the MQL and a move to opportunities.

A lead becomes an MQL when it meets two conditions. The first is fit with the ideal customer or the buyer persona; Salesforce lists job, industry, company size and role. The second is behavior, which according to the same article means repeated visits to pricing or detailed product pages, use of a cost calculator, or in-depth questions about the offering.

Lead scoring turns both conditions into points. According to Forrester, the lead earns points for profile and engagement and, once it reaches the threshold, becomes an MQL and goes to the sales development team or straight to sales.

CRM vendors define it differently. For HubSpot, an MQL is a contact or company that marketing has qualified as ready for sales, one of its default lifecycle stages. Salesforce described it in 2024 as a lead that has shown interest in the brand and that marketing deems likely to become a customer based on preset criteria, such as product-need fit and budget. HubSpot puts the weight on the handoff, Salesforce on interest and criteria. Neither sets a minimum score; criteria and threshold are up to each company.

More stages follow the MQL, and they vary by model. In the classic SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall, as Dave Kellogg explains it, the SAL comes before the SQL:

Source: Dave Kellogg (22.11.2019), Forrester (17.05.2018), HubSpot and Salesforce (26.01.2024), accessed 13.11.2026.

At the SAL stage, sales accepts or returns the MQL. Forrester lists what marketing and sales need to agree on: what an MQL and a SAL are, how fast sales responds, and the criteria for accepting or rejecting a lead. That agreement is the SLA described in the entry on lead generation, and the SAL stage makes it measurable: every MQL handed over ends up accepted or returned with a date.

Kellogg traces the order back to how the model was built, from marketing's point of view at a time when SDRs reported to sales: the SAL is acceptance by an SDR, the SQL is qualification by a sales rep. In his view, the Demand Unit Waterfall still uses the SQL but seems to have dropped the SAL.

HubSpot uses its own split: subscriber, lead, MQL, SQL, opportunity, customer, evangelist and other. It has no SAL stage, and the SQL keeps sub-stages in the Lead Status property.

A worked example with round points. A software company that sells to professional firms agrees these points with sales:

• Fit: target industry 20, 50 to 500 employees 15, management role 15.
• Behavior: guide download 5, pricing page visit 10, demo request 30.
• MQL threshold: 60 points.

Lead A works in the target industry, at a company with 200 employees, in a technical role. They download two guides and visit the pricing page once: 20 + 15 + 5 + 5 + 10 = 55 points. A stays a lead and moves into lead nurturing.

Lead B is the finance director at a company in the industry with 80 employees and asks for a demo: 20 + 15 + 15 + 30 = 80 points. B becomes an MQL, and sales has the SLA deadline to accept or return the lead.

With the threshold at 50, A would be an MQL too: the same two contacts would produce two MQLs instead of one.

Three figures show whether the definition works; none has a general reference value, because each company defines the MQL its own way:

• MQL-to-SQL rate: SQLs from MQLs ÷ MQLs in the same group × 100, by cohort (one month's MQLs and the SQLs that come from them), because the step does not happen on the same day.
• Time to first response: hours between entering the MQL stage and the first sales contact, against the SLA deadline.
• Return rate: MQLs returned at the SAL stage ÷ MQLs handed over × 100.

In HubSpot, according to its documentation, automatic updates only move the stage forward: a returned MQL needs a manual change or a custom field.

The first advantage is the filter: according to Salesforce, passing only vetted MQLs to sales focuses the sales team on the leads most likely to buy. The stage also creates a dated handoff point that can be measured.

The disadvantage lies in the unit: an MQL describes one person. According to Forrester, groups make B2B buying decisions, and the larger the deal, the larger the group. There, a single-person MQL shows only part of the demand.

Source: Salesforce, "MQL vs. SQL" (26.01.2024) and "What Is Lead Qualification and How Does It Work?" (05.03.2024), accessed 13.11.2026.

The full comparison of MQL and SQL is in the entry on lead generation. The MQA (marketing qualified account) scores accounts instead of people; Forrester described it in 2022 as a recent attempt to move from the individual to the account, and advises against adopting it.

Some of the criticism comes from Forrester, which now owns the Demand Waterfall. In 2022 Terry Flaherty wrote that the MQL era is antiquated and needs to end. In his view, points and threshold are based on guesses without analysis of propensity to buy, and one person downloading four whitepapers says little about whether their company will buy.

In the same post, Flaherty gives two figures: according to Forrester's Waterfall benchmarks, fewer than 1 % of inquiries end in a closed deal in a lead-centric process; and over 80 % of buying decisions are made by a group of more than three people, which a single MQL does not show.

The second limit shows in the worked example: lowering the threshold raises the MQL count without any change in demand.

Account-based marketing starts from accounts. Forrester's B2B Revenue Waterfall tracks buying groups and, according to analyst Simon Daniels, handles all demand inside the CRM's opportunity object.

• Agree with sales which fit and which behavior count towards an MQL.
• Turn those criteria into points in lead scoring and set the threshold.
• Add a SAL stage with a response deadline agreed in the SLA.
• Ask sales for a reason for every returned MQL.
• Measure the MQL-to-SQL rate by cohort, the time to first response and the return rate every month.
• Review criteria and threshold every quarter against that data.

• Write the MQL definition down in a document that marketing and sales both accept.
• Store the date of every stage change so you can measure response times.
• If you sell to buying groups, combine the MQLs from one account before handing them over.

• Setting a target for the number of MQLs without fixing the threshold.
• Copying a points threshold from another company or from an article.
• Handing over MQLs with no response deadline and no way to tell whether sales worked them.
• Comparing the MQL-to-SQL rate with companies that define the MQL differently.

This entry was written in November 2026 with the help of AI, based on documentation from HubSpot and MQL5, the Salesforce blog, Forrester publications and Dave Kellogg's blog. It was reviewed before publication and contains no client data.