Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
A prospect who has been vetted by your marketing team and meets the criteria your sales team needs to close a deal. Think of it as a warm handoff—the lead is ready for a sales conversation, not just a marketing email.
Full Explanation
The problem SQLs solve is simple: sales teams waste time chasing unqualified leads, and marketing teams send leads that aren't ready to buy. An SQL is the bridge between these two functions. It's a prospect who has demonstrated buying intent (they downloaded a pricing guide, attended a demo, or filled out a detailed form) and fits your ideal customer profile (right company size, industry, budget range). Marketing qualifies the lead using agreed-upon criteria; sales then owns the relationship.
Think of it like a restaurant reservation system. A lead is someone who walked past your restaurant. A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is someone who called to ask about your menu. An SQL is someone who called, confirmed they can dine at your price point, have a party size you can accommodate, and are ready to book a table. Your host (sales) knows exactly what to expect.
In practice, SQLs show up in your CRM with a specific status or tag. When a prospect completes a high-intent action—scheduling a demo, requesting a proposal, or completing a needs assessment—they're automatically moved to SQL status. Your sales team gets a notification and knows to prioritize that conversation.
For AI tools specifically, this matters because many AI-powered lead scoring systems now predict which MQLs will become SQLs before your team manually qualifies them. This saves time and ensures your sales team focuses on the highest-probability opportunities. The practical implication: when evaluating AI lead scoring tools, ask how they define and predict SQLs. A good tool should reduce the time between MQL and SQL conversion and increase your SQL-to-customer conversion rate.
Why It Matters
SQLs directly impact sales efficiency and revenue. A clear SQL definition ensures your sales team spends time on prospects who are actually ready to buy, reducing sales cycle length and improving close rates. Without it, sales wastes cycles on unqualified leads, and marketing doesn't know if their campaigns are actually working.
From a budget perspective, the SQL metric is how you measure marketing's contribution to revenue. If your marketing team generates 1,000 MQLs but only 50 become SQLs, you have a qualification problem—either your targeting is off or your nurture isn't working. This directly affects how much budget marketing gets next year. AI tools that improve your MQL-to-SQL conversion rate or accelerate SQL qualification time deliver measurable ROI. When comparing vendors, ask for their impact on your SQL volume and sales cycle time—that's the real business metric.
Get the Full AI Marketing Learning Path
Courses, workshops, frameworks, daily intelligence, and 6 proprietary tools — built for marketing leaders adopting AI.
Trusted by 10,000+ Directors and CMOs.
Related Terms
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A prospect who has shown enough interest in your product through their behavior (downloads, webinar attendance, email engagement) that marketing believes they're worth passing to sales. It's the hand-off point between marketing and sales teams.
Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
A prospect who has demonstrated genuine buying intent by actively using your product—usually through a free trial or freemium version—rather than just showing interest through a form or email. PQLs are further along the buying journey than traditional leads because their behavior proves they find value in what you're selling.
Lead Scoring
A system that ranks prospects based on their likelihood to become customers, using signals like website behavior, email engagement, and company fit. It helps sales teams prioritize who to contact first and when.
Sales Enablement
Sales enablement is the process of equipping your sales team with the content, tools, and information they need to close deals faster. It bridges the gap between marketing and sales by ensuring reps have the right message for the right prospect at the right time.
Related Tools
Enterprise-grade predictive analytics embedded across the Salesforce ecosystem, built for organizations already committed to the platform.
Enterprise-grade conversational AI designed to qualify and route leads directly into sales workflows with real-time account intelligence.
Related Reading
Get the Full AI Marketing Learning Path
Courses, workshops, frameworks, daily intelligence, and 6 proprietary tools — built for marketing leaders adopting AI.
Trusted by 10,000+ Directors and CMOs.