What's a ‘Good’ Business Lead? Defining a Quality Lead Explained

What do your marketing and sales teams mean when they say they’ve generated a ‘lead’?

Do they mean someone signed up for your newsletter? Do they mean someone attended a webinar? Are they talking about someone that called up to learn more about your pricing?

If you don’t have a clear definition of what a lead means for your business – a definition that is agreed by sales and marketing – you’re going to struggle to target them effectively. You’ll also struggle to get your sales and marketing teams working together.

This is a practical, hands-on exercise for determining a good lead. It won’t take you long, but you will need to get your sales and marketing leaders involved.

By the end of it, you’ll have a definition of a qualified lead that both teams have signed up to, and a much clearer focus for each of them.

Why sales and marketing need to agree on the meaning of a lead

Sales and marketing don’t always see eye to eye. Which is a shame, because companies with strong sales and marketing alignment generate 208% more revenue from their marketing than companies without.

Sales blame marketing for providing them with duff leads. Marketing thinks they’re providing great potential customers, but sales can’t close them. Often the problem is that sales and marketing are simply not aligned.

Establishing a consistent definition for who you should be targeting helps get both teams on the same page. The solution:

Define your ideal leads
Get buy-in and agreement
Measure results and improve over time

The language we’ll use

Everyone uses different terms when discussing the buyer journey. We’ll be using these terms:

Contact – a new contact that’s added to your CRM database (assuming you have one – if you don’t, here’s how to choose a CRM)
Marketing qualified lead (MQL) – a potential customer who’s interested in your company and can be reached by your team
Sales qualified lead (SQL) – a potential customer who has shown intent to buy
Customer – someone who has bought from you and may do again

What you’ll need

A pen and pad
A meeting room or video conference platform
Your marketing and sales leaders
Between 2-3 hours total

An exercise for defining your ideal lead

Step 1: define your idea of an ideal lead

Start off by creating your own definition of an ideal lead. The more specific and detailed your answers are, the more valuable your definition will be.

If you’re struggling to get the ball rolling, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

What industry does your ideal lead work in?
What is the job role of the person you’re targeting?
How senior are they?
Where are they in the decision-making process?
What kind of budget do they have access to?
What’s their path to purchase?
What pain are they looking to solve with your product or service?
What’s the company’s size and revenue?

Step 2: decide when a marketing lead becomes a sales lead

Lead generation is a process, and a contact rarely goes from stranger to buyer in one step. It’s important to be clear about the level of intent MQLs and SQLs need to demonstrate, otherwise you can end up focusing your efforts on people who are unlikely to buy.

Here are some useful criteria for MQLs and SQLs.

MQL	SQL
Made an enquiry about working together through your website.	Described their challenges and asked if you could help.
Converted on one of your landing pages.	Asked to see your pricing or case studies.
Met you at an industry or networking event and expressed interest in your company.	Requested a proposal or quote.

Step 3: ask your marketing and sales leaders to define a qualified lead

Marketing might define a qualified lead as someone who clicked a link in an email or signed up for a webinar. Sales might define it as someone who has already decided to buy and is looking for the right partner. This stage is designed to show how different their viewpoints may be.

When asking sales and marketing for their opinion, avoid ‘leading the witness’. Don’t share the definition you’ve already created as an example. The more open-ended you make this exercise, the more original insight you will generate from your sales and marketing people.

Step 4: discuss and agree on a definition of your ideal lead

You should now have three definitions on the table. Bring them together.

Think of this as a reality check for all parties. Where are the differences? Where are the overlaps? What can you agree on and where do you need to compromise?

If both sides come back with totally different definitions, this might seem like a bad thing. In reality, it’s a massive win. By highlighting these differences, you’re giving each side the chance to understand the other. And hopefully, to work towards a shared definition of an ideal lead.

For instance, sales may want qualified leads from people who have their chequebook open and a pen in hand, but the discussion needs to focus on how you could identify such people.

Similarly, if marketing provides sales with every person who has clicked on an email, do they have the bandwidth or motivation to follow them all up?

What’s often needed at this stage is some kind of pre-qualification engagement to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. The objective here is to learn a little more about the individual’s needs, urgency and role in the decision-making process.

This can take many forms, such as a telemarketing call, a well-crafted email nurture stream or an interactive piece of content. For instance, we use our Marketing 360 assessment.

Step 5: communicate with everyone else

Once agreed, you need to share your definition of a good lead with sales, marketing, your senior team, and everyone else concerned. This definition should become central to your marketing and sales strategy.

Share it via email, present it to the company at a monthly meeting, hang it on the wall. The important thing is that it’s communicated and referred back to on a regular basis.

Good job!

You’re now in a position to start tracking how many qualified leads marketing delivers and how many sales convert. And you’ve probably got your sales and marketing people talking to each other like never before.

Ready for more? Explore some of our other insights into landing, nurturing and converting leads:

Find the gaps in your marketing

We know how hard it is for business owners to find the time to take a step back and review their marketing performance. The Marketing 360 assessment takes just 10 minutes to complete and will give you an objective view of what’s going well and what you should focus on.

Click here to get your Marketing Maturity Score.

What’s a ‘good’ lead for your business? And how to get sales and marketing to agree