MQL to SQL went from 0.5% to over 2% - here's what changed

Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Fri(yay) - and that means it’s time for your Revenue Play - an issue where I share some stories from my own career that may just help you!

This week, we’ve been talking about MQLs and the pooling of MQLs that are generated by marketing, but that never truly materialize in the pipeline.

And boy oh boy - do I have a story for you.

Let’s dive in.

I worked with a client who wanted to set up lead scoring. This was a U.S. company, so they had the legal right to load in people from external sources and go full blast on cold outreach.

The MQL parameter? An open and a click. Any click.

Yup, a click to an Instagram page was being counted as purchase intent.

Of course, the volume of MQL was high, and the click rate looked great. Leadership was satisfied - for now.

But the pipeline did not. It was empty.

When we looked downstream, the MQL to SQL conversion rate was sitting at 0.5% compared to the cold outreach of 2%.

The idea that “any click” shows intent is dangerous. Social media clicks, clicks by accident, clicks by bots - none of which have anything to do with purchase behaviour.

Nobody had stopped to ask whether a click to an Instagram page actually signalled that someone was ready to talk to sales.

The volume looked healthy because the bar was set at almost zero. And suddenly, marketing was pointing to sales, saying, “Hey, why aren’t you closing all the leads we’re sending your way?”

I challenged them to go back to basics. Asked them a simple question: what does someone actually do right before they reach out?

Contact page visits.

Location page visits.

The quiet behaviours that show up when someone is getting close to a decision.

We built lead scoring around those signals and introduced a three-month decay window, because a lead that went cold needed a continuous email strategy to stay warm, not one or two touches and a hope.

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The results from reworking their lead score? Volume dropped, but the conversions climbed. That means the closing rate went from 0.5% to over 2% - above the industry average.

The leads that reached sales were actually ready to have a conversation, and that changed the dynamic between the two teams in a way that no dashboard report ever had.

Map the two or three things someone does right before they reach out, and build your scoring around those. Then get sales in the room - and not a second before.

Volume and quality are not the same game.

TL;DR

Intent lives in behaviour, not clicks. And if your lead scoring is showing great MQL numbers for marketing but fails to produce an opportunity, you may be scoring your leads all wrong.

Need a second pair of eyes on your lead scoring strategy? Email me at [email protected] and let’s talk!