SQL (sales qualified lead)
An SQL, or sales qualified lead, is a contact the sales team has checked and confirmed as a real opportunity worth turning into a deal.
What it looks like
Here SQL has nothing to do with databases. It is the stage after MQL. Marketing passes a contact over, a rep talks to the person and confirms the basics: there is a need, a budget, someone who decides and a realistic date. Once confirmed, the lead becomes an SQL and usually turns into a deal in the pipeline.
A simple example: out of 200 MQLs in a month, reps accept 80 as SQLs, and 30 of those pay. The numbers are illustrative. The two ratios, MQL to SQL and SQL to payment, are what you watch.
Why it matters
SQL is where responsibility moves from marketing to sales. If the MQL to SQL ratio drops, marketing is sending weaker contacts. If SQLs stop turning into payments, the problem sits in the sales conversation itself.
For an owner, this split stops the endless argument between teams. Each side has its own number and can be held to it.
Typical mistake
Letting reps mark leads as SQL without a clear rule. Some accept everyone to look busy, others reject everything that is not ready to pay today. The ratio then reflects personal habits, not lead quality.
Another mistake is counting the SQL stage but never recording why a lead was rejected. Without reasons, marketing has nothing to fix.
What to do
Write the SQL criteria down and make them the same for every rep. Record a short reason for each rejected lead. Compare MQL to SQL and SQL to payment by source and by rep every month.
More in Signals
- How to monitor your sales reps’ client conversations without turning into a spyYou can monitor sales reps' conversations without reading them all by keeping a few signals in view: slow replies, abandoned conversations, risky phrases and broken agreements. Tell the team the rules, decide in advance who looks at whose conversations, and use a weekly review as coaching rather than a hunt for the guilty. The company keeps control, and oversight does not turn into surveillance.
- A sales director who can’t see each rep: why the CRM lies and pipeline meetings go nowhereA sales director loses sight of each rep because the CRM is filled in by hand and after the fact, while the real work happens in messaging apps outside the system. Decisions end up based on gut feeling, the best and worst reps blur into an average, and problems surface after the client is gone. The source of truth is the conversation itself: reply speed, forgotten clients, promises kept and money per person; and the meeting should run on exceptions, not on retelling.