MQLs Don't Matter*

I'm going to say something that might get me kicked out of every marketing Slack: MQLs are bullshit.

Not completely bullshit. But mostly bullshit.

I've spent years obsessing over MQL volume. Celebrating MQL quality scores. Sitting in pipeline reviews defending conversion rates. Building lead scoring models that would make a data scientist jealous. Running nurture campaigns that could resurrect the dead.

You know what I learned? Teams that obsess over MQLs usually have worse pipeline than teams that ignore them. Walk into any B2B marketing meeting. You'll hear the same conversations every time.

"MQLs are down 15% this month."

"What's our MQL-to-SQL conversion?"

"We need more top-of-funnel to hit our targets."

"Sales says our lead quality sucks."

We've turned marketing into a factory. A factory optimized for producing a metric that doesn't always predict revenue.

Most MQLs never become customers. In fact it's typically <5% that actually do.

For every 1,000 marketing qualified leads:

• You'll schedule 250 demos (25% Demo/SQL)

• Create 187-188 sales opportunities (75% Demo/SQL → Opportunity)

• Close 56-57 new customers (30% Opportunity → Closed Won)

• Achieve a 5.63% overall MQL-to-customer conversion rate

But we keep optimizing for more of them. What happens if we optimize for the wrong 95%?

"Qualified" has become completely divorced from buying intent.

You know the standard MQL criteria. Downloaded three pieces of content. Visited pricing twice. Opened five emails. Attended a webinar. Has the right title and company size.

None of this indicates buying intent. It indicates curiosity. Research behavior. Sometimes just good content.

Here's what to actually look at

Track intent, not engagement. Instead of counting downloads, figure out what people are actually trying to do.

• High intent: Pricing page visits. Especially repeat visits. Documentation deep-dives. Security page engagement. API exploration. Competitive comparisons.

• Medium intent: Demo requests, even if they no-show. Trial signups. Technical content. ROI calculators.

• Low intent: Blog subscriptions. Generic downloads. Webinar attendance. Social follows.

Typical B2B buying is happening at the account level, not the individual level. When three people from the same company hit your pricing page in one week? That's a signal. When one person downloads an ebook? That's noise.

So if it's not an MQL…what metrics actually matter?

• Pipeline velocity: days from first touch to opportunity. Stakeholder expansion rate. Technical evaluation completion.

• Account progression: multi-stakeholder engagement rate. Intent signal progression. Buying committee identification.

• Revenue predictability: pipeline sourced by marketing. Customer acquisition cost by channel. Revenue per account.

But really, there's one metric that actually matters. Marketing-sourced revenue. Not influenced deals. Not opportunities that touched marketing content. Actual deals that started with marketing.

Every sales leader has the same complaint about MQLs: "Marketing sends us garbage and expects us to call it gold." That's because MQLs optimize for marketing metrics, not sales outcomes.

Sales teams want accounts that are actually evaluating solutions. Context about the business problem. Multiple stakeholders identified. Understanding of timeline and budget.

When I stopped sending MQLs and started sending account intelligence instead, everything changed. Instead of arguing about lead quality, we started collaborating on account strategy.

The MQL model assumes linear progression: awareness → consideration → decision → purchase.

But B2B buying doesn't work that way, especially for technical products or those selling into teams of 5+.

The companies winning at B2B marketing aren't the ones with the most MQLs. They're the ones with the shortest path from intent to revenue.