A lead accepted by sales as having enough fit, need, authority, or intent to justify direct sales follow-up.
A stage indicating that the opportunity is ready for a more active sales conversation.
Short and sweet:
A lead accepted by sales as having enough fit, need, authority, or intent to justify direct sales follow-up.
A stage indicating that the opportunity is ready for a more active sales conversation.
See also: Marketing Qualified Lead, Qualified Lead, Lead Scoring
A sales qualified lead, or SQL, is a prospect that the sales team has reviewed and accepted as ready for direct outreach, having already met criteria like budget, authority, and genuine need beyond simply showing initial interest. It sits further along the pipeline than a marketing qualified lead, marking the handoff point where marketing’s job of generating and warming up interest gives way to sales actually working the deal. Because this classification determines where a rep spends limited selling time, the criteria for what counts as sales qualified are usually agreed on jointly between marketing and sales rather than set by one team alone.
At a company like Salesforce, a prospect becomes a sales qualified lead once they’ve requested a live demo and confirmed they have budget authority, signaling they’re ready for a rep to reach out directly.
A software vendor’s marketing team might pass along this kind of prospect only after someone downloads a pricing guide and visits the enterprise plans page twice in one week.
Sales development reps at a company like Zoom spend their day calling this exact type of prospect, someone marketing has already vetted for genuine buying intent rather than just casual interest.
