The Seven · Gap 04 · Pipeline

Death of the MQL.

Individual lead scoring is blind to 13-person committees. Qualified Buying Groups convert 20–50% better.

04
§ The gap

The MQL was designed for a world where one person bought software. That world is gone. Scoring individuals in isolation discards the signal that actually matters: how much of the buying group is engaged, in what roles, on which themes.

§ You'll recognise it if…

Four symptoms we see, almost every time.

  • 01

    High MQL-to-SQL drop-off with no clear reason

  • 02

    Sales ignores marketing-sourced leads

  • 03

    No view of 'account temperature' across contacts

  • 04

    Routing is round-robin, not role-aware

§ Evidence
20–50%

Conversion lift moving from MQL to Qualified Buying Group (Forrester)

<1%

Of MQLs become closed-won revenue in most B2B orgs

§ How we fix it

Three moves — in this order, every time.

  1. 01

    Group scoring

    Score accounts on group coverage, role mix and signal density — not individual lead scores.

  2. 02

    Role-aware routing

    Route based on who is engaging and what role they play in the committee.

  3. 03

    Shared definitions

    Rewrite SLAs between marketing and sales around the QBG, not the MQL.

§ Deliverables
  • 01Qualified Buying Group definition and scoring model
  • 02CRM/MAP rework for group-level signals
  • 03New marketing-to-sales SLA
Outcome

Sales gets fewer, better, group-validated handoffs — and marketing stops being measured on a metric that no longer correlates to revenue.

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