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This blog was sparked by conversations at Anteriad After Hours: The Death of the MQL, a wine tasting and discussion we hosted along with Anteriad, a global B2B marketing solutions provider.
Hosted at Anteriad’s Syndey, AUS office, the event brought together senior B2B marketers for an open exchange on what’s working—and what’s not—in today’s demand strategies. Anteriad and Grove B2B are collaborating on this After-Hours series to give marketing leaders space to dig into the industry’s toughest questions and share real-world perspectives.
One striking moment came when many admitted they hadn’t revisited their MQL definitions in over five years. From there, the conversation quickly moved beyond “is the MQL dead?” into the bigger issue—whether our current models are fit for how buyers behave today. That made it clear this isn’t just an event talking point, it’s an industry-wide challenge worth unpacking.
I’m going to open with an uncomfortable question…if you turned off all your demand generation campaigns tomorrow, how much actual pipeline would you lose?
If the answer makes you uneasy, you're not alone.
B2B marketers have leaned heavily into demand generation as a core strategy since the early 2000’s, with MQLs serving as the primary metric to assess marketing effectiveness. This focus on generating MQLs became the backbone of B2B marketing, driven by the desire for measurable results and clear accountability.
However, as marketing, the market and customers have evolved, this approach has reached a tension point.
The MQL debate has become one of B2B marketing's most exhausting conversations.
The traditionalists among us, defend the value of MQLs – they are predictable, scalable and fit a model that is embedded into an organisation.
On the other end of the spectrum, the growing contingent of contrarian marketers argue that the MQL is obsolete and it’s time to move on.
Neither side of the debate is wrong, but both sides are missing the point entirely - the issue isn’t the MQL itself, it’s our obsession with the wrong letter.
While we debate whether marketing leads are “dead,” we’ve overlooked the part that really matters: what have we Qualified and why is this important?
The “Q” is what gives the MQL any value. It’s the signal that validates engagement and connects marketing effort to future potential commercial outcomes.
The “L” Problem
Let’s be honest: most MQLs were never leads in the way Sales defines them, not even close.
Marketing says, “They downloaded an eBook.”
Sales hears, “Someone ready to talk budget.”
It’s a linguistic mismatch that’s created years of misalignment and mistrust…and frankly, wasted effort.
An MQL is not a sales-ready lead and never was.
The MQL was born out of the martech boom as a convenient way to validate contacts entering the sales queue, and supposedly predict which ones were more likely to convert. It sounded good in theory: assign scores based on downloads, page views, or email clicks, and “Bob’s your Uncle”…a “qualified” lead.
But in reality, the scoring was (and is) often arbitrary, with models treating every interaction like a standardised buying signal, when most were anything but.
Instead of helping Sales, MQLs became a volume metric detached from real buyer intent.
And when conversion rates didn’t improve, marketing didn’t revisit the model.
Instead, we tried to game it.
To bridge the gap, marketers started passing BANT-qualified leads (the one tactic I strongly believe should die!), trying to shortcut credibility by mimicking sales criteria. But budget-readiness isn’t the same as intent. And a cold call to a senior stakeholder with authority, but who doesn’t have your brand on their consideration set, doesn’t make a pipeline.
This approach ignored how buyers actually move. It ignored the time needed for awareness, and it placed pressure on marketing to manufacture intent, instead of earning it.
When less than 1% of MQLs convert, it’s not just a tactical problem, it’s a strategy problem.
The result? Organisational misalignment, lost trust, and marketing teams stuck defending metrics instead of driving outcomes.
The Buyer Has Changed. The Model Hasn’t.
Meanwhile, modern B2B buyers don't follow linear paths to purchase. They self-educate, stay anonymous longer, act in groups, and only engage when they’re ready. The MQL model was built for a different world, where a single action, like a form fill, was uniformly treated as a buying signal. That disconnect is the problem in modern B2B demand marketing.
Buyers are more complex. So marketing’s job is too: tracking engagement across channels, recognising buying group patterns, and nurturing over time with relevant, high-value content.
Too many teams are still optimising for short-term conversions, not long-term influence, intent, or revenue.
We don’t need to kill the model. But we do need to rewire it to reflect how buying actually happens.
From Marketing Qualified Lead to a Marketing Qualified Spectrum: Define the Q, Customise the Rest.
The problem with the “Lead” is that it’s been used as a blanket label, too broad, too static, and too detached from how demand actually progresses.
In some cases an MQL might be a lead, sure, but in others, you may have qualified an account signal, a behaviour pattern, or a moment of interest that merits action, but necessarily a sales conversation.
Getting back to the meaning behind the acronym – Marketing Qualified: we have identified a moment(s) of intentional engagement between prospect and brand. We have defined a meaningful signal that suggests there is emerging interest that could result in future potential.
But once you start labelling something a “lead,” that qualification can’t just sit in marketing – it needs to meet a standard the business agrees reflects real commercial potential.
To help validate the signal, we have to force ourselves to answer an honest question: what exactly is being qualified?
So rather than qualifying prospects or accounts and calling them all MQLs, we move towards creating a Qualified Spectrum which includes (this is not exhaustive):
- Marketing Qualified Contact
- Marketing Qualified Trial
- Marketing Qualified Demand
- Marketing Qualified Account
- Marketing Qualified Lead (or Business Qualified Lead)
Suddenly you begin to define marketing qualified engagement in a more meaningful way that can better inform next best actions and stronger (and happier) coordination and effectiveness across departments.
It’s time to stop applying the same MQL definition across every business.
The scale of the MQL definition problem became clear at our recent After Hours event with Anteriad and Grove B2B, where many senior marketers admitted they haven't updated their MQL definitions in over five years.
This is not to “have a go” at a room of very smart B2B marketers, but it highlights an industry-wide issue… if the model doesn’t evolve, marketing risks losing its true potential.
This isn't about abandoning structure, it's about building the right structure for your business.
Treat defining your MQ* as a strategic priority, not a reporting checkbox –and embed it across the business with clear, shared agreement.
Building an effective MQ* framework for your business starts with four fundamental questions:
What problem are you solving?
If you need to scale database growth, focus on contact-level signals. If you need sales prioritisation, focus on account-level engagement patterns. If you need pipeline acceleration, focus on opportunity validation signals.
What constitutes intentional engagement in your market?
In some industries, downloading a technical specification sheet signals serious consideration. In others, requesting a consultation or scheduling a site visit carries more weight. Your qualification criteria should reflect how your buyers actually research and evaluate solutions.
How does this connect to revenue outcomes?
Every MQ* should have a clear operational purpose whether that be initiating nurture sequences, coordinating sales handoffs, prioritising account targeting, or validating opportunity creation. If you can't explain how the signal drives commercial momentum, you're measuring activity instead of future impact.
What's your sales model and buyer complexity?
High-touch enterprise sales with complex buying committees require different qualification approaches than product-led growth models with self-service conversion paths. Your MQ* framework should complement, not complicate, your revenue operations.
Work with your business to meaningfully define what MQ* means for your business by referencing the MQ* Spectrum – what qualifications and prospect features represent Hygiene versus Critical demand to the business and how does that impact the operational handoff between marketing and sales.
These definitions are fluid and must be adjusted to incorporate your unique business variables:
- Industry and customer type (fixed variables that don't change)
- Market conditions, category position, data maturity, and sales model (dynamic variables that require adaptation)
Your MQ* model isn’t a static ‘one-off’, it’s a living framework. One that should evolve with your market, your business goals, and your maturity. Get it right, and it becomes the anchor to aligning marketing, sales, and strategy around what really drives growth.
The businesses that have moved beyond traditional MQL thinking are measuring what matters. They're reporting on account progression rates, pipeline coverage by tier, trial-to-pipeline conversion, and revenue influence metrics that actually connect marketing activities to business outcomes.
Stop optimising for what’s easy to credit. Form fills are easy to measure, CPLs look clean in dashboards, volume feels good, the business has a predictable metric to ‘score’ marketing success – but do they drive revenue back to the business?
Moving Beyond the Debate
The death of the MQL makes for compelling conference presentations and viral LinkedIn posts. But the narrative misses a more important point: the problem was never the concept of qualifying marketing signals, it was the homogenous application of generic qualification criteria across diverse business contexts.
Instead of debating whether MQLs are dead, focus on building qualification systems that drive business outcomes:
- Define what qualified interest looks like in your specific market and sales context
- Align operational responses to different types of intent signals
- Build measurement frameworks that connect marketing activities to revenue impact
- Design for buyer behaviour, not marketing convenience
The businesses that master this approach won't just survive the MQL debate, they'll gain competitive advantage while their competitors argue about acronyms.
The Q in MQL was always the most important letter. It's time we started treating it that way.
About Grove B2B
Grove B2B is a marketing-as-a-service consultancy helping B2B brands scale reputation and revenue by rethinking the way marketing works. Services span advisory and senior expertise, activation through hands-on planning and delivery, marketing-first tech and AI strategies, and tailored workshops designed to upskill teams and close capability gaps. Specialising in Tech, Financial Services, and Professional Services, Grove B2B partners with organisations focused on solving the right problems. Learn more.
