In the competitive market for capturing scientists' attention, successful marketing campaigns create a plethora of marketing qualified leads (MQLs). While many marketing groups are judged by the sheer number of MQLs they create, it is the conversion from MQL to sales qualified lead (SQL) that is crucial for driving sales growth and maximizing the return on marketing investments.
However, traditional methods frequently fail to deliver, with experiential data suggesting that a staggering 85% to 98% of MQLs never progress to actionable sales opportunities.
Understanding the MQL-to-SQL Conversion Process
Many marketers define MQLs and SQLs differently. In this post, MQLs refer to contacts who have shown interest in speaking with a representative through channels like email campaigns, social media, webinars and trade shows. The goal is to assess these leads to determine their purchasing readiness, convert them into SQLs, and create opportunities from them. This conversion process is essential for ensuring that sales teams prioritize prospects with real buying potential.
Challenges in MQL-to-SQL Conversion
Several factors impede the effective conversion of MQLs to SQLs:
- High Volumes of Non-Actionable Leads: More than 85%of MQLs that request follow-ups and are passed to field sales lack genuine buying intent. This often leads to friction between sales and marketing teams, as sales may view the low-quality leads as a shortcoming of marketing efforts. As a result, sales reps may take minimal action on these leads and record them in the CRM as having no customer interest, ultimately obscuring the true impact of marketing and diminishing recognized ROI.
- Insufficient information: While webinars and website interactions allow for precise control over collected information, working with vendors running webinars or advertising campaigns requires clear guidelines—especially regarding the mandatory collection of phone numbers. It’s essential that these phone numbers are provided in real-time by the MQL rather than being outdated entries from a vendor’s database. We’ve frequently observed cases where outdated contact information reduces the value of MQLs, making them difficult to reach beyond email.
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The pandemic has led to reduced accessibility of prospects due to remote working arrangements and changes in communication infrastructure, such as the removal of direct-dial office numbers making contact with an MQL more challenging.
- Volume of MQLs: This topic is widely debated. Many information request forms include an option asking if the respondent wants to speak with a sales representative. However, in more than 85% of cases, respondents select this option unintentionally. Despite this, JBC found that 2–5% of MQLs who did not request a follow-up still converted to SQLs. The key debate is whether to proactively reach out to all respondents or webinar attendees immediately or wait for their engagement in a long-term nurturing campaign.
- Biased data: Inside sales teams are often not incentivized to provide data that could help refine the marketing mix and content strategy. Their primary focus is on immediate sales goals, and their performance metrics typically do not encourage the collection of such valuable insights.
Strategies for Enhancing MQL-to-SQL Conversion Rates
To address these challenges and regain sales team confidence and ROI by optimizing the MQL-to-SQL conversion process, consider the following strategies:
- Invest in Infrastructure: Enhancing CRM systems or customizing capabilities which are designed for high-volume calling and KPI monitoring can increase personnel efficiency by as much as 50%-100%. As an example, JBC monitors the best time to reach MQLs by phone, which varies often by a factor of 2X.
- Implement Multi-Channel Outreach: Utilizing a combination of communication methods—such as phone calls, emails, text messages, WhatsApp, and professional networking platforms like LinkedIn—can improve the chances of engaging with prospects. SMS alone can boost engagement by over 10% and is becoming an increasingly preferred outreach method among GenZ.
- Generate robust Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) beyond conversion rate: Regularly analyzing KPIs related to lead conversion helps identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, enabling data-driven decision-making. Stratifying data by region and campaign type allows for a rapid adjustment to marketing mix throughout the year, while real-time data analytics ensures continuous optimization.
- Outsource to Lead Qualification Specialists: Partnering with external experts can provide a turnkey solution to include regional and geographically appropriate personnel with the required scientific and sales expertise for your market. This allows you to leverage their specialized skills, tools and resources to manage the qualification process and generate data to impact the marketing mix and content
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and tactics for MQL-to-SQL Conversion
Monitoring specific KPIs can help organizations optimize their lead qualification processes:
- MQL-to-SQL Conversion Rate: The percentage of MQLs successfully converted into SQLs indicates the effectiveness of the lead qualification process.
- LeadResponse Rates –The likelihood of engaging leads depends on outreach methods. Mobile recipients answer only 10%-20% of calls from unknown numbers, making multi-channel engagement crucial.
- Outreach frequency and cadence: More than 65% of MQLs working in a lab should be able to be engaged by phone, email, SMS or WhatsApp.
- Number of Attempted phone dials, emails and SMS for each MQL, and at what point in cadence do they engage on average: Ensuring strict adherence to process is key. Most sales reps only attempt to reach an MQL up to three times, and lose out or delay contact with 25% of potential sales meetings having interest in your product.
- Impact of Lead Source: Different lead sources yield varying success rates, necessitating an evaluation of which channels generate the most SQLs, and at which time of year are they more likely to convert.
- Optimize calling times: Identify times when your customers are most likely going to pick up their phones.
Conclusion
Optimizing the conversion of MQLs toSQLs is crucial for enhancing sales and marketing alignment and ultimately driving revenue growth. Overcoming common challenges—such as filtering out non-actionable leads, adapting to shifting communication trends, and refining campaign strategies—requires a strategic approach. This includes investing in specialized talent, leveraging outsourcing, utilizing multi-channel engagement and closely monitoring key performance indicators. By implementing these targeted strategies, organizations can maximize ROI, minimize the sales-marketing divide, and ensure sales teams focus on high-value prospects, leading to higher conversion rates and sustained business success. The insights in this blog are based on over a decade of expertise from JBC, gathered through our lead qualification services and consulting on industry best practices.
About the Author
Mark Atlas is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience in life sciences and analytical instrumentation sales and marketing for both large and small companies. Since 2011, he has served as the CEO of JBC Associates, where he leads strategic development and implements technology-driven initiatives to drive revenue growth, optimize lead generation and enhance lead qualification processes. Additionally, Mark mentors early-stage companies as part of the Biotools Innovator program, helping teams achieve successful product launches through proven market research methodologies.
