What Your Sales Team Should Do with Marketing Qualified Leads

Sales teams often find themselves inundated with Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), yet only a fraction convert into actual sales. In fact, a 2024 report indicates that merely 13% of MQLs transition into Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) across various industries. This low conversion rate shows a critical issue: the misalignment between marketing and sales strategies.

The root of the problem lies in the definitions and expectations of what constitutes a "qualified" lead. Marketing teams may label leads as MQLs based on engagement metrics, while sales teams seek leads with a clear intent to purchase. This disconnect can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities.

To bridge this gap, sales teams should establish clear criteria for SQLs and collaborate closely with marketing to ensure alignment. By doing so, they can focus their efforts on leads with genuine potential, thereby increasing conversion rates and driving revenue growth.

In this blog, we'll explore some actionable strategies that sales teams can implement effectively to manage and convert MQLs, ensuring a more streamlined and successful sales process.

What are Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)?

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are prospects who have shown genuine interest in your product or service but aren’t ready for direct sales engagement yet. They typically engage with marketing content, like opening or replying to an email or filling a contact form, indicating awareness and potential buying intent.

Here's why MQLs matter to your sales funnel:

• They’re warmer than general leads and show intent to learn more.
• Prioritize marketing efforts by identifying engaged audiences.
• Improve sales efficiency by passing only promising leads to SDRs.
• Help forecast sales opportunities more accurately.
• Strengthen collaboration between marketing and sales teams.

While MQLs aren't ready to buy yet, their actions signal promise. The key lies in knowing what to do next. Let’s explore what your sales team should actually do once an MQL enters the pipeline.

What Should Your Sales Team Do With Marketing Qualified Leads?

Marketing may bring the leads in, but it's sales that turn intent into revenue. Once an MQL is identified, your sales team must act with precision. This section breaks down the essential steps, from evaluation to handover, that ensure no qualified lead goes to waste. Let’s get started:

1. Evaluating and Qualifying MQLs

Not every MQL is sales-ready, and that’s where evaluation comes in. The goal is to distinguish between leads who are merely curious and those showing strong buying intent. Sales teams need to apply a consistent qualification process to avoid wasted effort and prioritize high-potential opportunities. Evaluation helps clarify if the lead aligns with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and whether their engagement is meaningful or superficial.

How to Evaluate MQLs Efficiently:

• Review engagement history: Did they download a case study or just sign up for a newsletter? Prioritize leads showing deeper interaction.
• Check firmographics: Do they fit your target industry, company size, or geographic region? For instance, TLM (The Lead Market) works with MSPs based in the U.S, Canada or Australia.
• Use lead scoring models: Assign points based on actions taken (e.g., webinar attendance = high score; single email open = low score).
• Match to sales-readiness signals: Are they requesting pricing or trying to schedule a call? That’s a key handoff moment.
• Talk to marketing: Confirm the lead’s context, what triggered their interest, and what messaging resonated?

2. Efficiently Engaging MQLs

Engaging MQLs efficiently means turning interest into intent before the lead goes cold. Timing, personalization, and relevance are critical. Since these leads have already interacted with your marketing, your outreach should build on that foundation, not start from scratch. The goal is to continue the conversation in a way that feels natural, useful, and aligned with their journey.

Strategies to Engage MQLs Efficiently:

• Personalize every email interaction: Reference the exact asset they downloaded or the email campaign they engaged with. TLM, for example, customizes scripts based on what resonated, like a lead reacting to an MSP-specific case study.
• Respond quickly: According to a study, responding to a lead within five minutes results in a conversion rate of approximately 85%. Waiting 30 minutes drops the conversion rate to around 60%, and after 24 hours, it plummets to about 10%.
• Use value-driven follow-ups. Instead of generic pitches, offer relevant insights, such as MRR, ROI stats or success stories from similar clients.
• Ask qualifying questions: Instead of hard-selling, ask discovery-based questions that move the lead closer to booking a meeting.

3. Collaborative Processes Between Marketing and Sales

When marketing and sales work in silos, leads fall through the cracks. Effective collaboration ensures that MQLs are not only captured but also converted. A well-aligned process bridges the gap between early engagement and final conversion, keeping both teams accountable to shared revenue goals, not just individual KPIs.

How to Create a Collaborative Workflow:

• Define lead qualification criteria together: Agree on what makes a lead “marketing qualified” and “sales qualified.” For example, an MSP with over 25 employees engages with an email campaign.
• Hold regular sync meetings: Weekly stand-ups or monthly reviews help both teams discuss lead performance, campaign feedback, and pipeline health.
• Use a shared real-time dashboard: Real time dashboards offer a transparent view into campaign performance, lead scores, and follow-up stages. For example, TLM’s proprietary tools are not just a run-of-the-mill CRM. They provide in-depth reports to the users with an intuitive, real-time dashboard. 
• Implement a clear feedback loop: Sales should provide feedback on lead quality to help marketing refine targeting and messaging.
• Set mutual KPIs: Track metrics like MQL-to-SQL conversion rate, lead response time, and contribution to MRR.

4. Handover from Marketing to Sales

Many MQLs lose momentum during the handover from marketing to sales. A disorganized or unclear transition often results in delayed outreach or missed context, leading to lower conversion rates. An efficient handoff ensures that sales teams pick up the lead at the right moment with all the insights to move the conversation forward confidently.

How to Make the Handoff Efficient:

• Set clear qualification checkpoints: Only transfer leads once they meet agreed-upon criteria, such as when an MSP engages with a pricing email or schedules a meeting.
• Include context and engagement history: Sales should receive a lead brief with details like downloaded assets, campaign touches, and previous interactions.
• Automate notifications: Use internal tools to alert SDRs when a lead crosses the MQL threshold instantly.
• Use shared documentation or dashboards: TLM’s real-time dashboard allows both teams to track where each lead stands.
• Schedule follow-ups within a fixed time window: For example, ensure every qualified lead is contacted within 30 minutes to keep intent hot.

5. Utilizing Sales Development Teams

Sales Development Teams (SDRs) serve as the crucial link between marketing’s warm leads and sales reps' closing efforts. Their role is to qualify MQLs further, nurture them with tailored communication, and prepare them for meaningful sales conversations. Without SDRs, high-potential leads risk being lost in generic outreach or delayed follow-up.

How to Collaborate SDRs Efficiently:

• Specialize roles between inbound and outbound SDRs: Let’s understand this with an example. At TLM, inbound SDRs handle MQLs from email campaigns while outbound SDRs work on targeted account outreach. Such specialized roles help target specialized MQLs with efficient workload distribution.
•  Equip SDRs with lead context: Provide full interaction history, pain points, and behavioral insights to the SDRs. This helps the team to communicate efficiently and keeps the leads warm until they are converted.
• Use tailored scripts: Instead of generic intros, SDRs should follow email templates built around lead behavior, like referencing an email campaign, the prospect responded to.
• Set response time targets: To maintain interest, leads should hear from an SDR within 15–30 minutes of qualifying.
• Track conversion metrics: Measure SDR performance by MQL-to-SQL rates, booked appointments, and contribution to MRR.

Converting MQLs into real revenue is all about strategy and structure. From precise evaluation to a strong SDR follow-through, each step matters. When your sales team treats MQLs as informed opportunities, they’ll not only improve conversion rates, but also directly contribute to MRR growth.

Get Sales Qualified Leads With TLM (The Lead Market)

At TLM, we don’t just generate leads, we deliver qualified sales opportunities that align with your growth goals. With 9+ years of expertise in B2B lead generation, we help MSPs, staffing firms, and tech companies across the US, Canada, and Australia fill their sales pipeline with intent-driven prospects. 

Every campaign we run is built around precision targeting, data-backed outreach, and an unwavering focus on increasing your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). Our goal? To ensure your sales team speaks only to decision-makers who are ready to talk business.

Here are our B2B Lead Generation services:

• Sales-Qualified Leads (SQL): Focused, filtered, and aligned with your Ideal Customer Profile.
• Appointment Scheduling: Only confirmed meetings with the right prospects—no wasted time.
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Personalized campaigns that target high-value accounts with precision.
• TLM Proprietary Tools: Real-time dashboards and customizable scripts built in-house for smarter outreach.
• Industry-Specific Campaigning: Deep expertise in the MSP space with tailored messaging for maximum impact.
• Flexible Pricing Models: Choose from Pay-Per-Lead, Pay-Per-Appointment, with Monthly Retainer options.

With TLM, you’re not chasing cold leads; you’re building a scalable, qualified pipeline that accelerates real revenue. Book a call and let’s talk about how we can turn your next campaign into a result-driven success.