Stop Tracking MQLs in B2B SaaS Sales

Tracking MQLs might be costing you revenue.

Why?

MQLs in B2B reward tagging, not action. Volume of contacts ≠ conversion. They often represent low-intent activities misinterpreted as sales-readiness.

MQLs inflate the pipeline with fake opportunities. Sales teams waste time chasing unqualified leads, leading to frustration and blame loops between marketing and sales when targets aren’t met.

MQLs hide the fact that your CRM is often empty of real, actionable deal information. If the focus is on hitting an MQL number, the quality of actual deal data (budget, decision-maker, use case, close date) suffers.

If you and your team can’t define “qualified lead” in one sentence – stop scoring leads based on arbitrary marketing actions.

Here’s how I’d clean it up and focus on what matters:

1. Focus on Deals, Not Leads

• One Deal per Intent: Create a deal in your CRM only when there’s clear buying intent demonstrated. No deal = no forecast inclusion.
• Mandatory Deal Fields: Enforce completion of critical fields before a deal can progress: Budget confirmed? Use case understood? Decision-maker identified? Timeline realistic?

2. Reflect Reality in Pipeline Stages & Dates

• Action-Oriented Stages: Define pipeline stages based on the next action required by the sales rep to move the deal forward, not just documenting past activities.
• Realistic Close Dates: Close dates should reflect genuine timelines based on prospect feedback, not CRM defaults or hopeful guesses. Regularly update these dates.

3. Track Activity for Coaching, Not Just Incentives

• Rep Activity: Monitor calls, emails, meetings logged against deals to understand engagement levels and identify coaching opportunities.
• Pipeline Velocity: Track how long deals stay in each stage to identify bottlenecks in the sales process.

4. Define “Qualified” Clearly

Work with Sales and Marketing to agree on a concise, unambiguous definition of what constitutes a sales-ready opportunity that warrants creating a deal. This might be based on specific criteria like company size, industry, stated need, budget range, and engagement level (e.g., requested a demo after understanding pricing).

Implementation

I fix pipeline setups like this in weeks, not quarters, working directly with the CEO, VP Sales, and the team. This involves:

• Auditing the current CRM setup (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Close, etc.).
• Defining new stages, fields, and automation rules.
• Cleaning existing data where possible.
• Training the team on the new process.
• Setting up reports that track deal progression and pipeline health accurately.

This works across various tools – Zapier, Sheets, Databases – the principles are the same. No expensive new tools are required, just a commitment to data discipline.

If you’ve inherited a messy sales process or your forecast feels like guesswork, let’s talk about building a data foundation you can trust.