Goodbye MQLs! Hello Opportunities!

April 28th, 2022

Mike Pregler VP, Research Director

Terry Flaherty VP, Principal Analyst

With contributors:

Vicki Brown , Rick Bradberry , Amy Hawthorne , Robin Whiting , Mallory Icenhower

Summary

Sales and marketing leaders must align on a new perspective for driving demand. Historically, marketing’s focus and the expectation of sales was the generation of individual leads or MQLs — marketing qualified leads. However, Forrester’s 2021 B2B Buying Survey confirmed that more than 80% of B2B buyers had to involve groups of stakeholders in their most recent purchase. It’s time for sales and marketing leaders to say goodbye to their simplistic focus on individual leads and instead transition to a common focus on opportunities and the buying group members involved in the decision process. In this report, we expose the weaknesses of the lead-focused approach and share a roadmap for adopting an aligned sales and marketing process for building the opportunity pipeline needed for success.

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Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it requires being bold. We give business and technology leaders the confidence to put bold into action, shaping and guiding how to navigate today's unprecedented change in order to succeed.