Definitions for Sales Qualified and Sales Accepted?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Definitions for Sales Qualified and Sales Accepted?

I would love to hear the lead status definitions that other Marketo Users use.  

We just reassigned responsibilities between our Sales Dev Reps and Account Execs which is forcing us to redefine our lead statuses. First off, here are the responsibilities:

Sales Dev Reps (SDR) Responsibilities:  Qualifying Inbound & Marketing Qualified Leads, Outbound Prospecting, Concucting Discovery Calls for all leads interested in our product, and Scheduling Product Demos for our Account Executives.

Account Executives Responsibilities:  Creating Opportunities for the lead when a Demo is scheduled, Delivering Product Demos, Writing & Negotiating Contracts, Closing Deals


Our Status Definitions Are:

Marketing Qualified:  When a lead comes in through an inbound form, or an existing open lead reaches a lead score threshold, they become marketing qualified and an SDR is notified to respond.

Sales Qualified:  An SDR reviews the lead and confirms that the lead is legit data and a target customer that we should go after. Upon determining this, they mark the lead as Sales Qualifed.

Sales Accepted:  This is where we now have a conflict --- since we are now having the SDRs conducting the "discovery call" instead of our Account Executives(AE). Historically, Sales Accepted meant that an AE had conducted a discovery call and determined that they want to work the deal and are scheduling a demo and creating an opportunity.  But now, since the SDRs are doing the "discovery calls" and scheduling the demos for the AE and creating an opportunity in salesforce themselves, it seems to be broken. 

How do other organizations define Sales Accepted?

Our Options:  
1)  An SDR says this is good data and a qualified company, marks them as Sales Qualified, then conducts a discovery call and schedules a demo for the AE and marks them as Sales Accepted.

2) When an AE wants the lead, they mark it as sales accepted.  BAD CHOICE: because we dont want a bunch of leads sitting at Sales Qualified.  We want to get them to Sales Accepted as soon as possible.

3) We ditch the "Sales Qualified" status and just have one, called Sales Accepted.  BAD CHOICE: This will not allow us to have complete visibility of where leads are in our pipeline and where they are getting "stuck" - i.e. areas where we can improve and keep an eye on specific individual reps.

Would love to hear how other companies are defining their lead statuses and the sales process associated to them.

Again, we do both inbound and outbound sales. Also, our product is a SAAS product with a 3month sales cycle.


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4 REPLIES 4
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Definitions for Sales Qualified and Sales Accepted?

Ron look at the revised waterfall from Sirius it has the new definitions:

http://go.siriusdecisions.com/RearchitectedDemandWaterfall

...you are missing AQL prior to MQL...

...if Marketo defines AQLs based on engagment and then you have your SDR's review, lead nurture and then convert AQLs to MQLs that are reassigned to the field. Then, "only" the field declares SALs upon acceptance from Marketing and then SQLs after further qualification (SQL normally defined by lead conversion to contact by the field) you should be fine.
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Definitions for Sales Qualified and Sales Accepted?

What is AQL?  Or is your answer that I purchase your product by clicking on your landing page/lead gen link?
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Definitions for Sales Qualified and Sales Accepted?

Ron, the link I gave you is for a free whitepaper from Sirius Decisions. They are the leading analyst firm in the the Marketing Automation space. The terms you are using in your post are their intelectual property...They updated their model to include the stage "AQL" about a year ago based on the broad adoption of SaaS based Marketing Automaton tools like Marketo at the 250+ Enterprise b2b companies they interviewed...

AQL = "Automation" Qualifed Lead...as in Marketing Automation
Josh_Perry1
Level 7

Re: Definitions for Sales Qualified and Sales Accepted?

In my previous organization, we used the AQL or automated qualified lead Mark is talking about.  It worked well.  In essence this is a lead that has reached your scoring threshold.  

Once this happened, we passed the lead on to an SDR who would then look at the lead notes and interesting moments and see if the lead was real, and whether it was the right time to follow up with them.  If it was, the SDR would convert the lead into an MQL.  

The SDR would then work the lead until a meeting is booked.  Once a meeting was booked, it would become an SQL.  At this point, the lead was handed off to an account executive.  

The sales rep would then go forward with the meeting.  If the meeting went through, they would update the status to SAL.  

For us this worked well.  Each organization is a little different, and will want to adapt it to there situation.