Why the MQL is a Failed Metric (And What to Measure Instead)

For nearly two decades, the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) has been the central currency of B2B marketing. We’ve built entire funnels, dashboards, and compensation plans around this single number.

But what I find is that the MQL is fundamentally broken.

In today's GTM motion, it’s a vanity metric that does more harm than good. It rewards marketing for activity that has no correlation to revenue, it creates a huge chasm between sales and marketing, and it burns your most expensive resource: your sales team's time.

It’s time to declare the MQL a failed metric. There is a far better way to measure marketing’s contribution to the business.

The Anatomy of a "Successful" Campaign

I've seen this scenario play out hundreds of times.

Marketing launches a new, gated whitepaper. The campaign is a "huge success"—it generates 1,000 MQLs! The marketing team celebrates hitting their quarterly goal, and the leads are dutifully passed over to the sales development (SDR) team.

Then, reality hits. This is what I call the Revenue Chasm.

Sales stands on one side, staring at a list of 1,000 names. After weeks of calls, they discover:

• 400 are students, competitors, or have fake contact info.
• 500 are "tire-kickers" who just wanted the free content.
• 50 are lukewarm and might be interested... in 12 months.
• 0 are ready to have a sales conversation.

The SDRs are demoralized, having wasted 80% of their time chasing ghosts. The sales leaders are furious, declaring, "Marketing's leads are junk." And marketing is baffled, asking, "We gave you 1,000 leads. Why can't you close?"

The MQL model doesn't measure value; it measures noise. It incentivizes marketing to generate the highest volume of leads at the lowest cost, regardless of their intent to buy.

A Better Metric: Pipeline Contribution ($)

Instead of obsessing over MQLs, I advise my clients to change the dashboard entirely. The only metric that truly aligns marketing and sales is Pipeline Contribution.

This is measured in two simple, unforgiving ways:

1. Marketing-Sourced Pipeline ($): The total dollar value of new sales opportunities that marketing's efforts originated.
2. Marketing-Influenced Pipeline ($): The total dollar value of all opportunities that marketing "touched," demonstrating their role in accelerating deals they didn't originate.

Shifting to these metrics changes the entire GTM dynamic. It forces marketing and sales to agree, in writing, on the single most important definition: "What is a qualified opportunity?"

When marketing is on the hook for a pipeline number, not a lead number, their behavior changes overnight. They stop asking "How do we get more downloads?" and start asking "How do we get the right 100 accounts into a sales conversation?"

The Proof: A Tale of Two Marketers

Let's look at a common scenario. Imagine two marketing leaders, Mark and Jen, who both have a $100,000 quarterly budget.

Mark (The MQL Hunter):

• He spends his $100k on gated content syndication to maximize MQLs.
• Result: He generates 2,000 MQLs at $50/MQL. It looks great on his dashboard.
• The Reality: The MQLs have a 1% conversion rate to a real opportunity.
• Business Impact: He generates 20 opportunities for a total of $500,000 in Marketing-Sourced Pipeline.

Jen (The Pipeline Builder):

• She spends her $100k on "Q1 Air Cover" campaigns (like I wrote about recently). She runs targeted, non-gated content to their top 500 accounts and hosts high-value customer-story webinars.
• Result: She only generates 100 "hand-raisers" (Demo Requests, etc.). Her "lead" volume looks 20x smaller than Mark's.
• The Reality: These high-intent leads have a 40% conversion rate to an opportunity.
• Business Impact: She generates 40 opportunities for a total of $2,000,000 in Marketing-Sourced Pipeline.

Mark hit his vanity metric (MQLs), but Jen was 4x more effective at her actual job: building the sales pipeline. Mark's team created noise; Jen's team created revenue.

How to Bridge the Revenue Chasm

This isn't just a theoretical shift. It's a practical, structural change to your GTM engine.

1. Change the Scoreboard. Get sales and marketing leadership in a room. Formally agree on the definition of a "Sales Qualified Opportunity" (SQO). This is your new handoff point.
2. Change the Compensation. This is the most critical step. Stop paying marketing bonuses based on MQL volume. Start compensating them based on Marketing-Sourced Pipeline ($) and, as a secondary metric, pipeline velocity.
3. Stop Measuring "Leads," Start Measuring "Intent." Stop gating all your "Why Do Something Different?" content. Use it to educate and warm up your target accounts. Save your forms for high-intent, "Why You?" actions—like "Request a Demo" or "Talk to Sales."

From Activity to Accountability

The shift from MQLs to Sourced Pipeline is about changing the conversation from, "How many leads did we get?" to, "How much pipeline did we create?"

It forces marketing to stop being a "lead factory" and become a true partner in revenue. It eliminates the Revenue Chasm by giving sales and marketing one shared goal and one number to rally around.