The comprehensive guide to B2B lead types (and why your teams need to align)

Successful marketing campaigns, demo requests, freemium subscription signups—they all bring leads in. But someone who signs up for a freemium account and uses your product frequently is far more likely to pay for your service than someone who attends a webinar.

Not all leads are the same. While some are piping hot sales leads, others are ice-cold leads that should've never been qualified. And then you've got people who've been qualified by different departments:

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

• Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

• Product qualified leads (PQLs)

What's the difference between a PQL and an MQL? Why is one lead hot and another cold? Isn't every lead qualified?

Many teams struggle with ‌acronyms and various terminology. And sales and marketing are especially misaligned on lead types, what qualifies a lead, and lead categorization.

So we're breaking down the different B2B lead types and the characteristics of various leads, so you can properly categorize and manage all the people you bring in through your lead generation efforts.

What is a lead?

Lead generation and customer acquisition are always hot topics—and buzzwords—in marketing. But before you start planning your lead gen strategy, your teams should all align on what a lead is.

While everyone has a slightly different definition, the simplest is someone interested in your product or service. And there are many kinds of leads, from unqualified to a PQL who already uses your product.

So, what makes them all different? Keep reading to find out. Unqualified leads "Every lead is a good lead!" Well, not really. While we'd all love it if every lead was hot, that's rarely the reality. Sometimes people are just window shopping or they quickly discover you're not the best fit.

And sometimes they simply don't meet the criteria to move into the sales process—they're unqualified leads. They haven't taken certain actions or lack attributes that indicate buying intent, like:

• They don't know what products or services you offer

• They're unsure about what they want or need in a solution

• They can't afford your offering

• They're not your ideal customer or they'd be a bad fit

Unqualified leads certainly aren't ready to move through the sales process, but that doesn't mean you should discard them. 

Let's say a lead doesn't fully understand what you do and is unsure of what they need. You can nurture them with educational content, build trust, and properly introduce them to your product.

Over time, you've moved them from an unqualified lead to a warm or hot lead. So don't give up on them—note the missing criteria and send them through your nurture program.

Cold leads

Unlike unqualified leads, cold leads typically haven't interacted with your business previously and likely don't know what you sell or how you can help them. And they probably haven't expressed any interest in your company. Or, cold leads could have been warm leads that lost interest.

Sales teams typically use cold emailing or calling to tell them how your brand can solve a pain point. They often fit your ideal customer profile but need nurturing to move through the sales funnel and turn into warm leads.

Warm leads

While you can nurture unqualified and cold leads into eventual customers, starting with warm leads can give you the jumpstart you need to shorten the timeframe from lead to customer. So, what is a warm lead?

Lead scoring helps you understand what type of sales leads you’ve got. Lead categorization tells you which to prioritize (the warm and hot ones). Let’s take Sam—based on his actions, we can score him and categorize him as a warm lead:

• Subscribed to your email newsletter to access gated content (5 points)

• Registered for one of your webinars (15 points)

• Visited your pricing page multiple times in one week (40 points)

• Read two blog posts (5 points)

His total score is 65 points. If your system says any lead from 0-50 is cold, 51-75 is warm, and anything over 75 is hot, you can see that Sam is warm. And you can set up a nurture campaign—emails, tailored content, targeted marketing—to turn Sam into a hot lead.

Hot leads

A dream for any company, hot leads are the best of any sales leads. While they may (or may not) require nurturing before converting, they’re typically marketing, sales, or product qualified leads who are ready to buy.

So, what could typical hot sales leads’ scores look like? Take a look:

• Registered to five of your webinars this month (75 points—15 each)

• Contacted a sales rep (50 points)

• Click on a blog call to action (10 points)

• Requested a product demo (25 points)

With a total score over 100, this lead is steaming hot. Have a sales rep reach out immediately to gather more information to further qualify them—like budget, timeline to purchase, and buying authority—to convert them quickly.

Pro tip: Ineffective lead management can turn hot leads into cold leads, just like that. Stay on top of your leads (CRMs help with this).

Qualified leads

While the way we categorize and score leads to qualify them may change from business to business, most organizations group qualified sales leads into one of three categories:

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

• Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

• Product qualified leads (PQLs)

These leads have been qualified based on expressed interest from marketing efforts and sales-driven contact, and freemium or free trial product usage. Let’s see what sets these B2B lead types apart.

Marketing qualified leads

When you think of lead generation, you likely think of the marketing team and their omnichannel campaigns. While bringing in sales leads doesn’t fall solely with marketing, they are responsible for bringing in qualified leads that sales can convert into paying customers. 

They do that by creating marketing campaigns, content, and experiences, like:

• Sales pages

• Social media content

• Blog posts

• Email sequences

• Webinars

• Live interactive events

• Downloadable assets

And when any of these marketing efforts result in someone expressing interest in your brand, they become a marketing qualified lead—their behavior qualifies them.

Sales qualified leads

While marketing qualified leads have expressed interest in what you do and may be ready to buy, they often need some nurturing before converting. But sales qualified leads? They’re typically hot, know who you are, a great fit for your offering, and ready to swipe their credit cards. 

While similar, MQLs and SQLs have one distinct difference: where they are in the funnel. Sales qualified leads are further along the pipeline and looking to buy.

Product qualified leads

Is there anything better than red-hot sales qualified leads? Maybe not. But product qualified leads come close. 

Product qualified leads are already sold on your product—all sales has to do is convince them to upgrade to a paid plan. 

Aligning on lead qualification (and beyond)

If you work in sales or marketing, you already know about the lead blame game:

Sales blames marketing for sending unqualified leads. Marketing blames sales for fumbling MQLs and not following up.

Not only does this create a cycle of mistrust and disagreements on what constitutes qualified sales leads, but it also has a ripple effect throughout the entire organization.

Bottom line? If sales and marketing aren’t aligned, your lead generation efforts will likely go to waste and have a broader impact across your organization, from a poor customer experience to lost data to missed opportunities.

Getting everyone on board

We all have slightly different definitions of sales leads and what qualifies each one to move through the sales funnel. Coming up with an industry-wide definition isn’t the goal—the goal is to get your teams aligned on what makes a good lead and how you define your leads.

Leverage your data. Product usage, content downloaded, CTAs clicked—you have a wealth of data from your leads. Combine that with enriched data to get a more complete picture of your leads and how to tailor the sales process to get them to convert.

Typeform for Growth makes it easy to enrich lead data, score your leads, and convert them into paying customers.