MQL to SQL Disconnect Analyzer
Measure the marketing budget wasted on leads sales rejects.
Only 40% of MQLs survive sales, that's $691,200/year on leads reps reject. The fix is a shared, written MQL/SQL definition, not more volume.
A low accept rate usually means a definition gap, not bad leads, align on firmographics + intent before blaming either team.
About this calculator
When sales rejects a large share of the leads marketing hands over, the usual argument is about lead quality, but the real issue is almost always a disconnect: marketing and sales are scoring "qualified" differently. This calculator prices that disconnect directly, turning your MQL volume, sales accept rate, and cost per MQL into a monthly and annual figure for spend on leads that never became real pipeline.
How to use it
- Enter MQLs per month, the volume marketing hands to sales.
- Enter sales accept rate, the share sales actually works as genuine SQLs rather than rejecting.
- Enter cost per MQL, what it costs on average to generate one marketing-qualified lead.
- Read accepted SQLs, rejected leads, and the wasted spend that rejection represents monthly and annually.
Methodology
Accepted leads is MQLs × accept rate. Rejected leads is the remainder, MQLs minus accepted, the leads sales declines to work.
Wasted spend per month is rejected leads × cost per MQL, the generation cost sunk into leads that produced no sales follow-through. Annual wasted spend simply multiplies that by 12.
The tool flags a 60% accept rate as the healthy threshold, above it, marketing and sales broadly agree on what counts as qualified; below it, and especially below 40%, the gap is treated as a serious and costly misalignment rather than a lead-quality problem.
This calculator assumes cost per MQL is a fair proxy for the cost of the rejected lead specifically, if your MQL definition already filters out obviously bad leads before this stage, the true cost of the disconnect could be understated since rejected leads may have cost more or less to generate than the average.
FAQ
Usually neither exclusively, it typically means the MQL threshold, whatever combination of firmographic fit and engagement marketing uses to call a lead qualified, doesn't match what sales considers sales-ready. The fix is a shared, written definition both teams commit to, not blaming either side.
60% or higher is a reasonable target for a well-aligned funnel, though the right number depends on how strict your MQL criteria are. A very loose MQL definition will always produce a lower accept rate even with perfect sales follow-up, since more marginal leads are entering the funnel in the first place.
No, and it usually makes the wasted-spend figure worse, since more volume at the same low accept rate just scales up the rejected count and the cost tied to it. Tightening the qualification threshold to raise the accept rate almost always beats adding volume when the disconnect is the underlying problem.
The MQL Calculator computes how many MQLs your traffic and conversion rates produce and what each one costs. This tool picks up from there, it takes that MQL volume and cost as inputs and measures what happens after handoff, whether sales actually accepts what marketing sends.