HR Tech SaaS · B2B

MQL-to-SQL conversion of 8% against a healthy benchmark of 15–20%. 80 leads/month, 4 deals closing, sales team frustrated, marketing team claiming leads were fine. No lead scoring: every form fill became an MQL regardless of company size, job title, or intent signals. Average lead age in nurture: 41 days with zero activity-based re-engagement. Revenue attribution was being done manually by the CSO at end of each quarter, not systematically. No SLA existed between marketing and sales on lead response time.

Audited the last 12 months of closed-won and closed-lost deals to identify the 14 firmographic and behavioural signals that correlated with closing. Built a HubSpot lead scoring model: positive scores for company size >50 employees, HR director title, job description viewed, pricing page visited, case study downloaded. Negative scores for free email domains, sub-10 employee companies, student self-identification. Defined MQL jointly, first time marketing and sales aligned on a definition. Built a 3-stage nurture sequence based on score band. Created a 4-hour SLA for SDR follow-up on MQL-threshold leads with HubSpot task automation via Zapier.

MQL→SQL conversion: 8% → 23% within two months of scoring going live. Average lead-to-demo time: 41 days → 9 days. Sales team receiving 30 MQLs/month instead of 80, but closing 11 deals, volume down, quality and close rate up. ₹2.8Cr of pipeline influenced in 5 months with full source attribution in HubSpot. Pipeline velocity (time from MQL to close) halved. Weekly pipeline review cadence established: marketing and sales reviewing the same HubSpot report, no disagreement on what counts.