Ask your marketing and your sales teams what a "qualified lead" is: you will get two answers, sometimes three. That is not a tooling problem, it is a definitions problem - and it is expensive, because every poorly defined stage is a place where the pipeline leaks without anyone seeing it. Here are the reference definitions, where they diverge, and how to set them up in Salesforce.
01The definitions table
| Stage | Definition | Who owns it | Transition criterion | In Salesforce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lead | A person or company that has shown interest but is not yet a customer (Salesforce definition). At HubSpot, distinct from a mere subscriber: they have acted beyond signing up. | Marketing | Form, event, identified interaction | Lead object, Status field; the link to the campaign goes through the campaign member |
| MQL | Marketing Qualified Lead: a lead that marketing deems more likely to become a customer (HubSpot). Stage 2 of the SiriusDecisions/Forrester "demand waterfall". | Marketing | Score or high-intent behavior: demo request, pricing pages, score threshold | No native "MQL" status: a Lead Status value to create; the score can come from Einstein Lead Scoring |
| SAL | Sales Accepted Lead: the lead that sales has formally agreed to work (Forrester). Absent at HubSpot and in native Salesforce. | Sales | Explicit acceptance, ideally under a service-level agreement | Status value (e.g. "Working") + change of lead owner |
| SQL | Sales Qualified Lead: a verified prospect, ready for a direct sales conversation (HubSpot). | Sales (shared responsibility for the criteria) | Qualification confirmed by sales | "Qualified" status then conversion |
| Opportunity | An identified deal, with an amount and a close date. | Sales | Lead conversion - irreversible | Conversion creates an account and a contact (mandatory) and, optionally, an opportunity; stages with probability and forecast category |
| Customer | At least one deal won (HubSpot). | Sales → Customer Success | Deal closed won | Closed Won opportunity; the account becomes a customer |
02Where the sources disagree
- Does the SAL exist? Yes at Forrester/SiriusDecisions, where acceptance by sales is a stage in its own right. No at HubSpot, nor in native Salesforce. Our reading: the SAL is only useful if you measure a service-level agreement between marketing and sales - otherwise it is one more status nobody fills in.
- Who owns the MQL? Marketing identifies it, but HubSpot insists: the move to SQL is a shared responsibility, with criteria written together. An MQL defined by marketing alone is the first cause of "your leads are worthless".
- The unit of analysis. HubSpot and Salesforce reason by individual (contact or lead). Forrester's "Demand Unit Waterfall" (2017) reasons by buying group - the set of people who organize around a need. In complex B2B, a lead is never alone: the account is the real unit.
- Where the model stops. The classic funnel ends at won. HubSpot's flywheel (attract, engage, delight) and Winning by Design's bowtie - seven stages, from discovery to expansion, published as a "standard" in January 2026 - continue after signature: onboarding, impact, expansion. For a recurring model, it is the only reading that holds up.
A status that two teams define differently is not a status. It is a disagreement stored in a field.
03What Salesforce provides natively
- The lead and its conversion. Conversion creates an account and a contact, an opportunity if you wish, and it is irreversible: the converted lead can no longer be viewed without a dedicated permission. That is the natural boundary between marketing and sales - not to be crossed too early.
- Lead statuses. The default values are deliberately generic (open, contacted, qualified, unqualified): there is no native "MQL" or "SAL". It is up to you to set them - and to write the criterion for each.
- Opportunity stages. Ten default stages, from prospecting (10%) to negotiation (90%) then closed won (100%) / lost (0%), each with a type, a probability and a forecast category; a sales process is a filtered list of these stages per deal type. The default probabilities are not yours: calibrate them on your history.
- Campaign member statuses. Defined campaign by campaign, with a default status and a "responded" checkbox that feeds responses. Our advice: one set of statuses per campaign type (webinar, trade show, emailing), not a universal set.
- Einstein Lead Scoring. A conversion score computed by similarity with your converted leads, refreshed regularly; included in the Performance and Unlimited editions, an add-on on Enterprise. Useful for prioritizing - it does not replace an MQL definition, it feeds it.
0native "MQL" status: it is a definition to write, then to configure
10default opportunity stages - to be calibrated on your history
7stages in the bowtie: the funnel no longer stops at signature
04Our method for getting things straight
- One stage = one observable criterion, written down, verifiable in the data. "The rep thinks it's hot" is not a criterion.
- One owner per stage, and a service-level agreement at the handover: time to pick up an MQL, mandatory rejection reason.
- As few stages as possible. Every added stage is a field somebody will not fill in. If the SAL is not measured, remove it.
- The account as the unit in complex B2B - several leads from the same company are one signal, not three.
- Keep going after won. Onboarding, adoption, expansion: if your revenue is recurring, so is your pipeline.
05Going further
These definitions are the foundation of RevOps: RevOps: definition, scope, KPIs. And for the downstream part of the flow: Quote-to-Cash: the 7 steps. Want to see where your pipeline leaks? Our Health Check starts exactly there - or write to us.