Aug 30, 2026 · 20 min · 11 segments
In this video, Kevin and I break down Be Better, the fourth step of our 5Bs go-to-market framework, covering why the MQL is broken, how to measure what actually matters with leading and lagging…
And the first thing that we wanna note is this trend towards the death of the MQL, or maybe the lack thereof of the death [chuckles] of the MQL.
F- in our opinion, the MQL is particularly outdated.
It's often based on superficial activity, like e-book downloads, that rarely convert.
And the reason why it's been pushed to this, where marketing teams are constantly chasing MQLs, we've spoken about in different episodes in the past.
But by and large, given what's happened in the marketing space in the last few decades, this has become the status quo.
And unfortunately, that act of chasing MQLs misaligns sales and marketing.
It's quantity over quality and, unfortunately, that breaks the model for both teams.
Modern go-to-market strategies should prioritize quality engagement over arbitrary lead scores or lead volume.
It's really predictable revenue which turned all of this on its head and has forced marketing to become this lead generation machine and forcing us to try and become these people who identify who is in market, who is out of market.
But as we've discussed at length, especially with Adam Anderovich, that is simply not marketing's role.
They used to gather this account intelligence as part of their usual business development activities.
That's been washed out by predictable revenue and, as a consequence, marketing has now been handed this task of generating MQLs.
And they're MQLs but most of them, Kevin, because we're forced to do it on volume, most of them are kind of junk, which breaks down our trust with sales and really, I think, is why it is a key piece in this whole misalignment of marketing and sales and why it needs to start going away.
And there's plenty of episodes on this in depth and from different perspe- perspectives with guests on the show specializing in this area as well on the B2B Playbook.
But specifically we wanna talk about how to get out of that rut of looking at MQLs and optimizing for them.
What you should instead be driving towards and measuring is lagging and leading metrics that really show outcomes for your business.
And the first thing that we wanna note is this trend towards the death of the MQL, or maybe the lack thereof of the death [chuckles] of the MQL.
F- in our opinion, the MQL is particularly outdated.
It's often based on superficial activity, like e-book downloads, that rarely convert.
And the reason why it's been pushed to this, where marketing teams are constantly chasing MQLs, we've spoken about in different episodes in the past.
But by and large, given what's happened in the marketing space in the last few decades, this has become the status quo.
And unfortunately, that act of chasing MQLs misaligns sales and marketing.
It's quantity over quality and, unfortunately, that breaks the model for both teams.
Modern go-to-market strategies should prioritize quality engagement over arbitrary lead scores or lead volume.
It's really predictable revenue which turned all of this on its head and has forced marketing to become this lead generation machine and forcing us to try and become these people who identify who is in market, who is out of market.
But as we've discussed at length, especially with Adam Anderovich, that is simply not marketing's role.
They used to gather this account intelligence as part of their usual business development activities.
That's been washed out by predictable revenue and, as a consequence, marketing has now been handed this task of generating MQLs.
And they're MQLs but most of them, Kevin, because we're forced to do it on volume, most of them are kind of junk, which breaks down our trust with sales and really, I think, is why it is a key piece in this whole misalignment of marketing and sales and why it needs to start going away.
And there's plenty of episodes on this in depth and from different perspe- perspectives with guests on the show specializing in this area as well on the B2B Playbook.
But specifically we wanna talk about how to get out of that rut of looking at MQLs and optimizing for them.
What you should instead be driving towards and measuring is lagging and leading metrics that really show outcomes for your business.
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