A marketing funnel framework that aligns Sales & Marketing.
Map the buyer's journey to a marketing funnel and a sales/deal funnel — then document the stages, the handoff, and the operating cadence that make them work together. Educate yourself, capture your decisions, and export a draft your S&M leaders can sign.
The operating principle.
Read this before anything else. If your funnel conversations devolve into attribution debates, the framework has failed regardless of how elegant the model is.
We believe focusing on lead and opportunity attribution is less productive than aligning Sales and Marketing on a shared deals goal — and creating the conditions for these teams to work together on a defined, regular cadence.
The shared deals number, and the math behind it.
Anchor everything else. Every stage, target, and rejection reason traces back to this number.
Foundation questions
These determine your math: nurture lengths, recency windows, MQL targets, pipeline coverage. Don't skip — wrong assumptions here cascade everywhere else.
Buyer's journey, marketing funnel, deal funnel.
Three views of the same motion. The buyer's journey belongs to the buyer. The marketing and sales funnels belong to you — and must map cleanly to it.
One picture, two paths, one shared gate.
The behavioral path runs Prospect → Lead → MQL → SAL. The declared-intent path runs Hand-Raiser → SAL. Both converge at SAL — the only stage where both teams must agree.
Define each stage on your terms.
Stages don't all apply to every business. Toggle off any you don't need (e.g. no outbound motion → skip Prospects). For each stage you keep, write your own definition, owner, entry/exit criteria, KPIs, and SLA.
Target accounts / audiences
The shared pool that sits above the funnels. In-ICP companies and people both Sales and Marketing may draw from — Marketing through demand programs, Sales through outbound. Not a marketing-only stage.
Prospects
Known contacts (name + email) who have not opted in. Run permission-respecting first-touch motions only — never put them into nurture they didn't opt into.
Leads (engaged / opted-in)
Contacts who have explicitly agreed to receive engagement. They want to learn — they have not requested a sales conversation. Earn the right to a deeper conversation through value, not pressure.
MQL — Marketing Qualified Lead
The three-part test: Fit (matches ICP) + Intent (one or more defined behavioral signals) + Recency (signals fresh, typically 7–30 days). Score-only definitions let cold-but-frequent contacts trigger MQL status.
Hand-raiser leads (HRL)
Buyer-declared intent: demo request, contact sales, pricing inquiry. Bypasses the MQL gate — you're not in the business of declining requested calls. Speed-to-lead is the highest-leverage metric in the entire funnel.
SAL — Sales Accepted Lead
The single most important interface in the funnel. Without it, Marketing throws MQLs over the wall and assumes the work is done. With it, both teams must agree the lead is real before resources are committed.
SQL / Opportunity
SALs that, after a Sales conversation, are confirmed as real buying opportunities — defined need, budget, timeline, decision process. Marketing's role shifts to air cover.
The handoff is a relationship, not an event.
Six things every healthy MQL→SAL relationship requires. Score yourselves honestly — gaps here are where most GTM dysfunction lives.
Handoff requirements — current state
For each, write where you are today and the gap to good. "We don't have one" is a valid answer.
Both teams agree what an MQL is and what makes it acceptable. Written, versioned, reviewed quarterly.
Response-time commitments in both directions. Sales touches every MQL within X hrs; Marketing produces Y MQLs/week.
Explicit, observable signals Sales uses to accept or reject. Fit + intent + timing thresholds, documented.
Sales tells Marketing why a lead was rejected. Required field, reviewed weekly.
Recurring forum to review the handoff itself. Weekly pipeline review, both teams in the room.
Both teams measured against the same revenue number. Comp aligned to pipeline + closed-won, not silo'd activity.
A defined, regular rhythm — or none of this works.
Who meets, when, about what. Without a cadence, the framework is a poster. With one, it's an operating system.
Cadence plan
Define who's in the room and what they decide. The framework only works if there's a regular operating rhythm between Sales and Marketing.
Before you ship.
Tick each only if both VPs would say yes without flinching. Below, the anti-patterns to actively avoid.