What Is SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)?

The funnel runs MQL, scored by marketing on behavior and fit, to SAL, sales accepts the lead as worth working, to SQL, sales has directly engaged the prospect and confirmed the qualification signals actually hold up in conversation. SQL is generally the handoff point most appointment-setting vendors are actually selling against, since a "qualified meeting" in this category usually implies the prospect has cleared something close to the SQL bar before the meeting gets booked.

There is a real, honest gap worth naming here. No fully worked, universally agreed definition of exactly what separates a booked meeting from a true SQL was found published anywhere in the category. Individual vendors use their own version of a qualification standard, Abstrakt's "Right Company, Right Contact, Right Timing" phrase is the clearest example found, but no vendor or third-party source publishes a neutral, comprehensive standard that applies across the category.

That absence is exactly why asking a vendor to define their own standard in specifics, in writing, matters more here than in categories where an agreed benchmark already exists.