Why Your MQLs Aren’t Converting: 3 Reasons (And What To Do About It in Q1)

It’s a familiar tension in almost every portco we work with: the marketing team is generating leads – sometimes quite a few – but sales isn’t converting them. Frustration builds on both sides. Marketing believes the leads are qualified. Sales feels they aren’t getting what they need. And no one’s quite sure how to bridge the gap.

Here’s what we’ve learned: MQLs struggle to convert for three main reasons. And once you understand these reasons, you can move from frustration to action and actually solve the problem.

Reason #1: You Don’t Have a Good ICP (Or You’re Not Communicating It)

The first and most critical issue? Most teams simply don’t have a well-defined Ideal Customer Profile. But even when they do have one, they’re not communicating it effectively across sales, marketing, and customer service.

Think about it. If marketing is targeting one type of customer, sales is expecting another, and customer service is dealing with yet another segment, how can you possibly have alignment? You can’t. Your ICP needs to be crystal clear, documented, and shared across every team that touches the customer.

When Craig Group works with clients, this is always where we start. Before tactics and campaigns. Because if you don’t know exactly who you’re trying to reach, everything else is just noise.

Reason #2: You’re Chasing Volume Over Quality

The second reason MQLs fail to convert is simple: teams go full volume mode. They want big numbers to report in meetings. They want to show growth in lead generation. So they optimize for quantity instead of quality.

But here’s what happens with that approach – sales gets buried. They’re spending enormous amounts of time and effort trying to convert leads that were never really qualified in the first place. It’s exhausting for them, and it’s a waste of resources for the company.

MQL definitions between sales and marketing are often completely misaligned. Marketing might consider someone an MQL because they downloaded a whitepaper. Sales expects an MQL to be someone who’s actively looking for a solution and has budget. That’s not the same thing. 

Reason #3: There’s a Mismatch in Expectations

This third reason ties everything together. There’s often a fundamental mismatch between what sales expects leads to be versus what marketing expects them to be.

Marketing might think they’re doing a great job generating interest and awareness. Sales thinks they should be getting people who are ready to buy. Neither is necessarily wrong – they’re just operating with completely different definitions and expectations.

This misalignment creates friction, resentment, and ultimately, poor conversion rates. A lead is only good if sales agrees it’s worth chasing. 

How Marketing Becomes a Revenue Partner

So what’s the solution? One of the things we do with all our clients at Craig Group is work rigorously on ICP and buyer journey. We don’t just document who the ideal customer profile is – we study what this customer actually does as a buyer. What’s their process? What triggers them to start looking? What information do they need at each stage?

Craig Group does this through workshops where we bring sales and marketing people together. You might be surprised, or maybe not, but many times sales and marketing don’t actually talk about this in an open, collaborative way.

When we facilitate these workshops, something shifts. Sales starts to feel like they’re part of the process. It’s not the CEO or CFO asking for an investment in marketing to get better brochures or more polished collateral. They’re not being told what to do or being handed leads they don’t want.

Instead, they really see the value of marketing. They see marketing as partners, not as a separate department that just dumps leads over the wall. This changes everything.

Where Conversion Actually Happens

Getting MQLs to convert isn’t primarily about better forms or higher-quality content, although that’s important too. It’s about alignment. It’s about having a shared understanding of who you’re targeting, what quality means, and what expectations should be on both sides.

It takes effort, honest conversations, and both teams sitting in the same room, literally or virtually, working through these issues together.

When you do nail your ICP, align on definitions, and build that partnership between sales and marketing? The conversion rates follow. Because you’re finally generating leads that both teams believe in.

And that’s when things start to actually work.

If you’re ready to build this kind of alignment in Q1, Craig Group can help. Visit craiggroup.io to get started.