The Rise and Fall of the MQL — Live Workshop Recording with Jon Miller
About this episode
This episode features a workshop discussing the shortcomings of the MQL metric in B2B marketing and explores alternative lead models.
The MQL is marketing's worst open secret. Everyone in the room knows the number is gamed. The leads are low-intent, the scoring is guesswork, and the pipeline isn't growing. Yet marketing keeps getting graded on the one metric nobody actually trusts. In this workshop, Carolyn and Amber sit down with Jon Miller to take apart the metric the entire B2B playbook still runs on and walk through anonymized customer data showing exactly what it costs. Hand raisers in this account converted 83X better than MQLs and qualified faster. The MQLs that didn't convert got worked for two months before anyone disqualified them. That's the drain nobody puts on a slide. What this workshop covers: Why the MQL became gospel and the moment a sound idea turned into a volume game sales learned to ignore The gumball machine fallacy: why "more budget in, more pipeline out" assumes a linear process that buying stopped being years ago Nonlinear buying, the dark funnel, and why one overwritten lead record erases the history you actually need Real customer data: MQLs accounted for under 6% of pipeline while hand raisers drove 39% of closed-won revenue Jon's three-tier lead model and why waiting for…
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