What’s the difference between a qualified lead and a sales-ready lead? Do you need to have all of the BANT requirements, or will three out of four criteria do? Does a lead need to be ‘nurtured’ before it’s sales-ready?

These are all complex questions to grapple with as a B2B marketing professional. The short cop-out answer is that ‘it depends.’ However, the real answer to ‘what is the definition of a sales-ready lead?’ is much simpler in my opinion.

I believe the definition of a ‘sales-ready’ lead is one that has been accepted by sales and is deemed ready to engage in direct selling activity. Before that point, you can call them whatever you want—prospect, raw inquiry, qualified lead, opportunity—but they’re not a sales-ready lead.

As you can see by my nifty demand gen funnel, there are many stages that a lead enters into. When a structured lead-capturing, scoring- and nurturing-methodology is followed by marketing, and the lead is passed onto sales and accepted, it is (or should be) officially ‘sales ready.’

Of course, leads can leapfrog over any of these stages, or get stuck in one of the categories, but until they have been accepted by sales in a CRM system or whatever your lead delivery mechanism is, they are not yet ready to buy.

I know there are many passionate opinions on this topic, so feel free to disagree with me. What do you think a sales-ready lead is?