MQL vs SQL statistics at a glance
| Category | Statistic | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion | B2B SaaS clients convert 13% of MQLs into SQLs, in agency client data from 2019 to 2025 | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Conversion | MQL to SQL rates run from 10% (legal, real estate) to 26% (business insurance, HVAC) across 30 industries | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Channel | SEO-sourced B2B SaaS MQLs become SQLs 51% of the time; PPC-sourced MQLs 26% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Funnel | About 27 SEO leads or 80 PPC leads per closed-won SaaS deal, multiplying one agency's stage rates (no stated sample; assumes stage independence) | Computed from First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Funnel | A lead-centric process built on MQLs converts less than 1% of inquiries into closed-won deals | Forrester, 2022 |
| Timing | MQL to SQL takes 92 days on average, down from 107; SQL to closed-won takes 52 days (gated report, cited via coverage) | Dreamdata via PPC Land, 2026 |
| Timing | 81% of the B2B customer journey happens outside the sales pipeline, up from 70% | Dreamdata, 2026 |
| Handoff | 14.1% of demo form submissions are disqualified; 66.7% of qualified ones book a meeting | Chili Piper, 2025 |
| Handoff | The median SDR meeting quota is 10 a month, down 40% since 2018, and only 60% of SDRs hit it | The Bridge Group, 2025 |
| Alignment | 93.8% of marketers saw lead quality improve in 2025; 68% of sales pros said so in HubSpot's separate 2025 sales survey | HubSpot, 2026 and HubSpot, 2025 |
| Buying | A typical B2B buying decision involves 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers | Forrester, 2026 |
| Buying | 94% of buying groups rank a preferred vendor before first contact with a seller | 6sense, 2025 |
| Data | 76% of CRM users say less than half of their CRM data is accurate and complete | Validity, 2025 |
What is the difference between an MQL, a SAL, an SQL and an opportunity?
The difference between an MQL and an SQL is who has judged the lead: marketing qualifies an MQL on fit and engagement, while a salesperson qualifies an SQL after checking need, budget and intent.
- A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a contact whose fit and engagement meet a threshold that marketing sets, usually through a lead score, before any salesperson has looked at it.
- A sales accepted lead (SAL) is an MQL that the sales team has reviewed and agreed to work, which is the formal moment of handoff.
- A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a lead that a salesperson has spoken to and judged to have a real need, budget and intent to buy.
- An opportunity is an SQL that sales has entered into the pipeline as a potential deal with a value and an expected close date.
The MQL vs SQL split matters because it decides who owns a lead on any given day. Marketing gets measured up to the MQL, sales from the SQL, and the SAL is the signature in between. Teams that skip the SAL stage lose the only record of whether sales ever looked at a lead, so a missing SAL is the first thing to check when an MQL to SQL rate looks too low.
The SAL stage comes from the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall, which Forrester bought and in 2021 relaunched as the B2B Revenue Waterfall (Forrester, May 2021). Benchmark providers don't share one definition, and the table below shows how much the definitions move.
| Source | How it defines the stage | Source |
|---|---|---|
| First Page Sage, industry report | MQL: showed purchase intent (a form or email) and can afford the product. SQL: vetted by a salesperson as a good fit and has met or booked a meeting. Client data 2019 to 2025, no sample size given. | First Page Sage, updated December 2025 |
| First Page Sage, SaaS funnel report | MQL: a lead matching the target market or persona. SQL: shows product desirability, budget fit and active sales engagement. Opportunity: contract in hand. 50+ SaaS clients over a decade. | First Page Sage, June 2025 |
| First Page Sage, lead to MQL report | Lead: any visitor who submits contact details. MQL: a lead that matches the target market and buyer personas. Ten years of agency clients. | First Page Sage, August 2025 |
| Chili Piper | Qualified: a demo form submission that passes the customer's own routing rules. Measured on nearly 4 million submissions in 2024. | Chili Piper, February 2025 |
The one test I apply to any MQL to SQL benchmark: does the SQL require a meeting? If it does, the rate measures your sales calendar as much as your leads. If it doesn't, you're comparing your number with a stage that ends earlier than yours, and it'll flatter the benchmark every time. Keep that in mind for the conversion tables that follow.
What is the average MQL to SQL conversion rate?
The average MQL to SQL conversion rate for B2B SaaS is 13%, according to First Page Sage's analysis of its agency client data from 2019 to 2025, with industries ranging from 10% to 26%.
| Industry | MQL to SQL rate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Business Insurance | 26% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| HVAC | 26% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| eCommerce | 23% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Pharmaceutical | 21% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Manufacturing | 16% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Cybersecurity | 15% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Software Development | 14% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| B2B SaaS | 13% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| IT & Managed Services | 13% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Fintech | 11% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Legal Services | 10% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| Real Estate | 10% | First Page Sage, 2025 |
Source: First Page Sage, MQL to SQL Conversion Rate by Industry, published October 2024, updated December 2025. The agency describes its method in one sentence and gives no sample size.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| First Page Sage's separate SaaS funnel report, drawn from 50+ SaaS clients, puts B2B SaaS MQL to SQL at 26% to 51% by channel and 32% to 40% by target company size, every figure at least double the 13% in its industry report. Neither report publishes a sample size. | First Page Sage, June 2025 |
| The average lead to MQL conversion rate is 31% across industries, channels and page types; B2B SaaS sits at 39% and construction at 17%. | First Page Sage, August 2025 |
| The average website conversion rate to a qualified lead or sale is 5.13% across 110 million sessions and 5 million conversions in 13 industries; software converts at 7.6%. | Ruler Analytics, May 2026 |
| In legal services 56.3% of conversions are phone calls and in professional services 52.6%, which lead-scoring models built on form fills never see. | Ruler Analytics, May 2026 |
Three things move a published MQL to SQL conversion rate more than lead quality does. The first is whether the SQL requires a held or booked meeting, as First Page Sage's industry report does. The second is who sets the MQL threshold: a lead score that fires on a single whitepaper download creates more MQLs and a lower rate. The third is the client mix behind the average, which none of the agency reports publish. Ruler Analytics' call data adds a fourth for service businesses: when more than half of conversions arrive by phone, a form-based MQL model undercounts the leads that reach sales.
The 13% and the 26% to 51% come from the same agency, for the same kind of company. The definitions don't explain the gap either: the funnel report counts any persona-fit lead as an MQL, which should drag its rate down, yet its rates come out two to four times higher. When one firm's own reports disagree that much, the number describes its client mix more than your funnel. If you set a target from a benchmark, copy its definition and population too, or you'll spend a quarter explaining a gap that never existed. Channel is where the spread gets useful, and that's the next table.
How does MQL to SQL conversion vary by channel and company size?
SEO-sourced B2B SaaS MQLs convert to SQLs at 51%, nearly twice the 26% of PPC-sourced MQLs, in First Page Sage's funnel data from 50+ SaaS clients, mostly with $10 million to $100 million in revenue.
| Stage (B2B SaaS) | SEO | Webinar | PPC | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visitor to lead | 2.1% | 0.9% | 0.9% | 2.2% | 0.7% |
| Lead to MQL | 41% | 43% | 44% | 38% | 36% |
| MQL to SQL | 51% | 46% | 39% | 30% | 26% |
| SQL to opportunity | 49% | 48% | 42% | 41% | 38% |
| Opportunity to close | 36% | 32% | 40% | 39% | 35% |
Source: First Page Sage, B2B SaaS Funnel Conversion Benchmarks, updated June 2025. Agency client data; opportunity is defined as "contract in hand", later than most CRMs define it.
| Stage (B2B SaaS, by target company size) | Small ($1M to $10M) | SMB ($10M to $100M) | Mid-market ($100M to $1B) | Enterprise ($1B+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lead to MQL | 37% | 41% | 40% | 34% |
| MQL to SQL | 32% | 39% | 39% | 40% |
| SQL to opportunity | 40% | 42% | 46% | 36% |
| Opportunity to close | 46% | 39% | 35% | 31% |
Source: First Page Sage, 2025.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| Across all industries, client referrals convert 56% of leads to MQLs and executive events 54%, against 19% for webinars and 14% for outdoor advertising. This is a different, broader client base than the SaaS funnel above, where webinars convert at 44%. | First Page Sage, August 2025 |
| Only 5% of business buyers are in the market for a given service in any quarter and about 20% in a year, because companies switch providers roughly every five years. | Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for the LinkedIn B2B Institute, 2021 (dated) |
The company-size table runs against intuition. Enterprise-focused SaaS converts MQLs to SQLs at 40% in First Page Sage's data, higher than the 32% for small-business buyers, yet its opportunities close at 31% against 46%. Enterprise leads are harder to reach and easier to qualify; small-business leads qualify loosely and then decide fast. An MQL vs SQL target that ignores deal size will reward the wrong segment.
Channel matters more at the MQL to SQL step than anywhere else in the SaaS table. SEO and email leads asked for you; PPC and LinkedIn leads were often caught mid-scroll, and the 5% in-market figure explains why so many of them aren't ready for a salesperson. I'd stop reporting blended MQL to SQL rates entirely and split them by source. The next section turns these rates into a lead count.
How many leads does it take to close one B2B deal?
A B2B SaaS company needs about 27 SEO leads, 33 email leads or 80 PPC leads per closed-won deal, if you multiply First Page Sage's stage rates and assume every stage applies to the same cohort. Those rates are agency client data with no published sample, and the agency doesn't confirm the cohort assumption.
| Channel (B2B SaaS) | Lead to close rate | Leads per closed deal | Visitors per closed deal |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | 3.7% | 27 | about 1,290 |
| 3.0% | 33 | not computed | |
| Webinar | 2.9% | 35 | not computed |
| 1.8% | 55 | about 2,490 | |
| PPC | 1.2% | 80 | about 11,470 |
Computed from First Page Sage, 2025. The arithmetic is in the method section below. By target company size, the same multiplication gives about 38 leads per deal for SMB-focused SaaS and 66 for enterprise-focused SaaS.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| The typical conversion rate from inquiry to closed-won in a lead-centric process built on MQLs is less than 1%, according to Forrester's waterfall benchmarks. | Forrester, April 2022 (dated) |
| Win rates fall with target size in First Page Sage's SaaS data: opportunities close at 46% for small-company buyers and 31% for enterprise buyers. | First Page Sage, 2025 |
| The top 14% of sellers generate 80% of revenue, and involving a decision-maker early lifts win rates by 55%, in Ebsta and Pavilion's analysis of 655,000 opportunities. | Ebsta / Pavilion, 2025 |
Forrester's under 1% and the agency's 1.2% to 3.7% aren't comparable: Forrester counts every inquiry, while First Page Sage starts from a form fill and ends at "contract in hand". Keep them as two separate facts.
The same multiplication works on your own CRM, and that's where it becomes useful. Pull 12 months of leads by source, count how many reached each stage, and divide. If your paid search leads close at a third of your SEO rate, as they do in the agency data, the fair cost comparison is per closed deal, not per lead.
Twenty-seven versus eighty is the number I'd bring to a budget meeting, with the caveat printed on the slide. Paid leads look cheap until you divide by what closes. The multiplication is only honest because every rate comes from one dataset with one set of definitions; do it with rates from three different vendors and you'll get a precise, meaningless number. Stage timing is where the next surprise sits.
How long does it take an MQL to become an SQL?
The average B2B lead takes 92 days to move from MQL to SQL, down from 107 days a year earlier, and 52 days from SQL to closed-won, according to Dreamdata's 2026 LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report as covered by PPC Land on 10 March 2026.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| The average B2B customer journey takes 272 days from first touch to revenue, up from 211 days in the previous report. | Dreamdata via PPC Land, March 2026 |
| MQL to SQL takes 92 days (from 107) and SQL to closed-won 52 days (from 62), across 66 million sessions and 3.5 million customer journeys. | Dreamdata via PPC Land, March 2026 |
| 81% of the B2B customer journey now happens outside the sales pipeline, up 11 points from 70%, across 66 million sessions and 3.5 million journeys. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| The average B2B customer journey now carries 88 touchpoints, up from 76, and involves 10 stakeholders, up from 6.8. | Dreamdata, March 2026 |
| Buyers split their journey 60/40 between independent research and seller engagement in 2025, up from 70/30, and the average buying cycle shortened from about 11 months to 10. | 6sense Buyer Experience Report, November 2025 |
Dreamdata's full report is gated, so the day counts are cited from PPC Land's coverage dated 10 March 2026, which describes them as averages. Dreamdata's own announcement confirms the 81%, the touchpoints and the sample but doesn't print the stage timings; the 272-day figure also appears on Dreamdata's customer journey page. How fast sales calls back once a lead converts is a separate topic, covered with its own data on the lead response time statistics page.
The Dreamdata and 6sense figures agree on direction even though they measure different things. Dreamdata counts days from a first tracked touch in its customers' data; 6sense asks buyers how they split their time. Both say the part of the journey marketing influences is growing and the part sales sees is getting shorter. That puts more weight on the MQL to SQL stage, because it's the last point where a lead can be lost before a salesperson ever speaks to it.
The MQL to SQL wait is 1.8 times longer than the entire sales pipeline. That's the gap nobody owns: marketing thinks the lead is done, sales hasn't accepted it, and it sits for three months. When I audit a funnel, this is where I look first, before anyone touches the lead score. The handoff itself is the next section.
What happens at the handoff between marketing and sales?
About 57% of demo form submissions end as a booked meeting, computed here from Chili Piper's 2024 platform data: 14.1% are disqualified and 66.7% of the qualified rest book through instant scheduling.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| 14.1% of demo form submissions were disqualified in 2024, 561,977 in total, across nearly 4 million submissions on Chili Piper's platform. | Chili Piper, February 2025 |
| 66.7% of qualified submissions book a meeting when the form offers instant scheduling, against what Chili Piper calls an industry average of 30%, without naming that figure's source. | Chili Piper, February 2025 |
| Marketing software companies disqualify 23% of demo requests, the strictest rate; hospitality software disqualifies 6%. | Chili Piper, February 2025 |
| Qualified demo requests typically convert to booked meetings at 50% to 60%; real estate software qualified 93.84% of requests and booked 73.78%, from RevenueHero platform data on thousands of requests. | RevenueHero, May 2025 |
| The median SDR quota is 10 meetings a month, down 40% since 2018, and 60% of SDRs hit quota, the lowest on record, in a survey of 351 B2B companies. | The Bridge Group, February 2025 |
| Each SDR generates $3.78 million in pipeline a year, up from $2.83 million in 2022, and holds 4.1 quality conversations a day out of 112 activities. | The Bridge Group, February 2025 |
| 93.8% of 1,500+ marketers saw lead quality improve over the past year in HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing. | HubSpot, April 2026 |
| 68% of 1,000+ sales professionals said lead quality improved year over year in HubSpot's 2025 State of Sales. | HubSpot, September 2025 |
| Sellers spend 40% of their time selling, in a survey of 4,050 sales professionals in 22 countries fielded in August and September 2025; and 74% of sales professionals are focusing on data cleansing. | Salesforce State of Sales, February 2026 |
| 76% of CRM users say less than half of their CRM data is accurate and complete, companies lose an average of 16 deals a quarter to bad data, and 37% regularly fabricate data to meet leadership expectations. | Validity, July 2025 |
The two HubSpot lead-quality numbers come from separate surveys of different populations a year apart, so the 93.8% and the 68% aren't a measured gap. They are two facts that point the same way.
The Bridge Group data explains part of the handoff squeeze. SDR meeting quotas have fallen 40% since 2018 while pipeline per SDR rose to $3.78 million, so each accepted meeting now carries more value and SDRs have less reason to work a weak MQL. Chili Piper's unsourced 30% industry average for booking without instant scheduling hints at the cost of that friction from the buyer's side.
Marketing grades its own leads more kindly than sales does, and I'd expect that in any company that pays marketing on MQL volume. The Validity number worries me more: when respondents say 37% of staff regularly fabricate CRM data, your MQL to SQL rate is partly fiction. Fix the definition and the data before the scoring model. Forrester reached a similar conclusion five years ago, which is the next section.
Why did Forrester move away from the MQL?
Forrester moved away from the MQL because more than 80% of B2B buying decisions involve a buying group of more than three people, Forrester analyst Terry Flaherty wrote in April 2022. Forrester had already relaunched its waterfall in May 2021 around buying groups and opportunities instead of individual leads, and Flaherty put inquiry-to-close in MQL-led processes at under 1%.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| Forrester relaunched the SiriusDecisions Demand Unit Waterfall as the B2B Revenue Waterfall in May 2021, built around buying groups and opportunities, including renewal, cross-sell and upsell. | Forrester press release, May 2021 (dated) |
| 95% of consensus purchases involve three or more people across two or more departments, the finding Forrester used to justify the change. | Forrester, May 2021 (dated) |
| Over 80% of buying decisions are made by a buying group of more than three people, and lead scoring points are "typically based on guesses", in Forrester's words. | Forrester, April 2022 (dated) |
| The typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers; procurement is a decision-maker in 53% of buying cycles, and more than 60% of buyers use a trial. | Forrester, January 2026 |
| 94% of buying groups ranked their preferred vendors before first contact with a seller, and 77% bought from that early favourite, in a survey of 4,000+ buyers. | 6sense, November 2025 |
| 79% of software buyers had heard of the product before they started researching, and 67% bought their first choice, in a survey of 1,862 buyers. | TrustRadius 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect, July 2026 |
The Forrester figures from 2021 and 2022 are older than two years and marked as dated; Forrester's 2026 buying study updates the buying group side. If you're rebuilding reporting around accounts rather than contacts, the marketing attribution statistics page covers what that does to credit.
Forrester did not abolish qualification. The Revenue Waterfall still has stages; it moves the unit of measurement from a person to an opportunity with a buying group attached. For teams that still report MQL vs SQL numbers, the practical change is to count how many people from one account have engaged before calling it qualified, which is closer to how the 6sense and TrustRadius buyers describe their own process.
Forrester's argument holds up better in 2026 than when it was made. One person downloading four whitepapers says little when 13 people decide and 94% of groups pick a favourite before talking to you. I still use the MQL as a plumbing metric; I stopped using it as a target. Money is the last piece of the story.
What does it cost to turn MQLs into revenue?
B2B SaaS companies spent a median $2.00 in sales and marketing to win $1.00 of new customer annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2024, up 14% on the year, according to Benchmarkit's 2025 SaaS Performance Metrics.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| The median New CAC Ratio, sales and marketing expense per $1 of new customer ARR, rose 14% to $2.00 in 2024. Benchmarkit's summary page doesn't state the sample size. | Benchmarkit, 2025 |
| One SDR sources $3.78 million of pipeline a year on a median on-target pay of $80,000, in The Bridge Group's survey of 351 companies. | The Bridge Group, February 2025 |
| Paid search leads close at 1.2% of leads in First Page Sage's SaaS data against 3.7% for SEO, so a PPC lead has to cost about a third of an SEO lead to reach the same cost per deal. | Computed from First Page Sage, 2025 |
I haven't published a cost per SQL figure on this page. The public cost-per-lead benchmarks I found come from different populations than the conversion data above, and dividing one by the other would mix vendors in exactly the way this page warns against.
Benchmarkit's $2.00 is the number to hold MQL programmes against. If sales and marketing together spend two dollars for each dollar of new ARR, a channel whose leads close at 1.2% instead of 3.7% has to be cheap enough per lead to make up the gap, or it quietly pushes that ratio up.
Cost per MQL is the metric that made MQLs popular, and it's the one that misleads most. Price the lead at the SQL or the closed deal, using conversion rates from your own CRM, and the cheap channels often stop being cheap. The arithmetic behind every computed number here is next.
How we calculated the original numbers
Four figures on this page don't appear in the sources. Here is the arithmetic, so you can check it or swap in your own rates.
- 27 vs 80 leads per closed-won deal. First Page Sage's B2B SaaS funnel report gives four stage rates per channel from one client dataset with one set of definitions. SEO: 0.41 x 0.51 x 0.49 x 0.36 = 3.69% of leads close, so 1 / 0.0369 = 27 leads per deal. PPC: 0.36 x 0.26 x 0.38 x 0.35 = 1.24%, so 80 leads. Email gives 33, webinar 35, LinkedIn 55. Visitors per deal divide leads by visitor-to-lead rate: 27 / 0.021 = about 1,290 for SEO and 80 / 0.007 = about 11,470 for PPC. The multiplication assumes each stage rate applies to the same cohort that passed the stage before, which the agency doesn't state. Treat it as an order of magnitude.
- 2x to 4x: one agency, two sets of MQL to SQL rates. First Page Sage's industry report gives B2B SaaS 13% (MQL = purchase intent plus budget; SQL = vetted by sales and met or booked a meeting; client data 2019 to 2025). Its SaaS funnel report gives 26% (PPC) to 51% (SEO) by channel and 32% to 40% by company size (MQL = persona fit; SQL = desirable, in budget and speaking with sales; 50+ clients over a decade). 26 / 13 = 2.0 and 51 / 13 = 3.9. Neither report gives a sample size, and the looser MQL in the funnel report should lower its rate, so the gap is an inconsistency between the reports, not a measured difference in performance.
- 57% of demo form fills become booked meetings. Chili Piper reports 14.1% of submissions disqualified and 66.7% of qualified submissions booked. (1 - 0.141) x 0.667 = 0.573. Both rates come from the same platform and year, but Chili Piper doesn't say they describe exactly the same submissions, and the 66.7% covers forms using its scheduler. The result counts booked meetings, not held ones.
- 1.8x: the MQL to SQL wait vs the sales pipeline. Dreamdata's 2026 report gives 92 days from MQL to SQL and 52 days from SQL to closed-won. 92 / 52 = 1.77. Subtracting both from the 272-day journey leaves about 128 days before a contact becomes an MQL; averages from different cohorts only add approximately, so read 128 as a rough figure.
Each original number was checked against the other live pages in this series before publishing; none of them appears on another page.
What the 2026 numbers say
MQL to SQL conversion is a definition, not a benchmark. One agency publishes 13% in one report and 26% to 51% in another for B2B SaaS. Before you compare your rate with anyone's, find out whether their SQL needs a meeting, a budget check or just a sales rep's nod. Most published rates don't say, and that should end the argument about who's "below benchmark".
The expensive part of the funnel is the wait. Ninety-two days between MQL and SQL, against 52 days for the whole sales pipeline, in Dreamdata's data. Buyers pick a favourite before they talk to anyone, 94% of the time according to 6sense. A lead that sits unworked for three months isn't being nurtured; it's being handed to the vendor the buyer already preferred.
Channel beats scoring. SEO and email MQLs convert to SQLs at 46% to 51%, paid search at 26%, in the same dataset. That's a bigger spread than most lead-scoring models produce, and it costs nothing to report. For the parts of the journey that never show up as a lead at all, see the dark funnel statistics, and for the rest of the series, the statistics hub.
FAQ
What is a good MQL to SQL conversion rate?
13% is the average MQL to SQL conversion rate for B2B SaaS in First Page Sage's agency client data from 2019 to 2025, with industries ranging from 10% to 26%. The same agency's SaaS funnel report shows 26% for PPC leads and 51% for SEO leads. A good rate depends on your SQL definition, so compare against a source that defines the stage the way you do.
What is the difference between MQL and SQL?
49% to 74% of B2B SaaS MQLs never become SQLs, depending on channel, in First Page Sage's 2025 funnel benchmarks. An MQL is a lead marketing has qualified on fit and engagement; an SQL is one a salesperson has vetted for need, budget and intent. The SAL sits between them as the moment sales accepts the lead.
How many leads does it take to close a B2B deal?
About 27 SEO leads or 80 paid search leads per closed-won SaaS deal, computed here from First Page Sage's 2025 same-source stage rates. The figure assumes each stage rate applies to the same cohort. Forrester puts inquiry to close in MQL-led funnels at less than 1% (2022).
How long does it take an MQL to become an SQL?
92 days on average, down from 107, according to Dreamdata's 2026 LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report as covered by PPC Land. SQL to closed-won takes 52 days, and the whole journey 272 days. That makes the MQL to SQL wait 1.8 times longer than the sales pipeline.
Did Forrester get rid of the MQL?
In 2021 Forrester relaunched its waterfall as the opportunity-based B2B Revenue Waterfall, and in 2022 it wrote that MQL-led processes convert under 1% of inquiries to closed deals. Forrester's case rests on buying groups: over 80% of decisions involve more than three people. Its 2026 study counts 13 internal stakeholders per decision.
What percentage of demo requests turn into meetings?
57% of demo form submissions become booked meetings, computed here from Chili Piper's 2024 data on nearly 4 million submissions. Chili Piper found 14.1% are disqualified and 66.7% of the qualified rest book a meeting through its scheduler. It puts the industry average at 30% but doesn't name that figure's source.
Sources
- First Page Sage, MQL to SQL Conversion Rate by Industry (updated December 2025)
- First Page Sage, B2B SaaS Funnel Conversion Benchmarks (updated June 2025)
- First Page Sage, Lead-to-MQL Conversion Rate Benchmarks by Industry and Channel (updated August 2025)
- Ruler Analytics, Conversion Rate Benchmarks 2026 (May 2026)
- Chili Piper, 2025 Demo Form Conversion Rate Benchmark Report (February 2025)
- RevenueHero, The State of Demo Conversion Rates in 2025 (May 2025)
- The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions and Metrics: 2025 Research Report (February 2025)
- PPC Land, coverage of Dreamdata's LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report 2026 (March 2026)
- Dreamdata, B2B Customer Journey (updated September 2025) and Announcing the LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report 2026 (March 2026)
- Forrester, The Revenue Process Alignment Series, Part 1: The End of MQLs (April 2022)
- Forrester, Forrester Debuts Next-Generation B2B Revenue Waterfall (May 2021)
- Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2026 (January 2026)
- 6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report press release (November 2025)
- HubSpot, 2026 State of Marketing (April 2026)
- HubSpot, 2025 State of Sales Report (September 2025)
- Salesforce, State of Sales Report 2026 announcement (February 2026)
- Validity, State of CRM Data Management in 2025 press release (July 2025)
- Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your products (2021)
- Benchmarkit, 2025 SaaS Performance Metrics (2025)
- Ebsta and Pavilion, 2025 GTM Benchmarks (2025)
- TrustRadius (HG Insights), 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect Report (July 2026)
Methodology. Numbers were collected in September 2026 and checked against the original publisher's page, not against other statistics roundups. Most MQL to SQL benchmarks online come from agency or vendor client data; each is labelled with whose data it is and how that source defines the stage. Leads-per-deal figures multiply stage rates from a single dataset only. Dreamdata's gated 2026 report is cited through PPC Land's coverage for the stage timings and through Dreamdata's own announcement for everything else. Gartner's 2026 buyer survey was excluded because its press release could not be fetched for verification. Last updated 24 September 2026.