Today’s demand generation marketers are facing increasing pressure to identify qualified leads for sales that drive growth and revenue for their organization. To meet these goals, they invest in marketing campaigns to catch the attention of their audience, create content to nurture top-of-the-funnel leads, and find new tools that promise to improve their conversion rate. But after spending all this time and money, why are only 42 percent of MQLs accepted by sales?

Well, one of the most common reasons is poor sales and marketing alignment. And while it sounds like an easy problem to fix, it’s actually easier said than done. For many years, demand generation marketers have relied on the MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) to measure their contribution to sales’ pipeline.

But the problem is, sales has never been measured on MQLs—they’re measured on closed deals and revenue. Not to mention, sales’ criteria for an SQL can look very different from a marketer’s definition of an MQL when teams operate in silos.

That’s why modern marketers are abandoning the MQL, and instead, are working with sales to find out what makes a great lead from their perspective. In this guide, we’ll explore why question-based interaction is changing the game for demand generation marketers, improving sales-marketing alignment, and helping marketers prove their ROI.