The Dave Gerhardt Show · 28 Sep 2026 · From the week of 28 September
Is the MQL dead? (with Freya Ward, Headley Media)
These are notes on the conversation, checked against its transcript. The episode itself has the full discussion.
In brief
Freya Ward, associate managing director at Headley Media, and host Dasha discuss why the MQL has a bad reputation and what B2B teams can do about it. Freya argues the problem is the framing rather than the tactic, and describes renaming leads to qualified outbound leads, translating marketing results into the language of finance and sales, and building lead definitions from closed-won customer data. Dasha shares how her team uses weekly deal reviews, call reviews and BDs reporting into marketing to stay aligned with sales. The main argument is that alignment comes from concrete mechanisms such as a mandatory rejection-reason CRM field, a named owner for rejected leads, and a pilot with one SDR or BD.
For founders
- The MQL's reputation problem is often about how the term is framed, so a renamed lead category such as qualified outbound leads can change how sales treats it.
- Build the qualified lead definition from your won customers, starting with why they stay and how they found you, before setting criteria.
- Startups can set lead qualification boundaries from scratch because they have no legacy information or experience to undo, which Freya says lets them potentially be more agile and flexible, though the exercise works at enterprises too.
- Revisit lead definitions and criteria on a regular cadence, since the criteria set at the start of the year can drift as the market changes.
- Dasha says AI can reverse-engineer what a qualified lead meant historically from a year or more of CRM data, which a human should then check and pressure-test with the team.
For revenue leaders
- Make the sales rejection reason a mandatory CRM field with five or six buckets based on the most common reasons you suspect, so rejections become data marketing can act on.
- Give each rejection reason its own marketing workflow, and set an automatic reminder for the rep to re-engage 'not right now' leads after a fixed interval.
- Return a rejected lead to the rejecting rep if marketing later re-engages it, which Freya says makes sales more positive about sharing the feedback.
- Assign a named nurture owner for rejected and dormant leads so they do not become lead leakage that nobody works.
- Pilot alignment with one SDR or BD for three to six months, matched to your sales cycle, and have marketing shadow or review their calls.
What was said 23, most useful first
The MQL's bad reputation comes mainly from how the term is framed, not from the tactic itself. Listen
Freya Ward, associate managing director at Headley Media, says every B2B marketer she speaks to has a different definition of an SQL or MQL, and that saying marketing leads don't work is an easy thing for sales to say. She argues that marketers who join the debate about the term damage the reputation of marketing with internal stakeholders.
“I believe the reputation is associated with the framing of it as opposed to the actual tactic itself.”
A weekly session where reps replay recorded sales calls shows marketing how the product is being sold. Listen
Dasha says each week a rep opens a recorded call in Gong and plays it at 1.25x speed, and the team pauses to give feedback and ask questions. Marketers attend to see how sales describes the product, which objections come up, and how it is sold. She says this information shapes much of her team's content.
“they'll play a meeting on one point two five x speed that they've done”
Having BDs report into marketing splits the funnel into pipeline generation owned by marketing and conversion owned by sales. Listen
Dasha says her BDs report into marketing, which has worked well for her team. Marketing is responsible for generating pipeline, and sales is responsible for taking that pipeline and converting it into closed revenue. She says BDs get interested people on the phone for the sales team to convert.
“we have Bd that report into marketing, which has worked really well for us.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Build the qualified lead definition from your won customers, starting with why they stay and how they found you. Listen
Freya says the first place to look is sales success data, including speaking to successful customers. She suggests asking how they originally found the company, why they keep coming back, what the company does that competitors don't, and whether the account manager or the price is the reason. She also suggests asking lapsed accounts the same questions, since knowing where you went wrong matters as much as knowing what works.
“I would look initially in that success data.”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
Make the sales rejection reason a mandatory CRM field with five or six buckets. Listen
Freya says the sales leader should agree to one mandatory CRM field with five or six rejection reasons, based on the most common reasons the team suspects. At Headley Media the top four are ghosted, not right now, no budget and gone with a competitor, and each one signals the lead is not at the right stage. She says the field makes reps accountable and breaks a hypothetical 60 percent rejection rate into smaller buckets that marketing can act on.
“create one simple mandatory field in the sales Crm.”
Renaming MQLs to qualified outbound leads tells sales how to treat them. Listen
At Headley Media, leads are called qualified outbound leads. Qualified signals that the lead meets the ideal customer criteria, and outbound tells reps to work the lead the way they would a prospecting call rather than an inbound request. Freya says clients who made the same rename saw better internal relationships and communication.
“qualified outbound leads sets an expectations for the sales team”
Marketers need to translate their work into the language of finance, the C-suite and sales. Listen
Freya says being bilingual means internal fluency rather than foreign languages: marketers should present achievements, goals and tactics in terms the recipient understands. She points listeners to a Hallam article by Gareth James on getting brand budgets signed off by finance. She argues that this also limits role creep, where people outside marketing assume they could do the job.
“So marketers need to be able to speak finance.”
Keep operational marketing metrics inside the marketing team and report results to stakeholders in their terms. Listen
Freya separates operational metrics such as site traffic and share of search, which belong inside marketing, from output and results, which should be explained in terms stakeholders understand. She says over-explaining marketing measures to people outside marketing makes the role creep problem worse. Dasha says her leadership update focuses on pipeline because AEs need it to hit their number, while her marketing team reviews traffic and share of search.
“there's the operational and tactical, site elements, which absolutely should be discussed inside of the marketing department”
Revisit lead definitions and criteria on a regular cadence rather than once a year. Listen
Freya says teams that are still working from the criteria they set at the start of the year may be missing how much the B2B landscape has changed. She recommends checking sales pushback and lead leakage, then refining the qualification criteria before leads are handed over. She says this cadence may matter even more than rebranding the lead.
“if you're working off of the same definitions criteria touch points and metrics that you were at the top of the year.”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
A lead from a LinkedIn campaign and a lead from a contact form should not be handled the same way by sales. Listen
Freya says that if a rep treats a lead from a LinkedIn campaign the same way as one who filled in a website contact form, they are ignoring that the two buyers are in different mindsets. She adds that tech buyers do not usually want to displace a competitor on a large deal based on one piece of content or a LinkedIn message.
“if you treat a lead that's come through a linkedin campaign, for example, in the same way that you treat a lead that's filled out contact us form on your website, they're not in the same head space.”
Marketing can sit in the weekly deal review as an active participant. Listen
Dasha says her company of about a hundred people, with roughly fifteen in marketing and sales combined, runs a weekly deal review that covers every deal in the funnel with sales, with marketing taking an active part. She first led it herself, asking reps how deals were going and what the risks were, and has since stepped back so that she and other marketers sit in on it. She says this shows where deals fall apart and which stage is causing trouble.
“we have a weekly deal review where we review every deal at our funnel with the sales team and marketing is an active participant in that.”
A short daily sales stand-up with marketers attending keeps the two teams in step. Listen
Dasha says every morning starts with a sales stand-up, where each rep says what they are working on that day and raises any questions or blockers, and her marketers take part too. She says her team is small enough to do this easily, but she believes a version of it works at any team size.
“every rep just says, here's what I'm doing today.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Dasha's team changes its messaging and demo approach every week rather than waiting for a quarterly review. Listen
Dasha says her team is revising its messaging, its demo approach and parts of its strategy every week, using what it learns from sales conversations. She questions why teams would wait a quarter to revisit their approach when they already hold insight they could act on now.
“Every single week, we are changing our messaging.”
BDs on cold calls hear the real objections earlier than anyone else in the company. Listen
Dasha says that because BDs are on the phones, they hear the real objections on cold calls much sooner than the rest of the company, and they have a volume of conversations no one else is having. She says this is one reason she likes BDs reporting into marketing.
“They're hearing the objections, the real objections on cold calls.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Dasha's CRM keeps all leads in one object with stages from identified to selecting, and outreach differs by stage. Listen
Dasha says her team keeps all contacts as one lead type in the CRM. Stages run from identified, which is totally cold, through aware, interested, considering and selecting. She says the value of reaching out is much higher for someone who is considering than for someone who has only been identified, so outreach should be planned by stage rather than treating every contact the same.
“And also, those levels indicate what is the value of reaching out.”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
Startups can set lead qualification boundaries from scratch because they have no legacy data to undo. Listen
Freya says the exercise of defining what makes a lead qualified applies to any company size. A startup has the advantage of no historical legacy information or experience to retrain, so it can set the boundaries and define success more flexibly, while large enterprises have to work through what they already have.
“you've got that opportunity to really set those boundaries and define what success looks like”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
AI can reverse-engineer what a qualified lead looked like historically from a year or more of CRM data. Listen
Dasha says a marketer with a year or more of data can use AI to work out what a qualified lead meant historically, then use human judgment to check it is looking at the right data. The output can be packaged into definitions and pressure-tested with the team in a room. She says her team has done everything Freya described in practice.
“we're living in a world where you can use Ai to actually tell you in reverse engineer what is success look like historically”
Each rejection reason triggers a different marketing workflow, and not right now gets a three-month re-engagement reminder. Listen
At Headley Media, ghosted leads go into a long multichannel workflow, while not right now is treated as warm nurture with content and an automatic reminder to the salesperson to re-engage after three months. Freya says the three-month interval came from their benchmarking, since clients tend to book quarter on quarter. Budget rejections go back into the marketing workflows as intelligence.
“we have it in our system that it automatically sets a reminder to the salesperson to re engage that contact in three months time.”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
A rejected lead returns to the rep who rejected it if marketing re-engages it. Listen
Freya says Headley Media told its sales team that when marketing re-engages a lead a rep rejected, the lead comes back to that rep, arriving warmer and with rapport already built. She says this makes sales see the feedback process as a benefit to them, and the field soon becomes routine. Dasha says this is better than the lead being round-robined to someone else.
“it comes back to the salesperson that rejected it.”
Give rejected and dormant leads a named owner, or they become lead leakage that nobody works. Listen
Freya says if nurturing is nobody's responsibility, leads go into a workflow and are then dropped. A nurture manager analyses the workflows, optimises the campaigns and checks rejection reasons with sales. She says where this has been done, re-engagement rose, which brought down cost per lead and cost per acquisition and built more rapport with sales.
“But assigning a nurture manager.”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
The nurture owner does not have to be a new hire, and a solo marketer can use AI to build the workflows. Listen
Freya says the nurture role can be an added responsibility for an existing marketer, and a one-person team can use AI to help build the workflows. A dedicated hire could also take on legacy CRM data and cross-sell and upsell, since she says many enterprise clients only focus on net-new accounts and most CRMs hold stagnant data.
“I don't think it has to be an additional hire.”
An AI agent in Slack could roll up rejection reasons weekly and tag the responsible rep, with a human reviewing the output. Listen
Dasha says that because headcount is hard to get approved, she would build a Claude agent in Slack, connected to HubSpot, rather than hire a nurture manager. The agent would run a weekly cadence, review the rejection reasons, tag the responsible rep and ask questions, and a human would oversee the output. She says this would need Claude admin access, and she plans to take the idea back to her team. Freya agrees that AI output should always be checked.
“I would probably just create a Claude agent inside of Slack”
Pick one SDR or BD as an ally and pilot joint alignment work with them for three to six months. Listen
Freya says when marketing and sales feel far apart, a marketer can start with one SDR or BD. She suggests asking the sales manager for a pilot of three to six months, matched to the length of the sales cycle. Marketing should share content with context on the stage and pain points it reflects, ask to shadow calls or get recordings and transcripts, and show the rep how the data helps them. Once the rep books more meetings, she says AEs will want the same support.
“I wanna run a pilot with this individual for three months, six months.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this