Sales-qualified lead (agency)
A sales-qualified lead is a prospect who has agreed to a discovery call and matches the ideal client profile on revenue band, service fit and decision authority. Only these count toward pipeline coverage. A contact who has not agreed to a conversation is a marketing lead, whatever the CRM calls them.
The qualification happens before the call rather than on it, through a short form or a screening conversation. Running discovery with unqualified prospects is how a founder spends two days a week selling to people who cannot buy.
Hold the definition fixed across months. Loosening it when pipeline is thin produces a coverage ratio that looks healthy and a close rate that collapses a quarter later.
Covered in depth
Predictable lead generation for agencies: what makes pipeline forecastable instead of luckyNot sure which of these is capping you?
Six questions, two minutes, and the diagnostic names the one constraint worth working on first.