Rearchitected DemandWaterfall™ AcronymsHere’s our reference guide for each acronym within the Marketing Qualification and Sales Qualification stages

TAL Teleprospecting Accepted Lead.

The first handoff of a prospect that occurs between marketing and a teleprospecting function should be governed by a service-level agreement. This requires a teleprospector to accept (and begin working) or reject a lead within a given timeframe.

AQL Automation Qualified Lead.

The stage where inquiries, both inbound and outbound, are loaded into the marketing automation platform. The AQL is the clearinghouse for capturing, cleansing, scoring and routing the best inquiries to downstream functions.

TQL Teleprospecting Qualified Lead.

Teleprospectors begin a well-defined process of outreach involving a mix of telephone and email touches. These touches are designed to gather information about a prospect and potentially get the prospect to commit to a next step.

TGL Teleprospecting Generated Lead.

In this stage, teleprospecting can run small-net fishing efforts to source new prospects, or cold call. Marketing typically works with teleprospecting to build small-net fishing efforts, including providing segmentation, list pulls, scripts, tools and collateral.

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SAL Sales Accepted Lead.

This stage involves the handoff between teleprospecting and field sales or the channel. This stage should be governed with a service-level agreement that requires sales to accept or reject the lead in a certain timeframe, with rejection occurring only for procedural reasons.

SGL Sales Generated Lead.

This stage involves sales reps or partners sourcing new leads on their own. These leads may come from networking, cold calling, attending local events or other mechanisms.

TQL Teleprospecting Qualified Lead. In this stage, after a series of telephone, email and/or face-to-face interactions, the sales resource will have enough evidence to determine whether an opportunity exists, with an anticipated dollar value and close date.

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