Sales Accepted Lead
A Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) is a marketing-passed lead that the sales team has reviewed and formally agreed to work. It sits between a marketing-qualified lead and a sales-qualified one: sales confirms the contact meets the shared quality bar and commits to follow up, but has not yet fully qualified it as an opportunity.
The SAL stage exists to enforce accountability at the marketing-to-sales handoff. By requiring sales to accept or reject each lead against agreed criteria, teams get a clear signal of lead quality and can spot gaps in their service-level agreement. A high rejection rate points to misaligned targeting or scoring.
In the funnel, an SAL typically follows a Marketing Qualified Lead and precedes a Sales Qualified Lead. A common pitfall is skipping the SAL step entirely, which hides whether sales is actually acting on the leads marketing delivers.
Last updated: 14 June 2026