Undefined lifecycle stages are where automation and AI scoring quietly go wrong. This playbook gets sales and marketing to one definition they both sign.

What this isA step-by-step playbook to define lifecycle stages and an MQL SLA that sales and marketing both sign.

You give itAn hour with sales and marketing, plus access to your MAP or CRM.

You get backAgreed stage definitions, an MQL handoff SLA, and the enforcement to back it.

The steps

  1. Get sales and marketing in one room. List every stage a record can be in today, first touch to closed-won. Write them all down, even the overlapping ones.
  2. Collapse to a shared minimum: Subscriber, Lead, MQL, Sales Accepted, SQL, Opportunity, Customer. Cut any stage nobody can define.
  3. Write a one-sentence definition for each stage that both teams sign. If you cannot define it in one sentence, it is not a stage.
  4. Define the MQL handoff SLA: when marketing passes an MQL, sales acts within a set number of hours, and either accepts it or rejects it with a reason. Put the reason codes in writing.
  5. Enforce it in the system. Map each stage to a field value, build the automation, and make the reject-reason field required. A definition that lives only in a doc is not enforced.
  6. Review monthly. Pull MQL-to-accepted rate and rejection reasons. If acceptance is low, the definition or the routing is wrong, not the leads.

Template to start from

Start a simple table with three columns: Stage, One-sentence definition, System field value. Fill one row per stage, get both team leads to initial it, then build exactly what the table says.