Smarketing: Why are my MQLs going up while my SQLs are going down?

One question I have been getting all thru my 20+ years of smarketing career is why are marketing-generated leads numbers trending up but the real opportunities coming down?

Some real & uncool reasons no one told you:

1. Someone downloading a well-produced infographics/cat video doesn’t a lead make. Ease of marketing automation & increased volume of marketing activities doesn’t necessarily drive increased opportunities.

2. Who is guarding the hencoop – defining your MQL & SQLs?
Is a vendor selling ‘committed’ MQLs doing the definition or is it a quota-carrying salesperson defining the SQL? Smart smarketers have well-defined & pre-agreed definitions + governance to ensure that Ms M & Mr S are speaking ‘with’ not ‘to’ each other!

3. Face it – the customer might hate your interruptive sales but might still love your funny commercial. With increasingly cacophonous me-too undifferentiated vendors, even if you are doing brilliant marketing, at the end of the day if your new baby is not really 10X better than the competition it won’t sell!

Agree?