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https://productled.com/product-qualified-leads/
A product qualified lead (PQL) is a lead who has experienced meaningful value using your product through a free trial or freemium model.
When you reach out to a PQL, they should have already experienced meaningful value in your product. This makes the sale easier because there's no need to sell the user on the value of the product.
Before we dive into how to identify a PQL, I wanted to take a second to list out what PQLs are NOT: PQLs are not people who upgrade their free plan; PQLs are not marketing qualified leads; Someone who signs up for a free trial does NOT qualify as a PQL;
To choose a successful PQL definition, it has to involve helping the user become successful in your product. I'll share a few great examples with you in a second.
What matters, however, is that you try to find behaviors that correlate with people upgrading.
To really nail down the ideal definition of a PQL, you need to know your value metrics. According to Patrick Campbell (the CEO and co-founder of Price Intelligently), the perfect value metric should align with your customers' needs, grow with them and be easy to wrap one's mind around.
No business should have the same product qualified lead definition.
Every business should be constantly refining what their PQL definition is and make sure it helps users experience meaningful value in the product. Here are just a few examples of PQL definitions from well-known brands: For Slack, a PQL is when an account reaches its 2,000 message limit; For Facebook, a PQL is once someone adds 7 friends; For Drift, a PQL is once someone has 100 conversations on their website;
As a result, PQLs close at significantly higher rates than MQLs because users understand the value of your product. It's not uncommon for PQLs to convert upwards of 20-30% in my experience working with B2B SaaS businesses.
As prospects utilize your application, they demonstrate buying intent based on product behaviors which can include: Product interest Number of users Features used Spending patterns Usage patterns Velocity - How fast a user or team is adopting your product
Once you have that in place, I recommend brainstorming a few PQL definitions as a start. Even if it's just a hypothesis at this point, it will come in handy when you test it in your business
I find that usage patterns are one of the easiest ways to define a PQL if you're short for time. At first, your PQL could be as simple as a user that logs in 10 times. This at least shows that the user is actively using the product and is coming back for a reason.
Now, the next step is to find out what they're coming back to do. Like I mentioned before, your PQL is meant to be a moving target. You can start with usage patterns but eventually, you want to get closer to pinning what the leading behaviors of someone who becomes a paying customer are
Once you have your PQL definition, you need to put the systems in place so that all teams can play an active role in generating more PQLs. This is not a solo sport. In this section, I break down some of the key metrics each team can be responsible for.
When setting up metrics for teams, I always recommend having both a quantity and a quality metric to ensure that each team isn't sacrificing quality in order to attain the quantity metric
important that it reflects that we're upgrading users that become and stay as successful customers.
One of the best parts about PQLs is that it aligns teams to focus on helping the user become successful in the product.
Updated Nov 16, 2019:
A product qualified lead (PQL) is a lead who has experienced meaningful value using your product through a free trial or freemium model.
When you reach out to a PQL, they should have already experienced meaningful value in your product. This makes the sale easier because there's no need to sell the user on the value of the product.
Before we dive into how to identify a PQL, I wanted to take a second to list out what PQLs are NOT: PQLs are not people who upgrade their free plan; PQLs are not marketing qualified leads; Someone who signs up for a free trial does NOT qualify as a PQL;
To choose a successful PQL definition, it has to involve helping the user become successful in your product. I'll share a few great examples with you in a second.
What matters, however, is that you try to find behaviors that correlate with people upgrading.
To really nail down the ideal definition of a PQL, you need to know your value metrics. According to Patrick Campbell (the CEO and co-founder of Price Intelligently), the perfect value metric should align with your customers' needs, grow with them and be easy to wrap one's mind around.
No business should have the same product qualified lead definition.
Every business should be constantly refining what their PQL definition is and make sure it helps users experience meaningful value in the product. Here are just a few examples of PQL definitions from well-known brands: For Slack, a PQL is when an account reaches its 2,000 message limit; For Facebook, a PQL is once someone adds 7 friends; For Drift, a PQL is once someone has 100 conversations on their website;
As a result, PQLs close at significantly higher rates than MQLs because users understand the value of your product. It's not uncommon for PQLs to convert upwards of 20-30% in my experience working with B2B SaaS businesses.
As prospects utilize your application, they demonstrate buying intent based on product behaviors which can include: Product interest Number of users Features used Spending patterns Usage patterns Velocity - How fast a user or team is adopting your product
Once you have that in place, I recommend brainstorming a few PQL definitions as a start. Even if it's just a hypothesis at this point, it will come in handy when you test it in your business
I find that usage patterns are one of the easiest ways to define a PQL if you're short for time. At first, your PQL could be as simple as a user that logs in 10 times. This at least shows that the user is actively using the product and is coming back for a reason.
Now, the next step is to find out what they're coming back to do. Like Imentioned before, your PQL is meant to be a moving target. You can start with usage patterns but eventually, you want to get closer to pinning what the leading behaviors of someone who becomes a paying customer are
Once you have your PQL definition, you need to put the systems in place so that all teams can play an active role in generating more PQLs. This is not a solo sport. In this section, I break down some of the key metrics each team can be responsible for.
When setting up metrics for teams, I always recommend having both a quantity and a quality metric to ensure that each team isn't sacrificing quality in order to attain the quantity metric
important that it reflects that we're upgrading users that become and stay as successful customers.
One of the best parts about PQLs is that it aligns teams to focus on helping the user become successful in the product.