A qualified enquiry definition is an agreement between marketing and sales about what deserves follow-up. It should describe observable buyer signals, the information a salesperson needs, and the reasons a lead can be rejected. Without a shared definition, campaign reports count form submissions while sales teams count useful conversations, and both groups appear to disagree about performance.
Start with examples from the last month
Choose a small, representative set of enquiries from each channel. Include won opportunities, stalled deals, obvious mismatches and incomplete forms. Remove personal details from the working sample. Ask sales to describe what made an enquiry worth contacting and what information was missing. Ask marketing what the page or ad promised. If the promise attracts buyers too early in the process, qualification may require a follow-up step rather than a harsher form.
Write a definition that staff can apply
For a B2B service, a practical definition could require: the organisation is in a market the business serves; the contact is requesting a relevant service; a viable way to respond exists; and the request is not a job application, vendor pitch or support ticket. Budget and purchase date may be useful, but should not automatically disqualify a legitimate early-stage buyer. Define “unknown” separately from “no”.
| Signal | Example rule | Where to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | Business operates in a supported market and service area | Form answer, website or first call |
| Need | Request relates to an actual offered service | Enquiry text and first-call notes |
| Contactability | Valid reply route or completed conversation | CRM activity, not just a form submit |
| Sales handoff | Named owner and next step within an agreed period | CRM task and stage date |
Specify when the status is assigned, who can change it, and the reason codes. Keep rejection reasons limited and useful: wrong service, outside market, duplicate, uncontactable after agreed attempts, or insufficient information. A free-text “bad lead” label is hard to improve from.
Illustrative calibration session
Fictional example, not a Megvi client result. A UAE software company and its agency review 20 enquiries. Marketing labels 13 qualified because each completed a demo form. Sales labels eight qualified: four were students, one was a vendor, and three requested a product the company does not sell. They agree that a completed form is an enquiry, while qualification requires a relevant use case and contactable business. They write the rule, then independently classify another ten anonymised records. Where they differ, they refine the wording.
The team keeps a separate “needs follow-up” status for an otherwise relevant buyer who omitted a phone number. That avoids treating incomplete information as proof of poor fit. They inspect rejection reasons weekly and adjust page copy or targeting only after seeing a pattern, not after one difficult call.
Connect the definition to measurement
Report submitted enquiries, qualified enquiries, sales-accepted enquiries and won customers as separate stages. Record the date each stage happened and the campaign source where available. Do not replace historic values silently when the definition changes; note the change date so a monthly comparison remains interpretable. For long sales cycles, an offline conversion plan can connect later CRM outcomes to campaign review.
If paid traffic is producing volume without fit, Megvi can review the landing page, qualification form and campaign signals as part of its Google Ads service. Bring anonymised examples that sales accepted and rejected; they are more useful than a single lead count.
Method note: definition and numbers are illustrative, reviewed 19 October 2026; no client performance claim is implied.
Ahmed Elneil
https://megvidigital.comAhmed Elneil is a certified digital marketer and entrepreneur with over 5 years of experience helping brands grow through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid advertising, and CRM automation.