For B2B businesses having a well-structured deal stage process is crucial for driving revenue and ensuring smooth collaboration between Marketing and Sales. By clearly defining each stage of the funnel, businesses can create seamless handoffs, nurture leads effectively, and close deals efficiently.

Here’s how we recommend you should optimise your B2B Marketing and Sales funnel so the team has clarity on deal stages, can work collaboratively and ensure your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) has the best experience possible of your business.

Defining your funnel stages

Lead – contact in your database

At this initial stage, a lead is simply a contact in your database who has interacted with your brand but has not yet demonstrated strong intent. These leads are usually generated through content marketing, events, referrals, or paid campaigns. 

Some things to consider:

• Don’t categorise anyone as a Lead who isn’t your ICP – meaning you are not wasting marketing resources actively marketing to people who may never buy from you
• Anyone outside of your ICP you could categorise as a “contact” or “Future Lead” and ensure they get general marketing content eg; newsletters (people do change jobs after all!) 

Best practice: Ensure all leads are properly tagged with source and engagement data to enable future segmentation and targeted outreach.

  Best practice: Do not hand Leads to sales – people who have engaged with Marketing content are unlikely to be ready for a call about booking a demo etc.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

An MQL is a lead that has shown high intent by performing an action such as visiting the demo page but taking no further action. Additionally, they must meet your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) criteria. At this stage, marketing hands off the lead to sales for personalised outreach. This outreach might not be straight into booking a demo, but might be a softer approach about content they’ve engaged with, connecting on LinkedIn and showing you’ve read their posts etc. 

Best practice: CRM dependant – set-up automatic alerts that tell Marketing when a Lead meets you MQL criteria, work directly with sales to ensure the outreach is both personal and targeted. 

  Best practice: MQLs are the cherry on top of the cake for sales, they should be treated as longer term prospects. The focus should be on building relationships with future prospects. 

Demo Sat – completed demo

This stage represents a major milestone—the prospect has agreed to and attended a demo. This is where the sales team starts evaluating the potential of the opportunity. This is also arguably one of the MOST important metrics for Sales and Marketing to pay attention to, because it’s a clear indicator of high-intent to continue through the sales process. 

Best practice: Record demo attendance and prospect engagement levels to inform the next steps. Follow-up immediately with personalised content addressing the prospect’s key concerns and of course pricing!!! 

Sales Qualified Opportunity (SQO)

A prospect becomes an SQO when the sales team determines that the deal has a reasonable chance of closing. This assessment is based on prospect engagement, budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT criteria or equivalent frameworks).

Best practice: Ensure all SQOs are documented with notes on stakeholder involvement, objections, and deal blockers. A CRM with detailed tracking is vital for streamlining this process.

Need help implementing these funnel stages in your CRM – let’s talk

Navigating deal stages and the funnel

Once an opportunity is qualified, it progresses through various deal stages. This is where any pipeline weightings would start so you can report on the probability of deals closing. Here are the critical ones:

Getting internal buy-in

The prospect is convinced but needs to gain approval from other decision-makers within their company.

Best practice: Equip your champion within the company with case studies, ROI calculations, and battle cards to help them make a compelling internal case. Maybe even go and see them – dare we suggest that

Going through due diligence

Legal, procurement, and compliance teams assess the contract, security, and implementation details.

Best practice:  Have ready-to-go documentation (e.g., security compliance reports, contract templates) to reduce friction in the review process.

Closed Lost – deal didn’t close

If the deal does not move forward, it enters the “Closed Lost” stage. However, not all lost deals are the same—some prospects may still be valuable in the future – we’ll get back to that!

Best practice: Tag lost deals with specific reasons (e.g., budget constraints, timing issues, competitive loss) and send them back to marketing for nurturing through targeted campaigns.

Closed won – deal closed successfully

The best outcome—your sales team has successfully converted the opportunity into a customer but that doesn’t mean the work stops! Handover to Customer Success is vital and ensuring we’re all still working towards turning customers into advocates is a team sport.

Best practice: Ensure a smooth transition to the customer success team for onboarding. Capture insights from the sales process to improve future deal strategies.

Hand-back to Marketing

Deals that were lost but have the potential for revival should be passed back to marketing for re-engagement. Marketing can nurture these leads with relevant content, industry updates, and product improvements. However, it’s important that Marketing knows why the deal was handed back and that there is relevant information on the contact in the database so they can push them into the right nurturing segments. 

Best practice: Use marketing automation to segment and re-engage lost deals based on their original objections and challenges.

Need help finding a CRM that can do all this – let’s talk

Investor and CEO perspective on defining the funnel

For investors and CEOs, defining the sales and marketing funnel goes beyond process optimisation—it’s about ensuring scalability, predictability, and revenue efficiency for the future. 

Here are key considerations for leadership:

Data-driven decision making

• CEOs and investors should focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, sales cycle length, and customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• Implementing a robust CRM and analytics tools provides visibility into bottlenecks and optimisation opportunities – without this the above isn’t possible. 
• Data accuracy – without a process like this mapped out and a CRM you cannot ensure data accuracy 

Alignment between Sales and Marketing

• Ensure that marketing and sales teams are aligned on MQL and SQO definitions to prevent pipeline inefficiencies and smooth handovers.
• A feedback loop between sales and marketing helps refine ICP targeting and content strategies.

Revenue predictability and forecasting

• Investors and CEOs should expect clear forecasting models based on historical deal progression.
• Regular pipeline reviews with Sales and Marketing leaders can help identify potential risks and opportunities for strategic intervention.

Scalability and growth strategy

• CEOs should assess whether the current funnel structure allows for expansion into new markets or customer segments.
• Investors will look for a repeatable, data-backed sales process that demonstrates long-term scalability.

Final Thoughts

Aligning sales and marketing with well-defined deal stages and funnel ensures that high-intent leads receive the right attention at the right time. By implementing structured deal stages, businesses can increase win rates, reduce sales cycle length, and build long-term relationships with potential customers.

Key Takeaways:

• Ensure clear handoff between marketing and sales at the MQL stage.
• Implement a structured approach to tracking and progressing deals.
• Capture lost deal reasons and create targeted nurture campaigns.
• Use automation and CRM tools to improve efficiency and visibility.
• Investors and CEOs should focus on data-driven decision making, alignment, and scalability.

By following these best practices, your B2B business can create a highly optimised and repeatable Sales and Marketing process that drives consistent revenue growth.

Want to talk to some people who know how to implement this process and get it right?