Your Funnel is Broken

Hubspot + Salesforce doesn't have to be a pain.

One of the common issues with B2B Marketing measurement is funnel reporting. It's not that we don’t understand how the ‘funnel’ works, everyone is familiar with the lead → MQL → SQL → SAL → Opp → Customer progression. The issues happen when we don’t define the funnel well & answer questions like

• What is a lead

• How does a lead convert to SQL

• How is SQL defined

• What are the parameters for marking someone an MQL

• How do we report on the funnel

• What does our cohort report look like

It starts with a person

Even though B2B buying is all about selling to companies, a company itself can’t start a sales discovery call or be “in market” for a new solution. It always starts with a lead — a person inside the company who is expressing intent or engaging with sales.

A lead can be defined as a person with a name, email, and company who has interacted with our brand (by visiting the site, filling out a form, or engaging on social media).

In the traditional inbound model, a lead was easy to define: someone who filled out a form on your website — downloading an ebook, requesting a demo, subscribing to a newsletter.

Today, that definition is no longer enough. With the explosion of first-party and second-party intent data (1P/2P intent), a lead can (and should) be recognized much earlier and across a broader range of signals.

A modern lead is any person with a name, email, and company who has meaningfully interacted with your brand or shown intent. That interaction could take many forms:

• Visiting your pricing or product pages

• Engaging with your brand’s posts on LinkedIn

• Watching a webinar or event replay

• Clicking on a high-intent paid ad

• Being identified through tools like ClearBit, Breeze, Warmly, or Syft when they visit your website

In other words:

A lead today isn’t limited to hand-raisers.

It includes people showing buying interest even if they haven’t yet “asked” to speak to sales.

Modern B2B marketers need to rethink lead generation not as capturing only inbound, but as recognizing early intent wherever and however it surfaces — and having a system to capture, score, and act on it. The lifecycle stage is the place within the funnel where a particular account is located.

Traditional Inbound Was All About 1st-Party Data.

The traditional inbound model built everything around first-party (1P) data.

A prospect would come to your website, fill out a form (e.g., download an ebook, request a demo), and cookies would connect their visit to their identity. Once a form was filled out, the CRM could track and attribute all future behavior to that known person.

This was the core model that HubSpot built its software around, and the foundation of the inbound marketing category.

It’s also why gated content — like ebooks, templates, and whitepapers — became so central to B2B marketing.

The idea was simple:

• Not everyone is ready to talk to sales immediately.

• By offering high-value content, marketers could de-anonymize visitors early and nurture them until they were sales-ready.

Downloading an ebook was seen as an early buying signal — a lightweight conversion that identified interest without requiring a demo request.

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Why the 1P Gated Model Broke Down

Over time, this model started losing effectiveness, primarily for two reasons:

1. Decline in Content Quality:

Marketers began chasing form fills at all costs, producing high volumes of low-value, generic content.

Rather than solving real problems or connecting to pain points, much of the gated content became clickbait, generating contacts, but not qualified interest.

The ebook download was no longer a reliable signal of intent.

2. Misaligned Handoff to Sales:

Early-stage leads (people downloading TOFU content) were often treated the same as demo requests.

Instead of nurturing them appropriately, marketing would pass these contacts straight to sales, creating poor buyer experiences, frustrating sales teams, and ultimately harming trust.

As buyers became more sophisticated and poor follow-up experiences became common, fewer and fewer people were willing to fill out forms at all.

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The Modern Funnel: 1P, 2P, and 3P Intent Signals

Today, marketers no longer have to rely solely on form fills to identify potential buyers.

We now have a richer view of buying behavior through a combination of:

• First-party (1P) intent: Direct engagement on your owned channels (e.g., visiting the pricing page, starting a demo flow, attending your webinar).

• Second-party (2P) intent: Engagement on partner-owned channels where you can access the data (e.g., liking your company’s LinkedIn post, commenting on a team member’s post, following your brand on social).

• Third-party (3P) intent: External research activity captured via data providers (e.g., someone reading about your product category on G2, TrustRadius, Bombora).

Importantly:

• Some social signals (like engaging with your company page) are still technically 1P because you own your company’s LinkedIn or X (Twitter) profile.

• If you’re capturing aggregated social intent data through a partner or a data-sharing platform, that moves into 2P intent territory.

• 3P intent generally covers data you don’t own or don’t directly observe — it’s purchased, licensed, or syndicated data about what topics buyers are researching elsewhere.

In short:

The funnel no longer starts with a form fill.

It starts when a buyer shows any sign of interest — whether it’s on your site, in your network, or across the broader internet — often before they ever willingly identify themselves.

Download the Quick Glossary: 1P, 2P, 3P Data in B2B Marketing

How the B2B Funnel Changed

The traditional B2B Funnel (as defined in Hubspot / Inbound Marketing)

Subscriber → Lead → MQL → SQL → Opp → Customer

Because of the changes in how buyers engage and how go-to-market (GTM) strategies operate today, a “lead” is no longer just a single contact who filled out a form.

A lead can now emerge from any of the three types of intent signals outlined above — 1st-party, 2nd-party, or 3rd-party.

Yet despite this evolution, the biggest mistake in B2B marketing measurement remains the same:

Treating the funnel as a single object moving cleanly through stages — Lead → MQL → SQL → Opp → Customer.

At the very beginning of the funnel, that model makes sense:

• It starts with a single lead — a known person showing intent.

• Early actions (site visit, form fill, ad engagement) are attached to that individual.

Previously, a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) was often defined by basic engagement thresholds:

• Opening a certain number of marketing emails

• Visiting a set number of pages on the website

• Downloading a piece of gated content

But today, marketers have access to a much wider range of data points — across 1st-party, 2nd-party, and 3rd-party intent sources.

We can now qualify leads not just by surface-level engagement, but by deeper buying signals:

• Visiting high-intent pages (pricing, demo request)

• Watching or attending product webinars

• Following or engaging with executives or brands on social media

• Researching solution categories on external review sites like G2 or TrustRadius

• Being flagged by third-party intent data providers as “in-market” based on aggregated research patterns

In short:

MQLs today need to be defined by true buying behaviors, not just generic marketing activity.

Modern MQL scoring should blend volume of engagement (how much?) with quality of engagement (how meaningful?) & ICP fit (are they from the right kind of account?) and type of signal (owned, earned, or external).

To access our MOPS operational workbook, click here.

The SQL Blackhole

One of the most common breakdowns in B2B marketing and sales alignment happens right after a lead becomes an SQL.

This moment is known as the Sales <> Marketing Handoff.

Here’s what typically happens:

• Marketing identifies a lead who fits the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and shows buying intent based on engagement signals (e.g., website activity, content downloads, 2p/3p intent signals).

• Marketing then says:

“This is a qualified person. Sales, it’s now your job to take this lead and determine whether there’s a real commercial opportunity here.”

At this point, the lead is handed over to a Business Development Rep (BDR/SDR) or directly to an Account Executive (AE) to qualify further.

Most sales teams use established qualification frameworks like:

• BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing)

• MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion)

• SPICED (Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, Decision)

The goal of these frameworks is simple:

• Quantify the buyer’s pain or need

• Confirm urgency and timeline

• Validate whether the opportunity is real and worth pursuing

• Size the potential deal ($$ value)
  This is also where things break the most.

The danger is that without clear tracking at this stage, leads fall into the “SQL blackhole” — accepted by sales, but never properly qualified, advanced, or rejected.

SQL is often where things fall into a blackhole. Marketing and sales will yell at each other, and generally, the lovely funnel starts to break down.

This happens primarily because marketing doesn’t understand the sales qualification process and the mini funnel that comes with it, BD teams don’t enforce or follow SLA, or update the status on the lead and systems to enable automation to minimize human errors.

The SQL stage actually has a ‘mini funnel’ under it, which tracks where the lead currently sits within its BD / Sales Qualification Journey. Typically, it looks something like this.

New

The lead has been assigned to a rep but has not yet been contacted.

Contacted

Sales has attempted outreach (email, call, social DM, etc.).

Meeting Scheduled

A discovery call or meeting has been booked.

Meeting Held

The first sales conversation with the prospect has been completed.

Qualified

The lead has met qualification criteria (BANT, MEDDIC, SPICED) and an Opportunity is opened in CRM.

Disqualified

The lead was contacted but deemed not a good fit (e.g., wrong ICP, no urgency, no budget).

Recycle

The lead is not ready now but could be a good fit later; sent back to marketing for nurture and re-engagement.


Tracking Lead Status accurately matters because it provides visibility into sales activity, accountability for lead progression, and insights into where breakdowns happen.

Without it, the SQL stage becomes a black box, and it’s impossible to know whether pipeline problems are due to lead quality, sales follow-up, or buyer readiness.

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From Lead to Opportunity: The Operational Shift

Going back to our funnel, this handoff is not just a change in team ownership — it’s a shift in how the system tracks and measures the buyer journey.

Up until qualification (SAL and SQL), the lead is a single object — an individual person showing intent.

However, once a lead is qualified, that individual lead ceases to be the primary object.

From an operational and systems perspective, we now transition into managing three key objects:

Opportunity (Deal)

Account (Company)

Contacts (Buying Committee)

BONUS CONTENT: Get the checklist: What a Good Sales <> Marketing Handoff Should Include

Here’s what happens next:

• The Opportunity represents the commercial potential: a formal deal with forecasted revenue and timelines.

• The Account represents the company or organization we are selling into.

• The Contacts represent the people — decision-makers, champions, influencers — who are part of the buying process.

In other words, B2B sales no longer targets just one person; it targets the organization through multiple stakeholders.

The Internal Sales Handoff: BDR to AE

This is also where an important internal sales handoff occurs between the BDR (Business Development Representative) and the AE (Account Executive).

• The BDR’s job is to qualify whether there is a viable Opportunity.

  • They focus on early discovery: Does the account have a real need, budget, urgency?

• Once a qualified Opportunity is identified, the BDR hands off to an AE.

  • The AE’s job is to take over the sales cycle: running deeper discovery, demoing the product, building the business case, navigating procurement, and closing the deal.

• (In some models, full-cycle AEs handle both discovery and closing without a separate BDR layer.)

Why This Transition Matters for Funnel Measurement

The moment an Opportunity is created, the old single-lead model no longer applies.

• You are no longer tracking a person moving through the funnel.

• You are tracking an Account, an Opportunity, and a group of Contacts.

If your measurement, reporting, and attribution models don’t adjust at this stage, you lose visibility into what’s actually happening inside your pipeline.

You risk making marketing look ineffective (“bad leads”) or sales look slow (“bad execution”) — without the correct data to diagnose where the real problems are.

Key point:

Funnels today must be designed to evolve — from tracking individual leads to tracking opportunities driven by buying groups at the account level.

From an operational point of view, once an Opportunity is created, you must bridge your reporting from Leads to Opportunities, Accounts, and Contacts.

• Early in the funnel, marketing and sales are tracking Leads (which in HubSpot = individual Contacts).

• But after qualification, the Opportunity becomes the primary object — and it is connected to:

  • The Account (the company you’re selling to)

  • One or more Contacts (the buying committee)

If you continue reporting only at the Contact level, you create massive distortion.

For example:

• Suppose an Opportunity has 4 Contacts associated with it, and you report on “Contacts tied to Opportunities” without properly bridging to the Opportunity object. In that case, it might incorrectly appear as 4 Opportunities instead of 1 real Opportunity.

This creates inflated pipeline metrics, incorrect conversion rates, and misleading funnel reporting.

Key operational reality:

AEs don’t work just individual Contacts — they work Opportunities tied to Accounts that involve multiple Contacts.

Thus, once a deal is in play:

• The Opportunity is the “north star” object that sales works against.

• Contacts are important, but they are now attributes of the Opportunity and Account, not standalone funnel stages.

ProTip: How to Bridge Leads → Opportunities → Accounts in CRM Reporting

When working with CRM systems like HubSpot or Salesforce, make sure that lead source and attribution data are preserved after a lead is converted into a Contact, Account, and Opportunity.

In HubSpot, this can be handled with Cross-Object Reporting.

In Salesforce, you can map key Lead fields to the Contact and Opportunity objects during conversion, or use Converted Lead fields in reporting.

The Opportunity Funnel

The funnel doesn’t end at Opportunity creation.

It continues through a structured sales process — one that must be defined, measured, and managed just as tightly as the early-stage funnel.

Once an Opportunity is created, the buyer journey enters a new phase — and a new funnel begins: the Opportunity Funnel.

Unlike the early-funnel stages that track individuals (Leads, Contacts) or engagement signals (MQL → SQL), the Opportunity Funnel is about managing a commercial deal through the sales process, from discovery to close.

Each stage of the Opportunity Funnel represents a deeper level of buyer commitment and an increased probability of revenue realization.

Most revenue forecasts, revenue attribution from marketing, sales management, quota reporting & sales management actually happens here. The Opp represents the $$$ that the lead ‘promised’.

Lifecycle Best Practices

1. The lifecycle stages should match your sales funnel. You can rename them to disqualified (DQL) if you must. What matters is the consistency between Hubspot and Salesforce so the reporting is clean.

2. Lead Status should match BDR activity: Open (not owned), working (in a BDR queue), connected (meeting booked), and recycle (not the right time), should be the lead status’ you use.

3. If BDRs don’t qualify the lead, don’t move it: There is no reason for leads to hit the next stage unless a BDR gets on the phone with them and figure out their status. If the lead is disqualified it doesn’t mean they’re an MQL, they’re just disqualified.

4. If BDRs qualify the lead as recycle, don’t move them back to MQL: This is an already qualified individual that went through the funnel. While you may continue nurturing them so when the time comes your company comes to mind, it doesn’t mean they become an MQL. This will mess up your reports.

Mistakes to avoid with Hubspot and Salesforce

1. Don’t move backward on lifecycle stages: The main reason you can't move backward is creating an accurate report where everyone understands what’s working for sales and marketing. Once sales and accepted qualify a lead, it should be managed via lead status. If it becomes a deal, manage it via deal stages or opportunity stages in SFDC.
   
   Why? You need to know what is happening at all times. Moving backwards on lifecycle stages creates redundancies, messes with stage understanding, it creates interdepartmental confusion, and messes your reports.

2. Leads vs. Opportunities: Think of a lead (contact in HS, lead in SFDC) as an individual in your funnel that has not gone through a qualification process. It’s a single object going through the funnel.
   
   But, once it becomes qualified, it stops being a single object but an opportunity. This opportunity may have multiple individual contacts that require touch-points for a deal to close (this is particularly relevant in B2B), but the opportunity is about the account you’re trying to close, not the person.

   Why? B2B works with sales committees. Reporting on opportunities as singular objects is generally inaccurate.
   

3. Don’t use leads, contacts and opportunity reports: Technically a lead and a contact should not exist at the same time. If your lead gets qualified it should become an opportunity and you should report it within that category.

   
   Why? because multiple contacts can belong to the same opportunity and opportunity

4. Understand how the funnel stage varies by object: Closed-won or closed-lost opportunities should not go back to MQL stage. Ever. If a closed-won/lost opportunity shows interest again it should become a net-new opportunity rather than become a lead or contact object.

   
   Why? Because you know they are already qualified so they don’t have to go through the entire funnel again. This will only add confusion to your funnel view and potentially trigger unnecessary sequences to help people move down a funnel they already are aware of anyway.

Funnels Still Work — But Only If We Build Them for How Buyers Actually Buy

Funnels aren’t broken.

Our old definitions of how buyers move through funnels are broken.

Today, B2B buyers start earlier, involve more people, engage across more channels, and expect more seamless handoffs between marketing and sales.

The traditional Lead → MQL → SQL → Opp → Customer model still matters — but it only works if every stage is clearly defined, properly operationalized, and measured against the reality of multi-threaded, account-based buying.

To build a modern, effective funnel, you need:

• Clear definitions of leads, MQLS, SALS, SQLS, and Opportunities.

• Rigorous tracking of buyer behaviour through both lead status mini-funnels and opportunity stages.

• Clean operational handoffs across Marketing, BDRS, and AES.

• CRM systems (HubSpot, Salesforce) that enforce lifecycle discipline and prevent reporting confusion.

Today's funnels are no longer linear—they are networks of signals, buying groups, and opportunity paths that must be captured, qualified, and progressed systematically.

If you don’t evolve your funnel operations to match modern buying behaviour, your pipeline will lie, your attribution will fail, and your growth engine will stall.

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Ready to Fix Your Funnel?

Modern B2B funnels demand more than great marketing or great sales — they demand great systems, clean processes, and tight operational alignment.

That’s exactly what we build at 42 Agency.

Here is how we can help

• Define your funnel stages properly

• Build a clean lifecycle model across marketing and sales

• Set up accurate reporting across Leads, Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities

• Fix the gaps between marketing attribution and sales forecasting

• Scale your revenue engine without guesswork

• Set up Enrichment & Routing Rules.

Book an audit or download our RevOps Overview.