SAL (Sales Accepted Lead)
SAL is not a bureaucratic handoff between marketing and sales. It's the exact moment ownership of a lead changes hands, and with it, its commercial fate.
“If sales rejects half the leads marketing considers ready, the problem isn't the leads. It's an ICP definition the two functions don't actually share.”
Otto GTM ObservatoryWhy it's the real smarketing indicator
SAL rate measures how much the two functions speak the same language on qualification criteria. A low rate doesn't mean poor leads: it often means sales is applying different criteria than marketing used to generate the MQL.
Separately monitoring sales response time on SALs (ideally under 24 hours in B2B) prevents valid leads from losing interest while waiting for first contact.
Anti-patterns
Common mistake: not tracking the rejection reason when a sales rep rejects a SAL, losing the most useful information for correcting upstream qualification criteria.
Second mistake: letting SAL acceptance take days instead of hours, a delay that in B2B almost always corresponds to a measurable drop in the subsequent conversion rate.
Practical Application
Of 410 MQLs passed to sales in a quarter, 287 are accepted as SAL within the agreed 24-hour SLA: a 70% SAL rate. Analyzing the 123 rejected leads, 68% are discarded for the same reason (company size below threshold): a targeted correction to the marketing scoring criteria brings the SAL rate to 84% the following quarter.