Concept

Customer lifecycle definitions

The customer lifecycle is the shared language for where a person or company sits in the journey from unknown target account to paying customer. In 10ex, it is deliberately simple:

Prospect → Lead → MQL → SQL → Customer

Use this page when you need to decide what a record means, what status it should have, and when automation should hand work from marketing to sales.

Quick definitions

Prospect: ICP-fit target with no meaningful action yet.
Lead: someone who has taken an identifiable action, such as a form submission, email reply, event registration, or sales-entered interaction.
MQL, or Marketing Qualified Lead: ICP-fit lead with positive buying intent.
SQL, or Sales Qualified Lead: MQL accepted by sales as a real potential deal with a next step.
Customer: closed-won, active subscription, signed contract, or confirmed purchase.

For 10ex reporting, this page is the canonical definition of Prospect, Lead, Connected, Meeting Booked, Proposal Sent, Customer, Future Opportunity, Not Interested, and Unqualified.

The rule of thumb

Lifecycle stage	Plain-English definition	What changed
Prospect	Someone in your ICP universe who has not shown awareness of the problem or interacted with your company yet.	Fit exists; engagement does not.
Lead	Someone who has taken an identifiable action, such as submitting a form, replying to an email, clicking a high-intent CTA, registering for an event, or being manually added by sales after a real interaction.	Engagement exists; qualification may not.
MQL	A Marketing Qualified Lead: a lead that both fits the ICP and has shown positive buying intent. Positive intent can include a positive email reply, a connected conversation, a meeting request, a future-opportunity response, a demo/pricing form, or repeated high-intent page visits.	Marketing can justify sales attention.
SQL	A Sales Qualified Lead: an MQL that sales has accepted and confirmed as a real potential deal. The person has a relevant need, a plausible buying path, and a next sales step such as discovery, meeting booked, or proposal.	Sales owns the next step.
Customer	A person or company with a closed-won relationship, active subscription, signed contract, or otherwise completed purchase.	The lifecycle moves from acquisition to retention and expansion.

This follows the same broad operating model used in mature CRMs: HubSpot uses lifecycle stages to show where contacts and companies sit in marketing and sales handoff, including Lead, MQL, SQL, Opportunity, and Customer; Salesforce treats qualification as the point where a lead can be converted into account/contact/opportunity records; and the Forrester/SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall popularized explicit handoff points so teams can measure demand progression instead of debating names.

Prospect

A prospect is part of the addressable market, not yet part of the active pipeline.

They may match your ICP by industry, company size, role, geography, tech stack, pain profile, or trigger event. But they have not yet acknowledged the problem to you, and they have not taken a meaningful action with your brand.

Good examples:

A VP Operations at a target manufacturing company found by Marcus/Prospector.
A company in your ICP uploaded from Apollo or LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
A target account with weak or no first-party engagement.

Do not treat every prospect as a lead. Prospects are valuable, but they are still in the “find and educate” motion.

Lead

A lead is a prospect or contact who has crossed an action threshold.

The action can be inbound, outbound, or sales-entered. The important test is: would a reasonable GTM team believe this record now deserves tracking beyond a static target list?

Common lead-creating actions:

Form submission
Email reply
Webinar registration or attendance
Demo, pricing, or consultation request
Meaningful ad or landing-page conversion
Sales call, LinkedIn conversation, or manual sales qualification note
Imported record from a known campaign where the source implies interaction

In 10ex CRM, every status except Prospect belongs to the lead universe:

10ex CRM status	Meaning
Lead	In pipeline, but not yet contacted or qualified.
Connected	Initial contact has been made. This often becomes MQL when the connection is positive and ICP fit is present.
Meeting Booked	A sales meeting, demo, discovery call, or next-step conversation is scheduled.
Proposal Sent	A proposal, quote, or commercial document has been delivered.
Customer	The record has converted into a paying or contracted customer.
Future Opportunity	The contact is positive or relevant, but timing is later. This is still valuable demand, not a rejection.
Not Interested	The contact declined. Keep the reason for reporting and suppression logic.
Unqualified	The contact does not meet fit, need, authority, budget, timing, or data-quality criteria.

Not Interested and Unqualified are still lead statuses because an action happened. They should not count as qualified demand.

MQL: Marketing Qualified Lead

An MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is not “anyone who filled a form.” It is a lead with both:

Fit: the person or company matches the ICP.
Positive intent: the action suggests a real possibility of future buying conversation.

Examples of positive intent:

Positive email reply
Connected status with relevant conversation notes
Future Opportunity response where the contact says timing is later, not “never”
Demo, pricing, or consultation form
Webinar attendance plus ICP fit
Multiple visits to high-intent pages
Lead score crossing the MQL threshold

Typical 10ex statuses that can represent MQL:

Status	MQL interpretation
Connected	MQL if the conversation is positive or relevant.
Future Opportunity	MQL for nurture if fit is strong and timing is the blocker.
Meeting Booked	MQL, usually already moving into SQL.
Proposal Sent	MQL historically, but operationally should be treated as SQL or opportunity-stage.
Customer	Was qualified earlier; now closed.

Do not mark Unqualified or Not Interested as MQL. Those are useful outcomes, but they are negative or disqualifying outcomes.

SQL: Sales Qualified Lead

An SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) is an MQL that sales has accepted as worth active pursuit.

The SQL test is stricter than the MQL test:

The account fits the ICP.
The problem is relevant to what you sell.
There is a real next step.
Sales can identify the buying context: need, authority, timeline, budget, urgency, or buying committee.

Typical 10ex statuses that indicate SQL:

Status	SQL interpretation
Meeting Booked	Sales has a scheduled next step.
Proposal Sent	Sales is working a concrete commercial conversation.
Connected	SQL only if sales accepted the record and has a qualified next step.
Customer	The SQL converted.

Future Opportunity is usually not SQL yet. Keep it in nurture until timing or urgency becomes active.

Customer

A customer is the closed-won state of the lifecycle.

In 10ex CRM, use Customer when the person or company has purchased, signed, subscribed, or otherwise entered a confirmed commercial relationship. After this point, the primary motion changes from acquisition to onboarding, retention, expansion, and advocacy.

Status mapping

10ex CRM status	Lifecycle bucket	Qualified?	Notes
Prospect	Prospect	No	ICP-fit target, no meaningful action yet.
Lead	Lead	Not yet	Action or manual creation happened; qualification pending.
Connected	Lead / MQL / SQL	Sometimes	Depends on sentiment, ICP fit, and sales acceptance.
Meeting Booked	MQL / SQL	Yes	Usually a sales-accepted record.
Proposal Sent	SQL	Yes	Concrete commercial motion.
Customer	Customer	Yes	Closed-won or active customer.
Future Opportunity	MQL nurture	Yes	Positive fit, timing later.
Not Interested	Lead outcome	No	Negative response; suppress or nurture only if policy allows.
Unqualified	Lead outcome	No	Does not meet criteria or data quality bar.

Why this matters

Clear lifecycle definitions protect reporting and automation.

Marketing can measure how many ICP-fit records become engaged demand.
Sales can trust that MQL and SQL mean different things.
Automation can route positive replies, meeting requests, and high-intent forms without accidentally treating every target account as pipeline.
Leadership can distinguish list growth from real demand creation.

The most common mistake is inflating the funnel by calling every ICP match a lead. In 10ex, an ICP match starts as a Prospect. It becomes a Lead only after action. It becomes an MQL only after fit plus positive intent. It becomes an SQL only after sales acceptance. It becomes a Customer only after a real commercial conversion.