What it is
A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is a lead that has been checked against your criteria, industry, size, role type, buying signal, and judged ready for direct, active pursuit rather than further vetting. The term comes from the wider B2B sales world, where it marks the handover point between marketing's "this looks promising" and sales' "I've checked, this is real." Recruitment agencies rarely run a separate marketing function, so on most desks the qualifying step collapses into one moment: a consultant, or the system working on their behalf, reviews an account and decides it is worth a message today.
An SQL is not the same as a raw name on a target list, and it is not the same as an ICP match on its own. A company can fit your ICP perfectly and still not be an SQL if nothing points to timing, no signal, no mandate, no reason to believe now is the moment. An SQL adds the second ingredient: the lead is not just a fit, it is a fit with a live reason to act.
An ICP match tells you the company fits. An SQL tells you now is the moment to say so.
Why it matters
Treating every ICP-matched account the same way wastes the one resource a desk cannot buy more of: consultant attention. A list of five hundred companies that merely fit the profile tells a consultant nothing about which twenty to call this week. Separating SQLs out gives the desk a working queue instead of a research project, and it protects the ICP-matched accounts that are not yet SQLs from being contacted too early, with no real hook.
It also changes how a desk measures itself. Counting ICP matches tells you how big your market is. Counting SQLs, and tracking how many become placements, tells you whether your targeting and timing actually work. A desk that only ever looks at the top of the funnel has no way to see where good leads are being lost.
How boilr handles it
In boilr, a lead only reaches your task inbox once it has effectively become an SQL: it matches your ICP, it carries a buying signal or a confirmed reason to approach, and the decision-maker is identified and enriched. Your AI sales employee does the qualifying work that a sales development rep would otherwise do by hand, continuously, across every company it watches, not just the ones a consultant happens to glance at.
You see the result as a ready-to-send task rather than a list to triage. You verify the account, the contact and the message, and you send it, in the Company Brain's language. That review step is what keeps the human judgement in the loop, while the volume of accounts actually assessed each day is far higher than any desk could manage checking leads one at a time by hand.
