In most medium-sized businesses, marketing and sales are not misaligned about effort. They are misaligned about definitions — and the argument about lead quality is really an unresolved definition surfacing every month.
Agree the definition before the target
A qualified lead needs a written definition both functions accept: the buyer profile, the trigger, the budget signal and the evidence of intent. Without it, marketing optimises for volume and sales optimises for convenience, and neither is wrong within its own frame.
Write the definition, date it, and review it quarterly against closed-won data rather than opinion.
Design the hand-off explicitly
Alignment lives in the mechanics of the hand-off, not in goodwill between two managers.
- Response-time commitment from sales, measured and reported
- Required context passed with every lead: source, content consumed, stated need
- A defined return path for leads sales rejects, with a reason code
- One shared dashboard, reviewed in the same meeting by both functions
Measure the system, not the departments
Departmental metrics reward local optimisation. A revenue system is measured end to end: qualified pipeline created, conversion by stage, sales-cycle length, cost of acquisition and revenue retained.
When both functions are assessed against the same numbers, the lead-quality argument tends to resolve itself within a quarter.
Leadership owns the seam
The space between marketing and sales is nobody's default responsibility, which is precisely why it degrades. Someone senior must own the seam — a commercial director, a Head of Marketing, or a fractional equivalent with the authority to change process on both sides.
Treat marketing and sales as one revenue system with shared definitions and shared numbers, and lead quality stops being a monthly negotiation.
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