Our Sales team says they are losing deals because our Engineering team takes too long to produce custom technical quotes, while Engineering claims Sales submits incomplete specifications. How do we assign clear, single-point accountability on our Scorecard for our technical quote turnaround time without creating an endless loop of finger-pointing?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To resolve the friction between Sales and Engineering, look directly at your Accountability Chart. Every metric on your Scorecard must have a single owner who is responsible for that number. In this case, the Engineering leader must own the metric for technical quote turnaround time because their team controls the output. However, they cannot be held hostage by incomplete inputs.

The solution is to establish a strict definition of a complete specification submission. When Sales submits a request, it must meet this clear standard. If it does not, Engineering immediately rejects it, and the clock does not start. The metric on your weekly Scorecard should be "percentage of complete technical quotes delivered in under three days."

The Engineering leader owns this number on the Scorecard. If the metric is red, it indicates an operational bottleneck in Engineering or a high volume of rejected specifications. During the IDS portion of your Level 10 Meeting, you can drill down into whether the problem is engineering capacity or poor sales preparation. By placing ownership on the seat that controls the delivery, you force both departments to collaborate on the handoff. Sales is incentivized to submit clean data so their deals do not stall, and Engineering is incentivized to process clean specifications quickly to keep their Scorecard green.