Our marketing seat is responsible for generating leads, but our sales seat complains that the leads are useless, leading to a constant debate over who owns the lead count on our Scorecard. How do we assign clear ownership of this metric?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When two departments point fingers over a shared outcome, the problem is always a lack of clear definitions and poor Accountability Chart alignment. Marketing wants to report high numbers of leads to look good, while Sales complains those leads are junk to excuse low close rates.

To resolve this, you must separate the metrics and assign absolute ownership based on the GWC™ of each seat. Marketing cannot own the final sales conversion, and Sales cannot own the initial lead generation.

The solution is to split the lead-to-sale pipeline into two distinct, objective weekly metrics:
- Marketing Qualified Leads generated, owned by the Marketing seat.
- Marketing Qualified Leads accepted, owned by the Sales seat.

The transition point must be defined by strict, objective criteria agreed upon by both leaders during an IDS® session. For example, a lead is only qualified if the prospect has a verified budget and a confirmed phone number.

The Marketing seat owns getting those qualified prospects to the door. Once they arrive, the Sales seat has twenty-four hours to accept or reject them based on the objective criteria. If Sales rejects them, the number of accepted leads drops, pointing the spotlight directly back to Marketing's targeting. If Sales accepts them but fails to close them, the responsibility lies squarely on Sales. This structure eliminates subjective debates and forces both seats to collaborate on data integrity.