We have outsourced our entire marketing department to an external agency, but our internal sales team is complaining about a total lack of leads and accountability. How do we represent an outsourced vendor on our Accountability Chart, and who owns the ultimate metrics?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You can outsource the execution of your marketing, but you can never outsource the accountability. If you have an external agency running your marketing campaigns, you still must have a dedicated seat on your internal Accountability Chart that owns the marketing function.

Putting the name of an external agency in a leadership seat on your chart does not work. A seat must be occupied by an internal team member who fully GWCs™ the role. This person is responsible for managing the agency, defining their deliverables, and holding them accountable to their metrics.

The internal owner of the Marketing seat must report directly to the Integrator. Their roles should include managing vendor relationships, ensuring brand alignment, and hitting the marketing metrics on your weekly scorecard.

If your sales team is complaining about a lack of leads, the owner of the internal Marketing seat must address this in the weekly Level 10 Meeting™ and IDS® the issue. They cannot simply point fingers at the agency. They own the result. By structuring it this way, you maintain a clean line of accountability and ensure that your external vendors are integrated seamlessly into your operational engine.