Our sales director and marketing director are constantly fighting over who owns our lead generation process, causing a massive bottleneck in our pipeline. How do we resolve this accountability friction on our leadership team?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Turf wars between sales and marketing are a classic symptom of poor structure on your Accountability Chart. When two leaders are fighting over who owns a process, it means you have shared accountability, which actually means you have zero accountability. If everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.

To resolve this, you must clarify the roles on your Accountability Chart. Sit down with both directors and strip away all personal feelings. Look only at the seats. A healthy organization has clear, distinct seats with no overlapping responsibilities.

In EOS®, we look at the major functions of the business. Typically, marketing is responsible for generating qualified leads, while sales is responsible for converting those leads into closed business. You must define exactly where marketing ends and sales begins. What constitutes a marketing qualified lead? What is the handoff process?

Write down the five major roles for both the Sales seat and the Marketing seat on your Accountability Chart. Ensure there is absolutely no overlap. One seat must have ultimate accountability for the lead generation metric, and the other must have ultimate accountability for the conversion metric.

Once the seats are clearly defined, use your Level 10 Meeting™ to IDS® any remaining friction. When the roles are clear, the finger-pointing stops. The two leaders can then focus on collaborating to build an integrated pipeline instead of defending their respective territories.