Our VP of Sales and our Marketing Director are constantly arguing about who owns our digital customer acquisition pipeline, and both claim they should control the budget. How do we use the Accountability Chart to resolve this turf war?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A turf war between Sales and Marketing usually means your Accountability Chart has overlapping roles or lacks a single point of accountability for your revenue pipeline. To resolve this, you must first look at your business model to determine if you need separate Sales and Marketing seats reporting to the Integrator, or if they should be consolidated under a single Revenue seat. If you keep them separate, you must clearly define the unique roles for each seat on your Accountability Chart. Typically, Marketing is accountable for brand awareness, lead generation, and content creation, while Sales is accountable for closing deals, revenue generation, and client acquisition. If they are fighting over who owns the digital customer acquisition pipeline, you must make a hard structural decision and assign absolute accountability to one seat. For example, if Marketing is accountable for generating qualified leads, they must own the digital lead generation budget. Once those leads are generated, Sales is accountable for converting them. Once you have defined these boundaries, have your Sales and Marketing leaders use their Level 10 Meeting™ to resolve any operational friction. When the roles are clearly defined on the Accountability Chart, the turf war ends because there is no longer any confusion about who has the final decision-making authority.