Our Sales Leader and Marketing Leader have separate seats on the Accountability Chart, but whenever new revenue misses target, Marketing blames lead quality and Sales blames closing speed. How do we define the five roles and scorecard metrics for these seats so accountability cannot be deflected?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The finger-pointing between Sales and Marketing happens when seats are defined by activities instead of concrete, measurable business handoffs. If your Marketing seat is accountable for awareness or lead generation, and your Sales seat is accountable for revenue growth, the boundary is mush. Marketing declares victory because website traffic went up, while Sales complains that the leads are unqualified tire-kickers.

You resolve this by redesigning the five roles on the Accountability Chart around unambiguous handoffs and assigning mutually exclusive Scorecard measurables.

For Marketing, the roles must define the exact delivery standard for prospects handed to Sales:
- Defining and targeting the ideal customer profile
- Generating Sales-Accepted Leads (SALs) meeting strict demographic and budget criteria
- Creating sales collateral and objection-handling assets
- Maintaining campaign customer acquisition cost efficiency
- Managing brand positioning and message consistency

For Sales, the roles pick up the moment the lead is accepted:
- Executing discovery and qualification calls within defined timeframes
- Pipeline velocity and deal stage conversion
- Proposal creation, contract negotiation, and close rate
- Pipeline data accuracy in the CRM
- Handing off signed contracts cleanly to Operations

On the weekly Scorecard, separate their numbers completely. Marketing is accountable for the quantity of Sales-Accepted Leads delivered. If they hit that number, Marketing did its job. Sales is accountable for the conversion rate and closed revenue from those accepted leads. When the handoff metric is sharp, neither seat can blame the other during your Level 10 Meeting™.