We have several seats on our leadership team that influence our customer acquisition cost. How do we decide who owns the marketing and sales efficiency metrics on our scorecard without causing territorial disputes?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Territorial disputes on a leadership team usually happen because of a lack of clarity on the Accountability Chart. When it comes to complex metrics like customer acquisition cost, multiple seats may influence the outcome, but only one seat can own the actual scorecard number.

To assign ownership, look at your Accountability Chart and determine who has ultimate accountability for the system that generates the number. For customer acquisition cost, this is typically the Marketing Director. While the Sales Director is responsible for closing leads, the Marketing Director owns the strategy and budget that drives those leads into the funnel.

If your team starts arguing about who is responsible for a bad number, you have a shared ownership trap. The owner of the metric is not necessarily the person doing all the manual labor to lower it. Instead, they are the leader who must analyze the variance, bring it to the Level 10 Meeting, and lead the IDS process to solve it when it goes red.

When you assign a number, use the GWC framework. The owner must get it, want it, and have the capacity to manage it. If two people try to share ownership of customer acquisition cost, no one actually owns it, and the metric will consistently underperform. Keep ownership singular and transparent.