In almost every business that runs both marketing and sales, the same argument surfaces sooner or later. Marketing reports a healthy number of leads. Sales says most of them are a waste of time. Both are telling the truth as they see it, because they are counting different things.
A written qualified lead definition ends the argument. It gives both teams one shared standard, and it tells the marketing side exactly what to optimise for.
Why the argument happens
Marketing naturally counts anyone who fills in a form or calls. Sales naturally counts only people who could plausibly buy soon. Between those two sit students, job seekers, suppliers, people outside the service area and people with no budget, and each team files them differently.
Neither side is wrong about its own numbers. The problem is that nobody agreed which of those numbers the business actually cares about, so each report looks like an accusation to the other team.
Write the definition together
Put both teams in a room and work through recent enquiries one by one. For each, decide whether it deserved a salesperson’s time. The criteria that keep coming up are your definition.
- Fit: the right service, the right location, the right size of job.
- Need: a real problem, not general curiosity.
- Timing: a plan to act within a reasonable window.
- Contactability: real details and a willingness to talk.
Keep it short enough to apply in a minute. A definition with twelve conditions will be applied inconsistently, which recreates the original argument in a new form.
The definition matters less than the fact that both teams wrote it. Once sales has signed off on the criteria, it becomes much harder to dismiss the leads that meet them.
Marcus Bennett, VP of Strategy, Media @ Marsons
Decide who applies it, and when
Someone has to mark each enquiry as qualified or not, and it should be the same role every time. Usually that is whoever makes first contact, because by the end of the first conversation the answer is usually obvious.
Set a deadline for the judgement, such as within two working days of the enquiry arriving. Leads that sit unclassified for weeks distort every report built on them.
Record the reason when a lead is rejected
A short list of rejection reasons, chosen from a drop-down rather than typed freely, turns the rubbish pile into useful information. If most rejections are for being outside the service area, the targeting needs tightening. If most are for budget, the pricing message needs to appear earlier.
Report on the qualified number
Once the definition exists, marketing should be judged on qualified leads rather than total leads. That single change removes the incentive to generate cheap volume, and it lines the two teams up behind the same goal.
Feed the same judgement back into the ad platforms where possible. Bidding systems learn from what you tell them a success is, and telling them a qualified lead is the target changes what they go looking for.
Handle the leads that are not ready
Many unqualified enquiries are simply early. Someone planning a project next year is not a waste of time; they are a future customer who needs occasional contact rather than a sales call this week.
Give that group a separate route: a helpful email sequence, a check-in in a few months, a place in the newsletter. Discarding them wastes the money spent attracting them.
Revisit it every quarter
Services change, prices move and the target customer shifts. Review the definition quarterly with both teams, looking at whether the qualified leads are turning into work at the expected rate.
If qualified leads are converting poorly, the definition is too loose. If sales is finding good customers among the rejected pile, it is too tight. The PPC hub covers how paid campaigns can be tuned once this feedback exists.
Keep the conversation friendly
The point of the exercise is shared understanding rather than scoring points. Where a disputed lead comes up, treat it as a chance to refine the definition rather than a verdict on either team.
Businesses that get this right tend to find the relationship between the two teams improves noticeably, because each can finally see the other’s side of the pipeline in the same terms.
Sales and marketing disagreeing about lead quality?
We will help you write a shared definition and wire it into your reporting.
