01Where the Handoff Breaks
Where the handoff actually breaks
The Short Version
The two teams are not fighting over strategy. They are fighting because nobody wrote down what happens between the form submission and the first call.
In practice the break is always in the same four places, and none of them is about effort or goodwill. The lead arrives with no context, so the rep has to research the company before calling and postpones it. There is no written deadline, so "later today" becomes next week. The discarded lead never comes back with a reason, so marketing keeps generating the same thing. And each side reports a different number in the monthly meeting — marketing reports leads, sales reports closed orders — so the conversation has no common ground.
The Four Break Points
1. The Lead Arrives Naked
Name, email, phone and a free-text message. The rep does not know the application, the volume, or whether the plant already buys from a competitor. Researching costs 15 minutes per lead, so with 40 leads a month it becomes 10 hours nobody has.
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2. No Written Deadline
An industrial buyer who fills three supplier forms on a Tuesday morning is already in a conversation with someone by Tuesday afternoon. Without a deadline in writing, the average first-attempt time in Brazilian manufacturers sits in days, not hours.
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3. The Discard Never Returns
The rep marks the lead as lost, or marks nothing at all. Marketing never learns whether the problem was the wrong segment, an unserved region, a volume below the minimum batch, or simply a bad phone number.
4. Two Different Scoreboards:
Marketing is measured on leads and cost per lead. Sales is measured on closed orders. Between the two there is an industrial sales cycle of 60 to 180 days that neither side owns. Whoever is losing the argument that month simply points at the other side's number. The fix is not a better argument — it is a third number both teams are accountable for.
The cultural side of this — why the two teams distrust each other in the first place, and how to run the conversation that undoes it — is covered separately in how to align marketing and sales in B2B. This page stays on the operational side: what has to be written down, what the deadline is, and what gets measured.
02The Contract Between the Two Teams
The contract: what each side commits to, in writing
One page. Signed by whoever runs marketing and whoever runs sales, with the owner or director in the room. It has three parts and no adjectives — only quantities and deadlines. The market calls this an SLA between marketing and sales; the name matters less than the fact that it exists on paper and is reviewed every two weeks.
Part 01
What Marketing Delivers
A monthly volume of leads that meet four mandatory fields: company with CNPJ, application or part described, estimated volume or batch size, and expected deadline. A lead missing any of the four does not enter the sales queue — it goes back to nurturing. Set the volume from what the sales team can actually work: a rep who handles 8 active opportunities cannot absorb 60 new leads a month.
Quantity and Criterion
Part 02
What Sales Commits To
First attempt within 2 working hours. Five attempts across 10 working days — 3 calls at different times, 1 email, 1 WhatsApp — before the lead can be closed as unreachable. Every discarded lead gets a reason from a closed list of five: wrong segment, region not served, volume below minimum batch, no deadline within 12 months, wrong contact data. Free text is not a reason.
Deadline and Cadence
Part 03
What Happens When a Side Fails
Without this part the contract is decoration. If marketing delivers below the agreed volume or with incomplete fields, the campaign budget is redirected before adding new channels. If sales lets leads pass the 2-hour deadline, those leads are reassigned to another rep on the next round. Both breaches are read out loud in the fortnightly meeting, by name, with the count from the CRM.
Consequence
A practical note about the four mandatory fields: adding them to the form will cut lead volume, often by 30 to 50 percent. That is the point. The leads that disappear are the ones the rep was already ignoring — the difference is that now they never enter the queue, and nobody spends the month arguing about them.
03The Ritual and the Single Number
The fortnightly ritual and the one number that ends the argument
A written contract nobody reviews is a document in a shared folder. What keeps it alive is a 45-minute meeting every two weeks, with the same three numbers on screen and the same fixed agenda: how many leads met the criterion, how many were contacted inside the deadline, and how many turned into a qualified meeting. Not a general status meeting — three numbers, then the exceptions, then who does what by when.
Marketing cannot control whether the order closes. Sales cannot control how many people fill the form. Both control the qualified meeting — so that is the number that goes on both scoreboards.
A qualified meeting is a specific, auditable event: a scheduled conversation with someone at a company that fits the criterion, who showed up, and where a real application was discussed. It sits in the middle of the 60-to-180-day industrial cycle, so both teams can see it move inside a fortnight instead of waiting a quarter for the order. The definition, how to count it, and what disqualifies a meeting are in the qualified meeting as a metric. Adopt one definition and freeze it — a metric that gets redefined every quarter measures nothing.
Two operational details that decide whether this survives past the second month. First, the numbers come out of the CRM, not out of a spreadsheet somebody typed the night before — if the rep does not log the attempt, the attempt did not happen, and that rule has to be stated out loud. Second, the meeting has one owner who opens the CRM report on screen; without a named owner the ritual is skipped in the first busy week and never comes back.
04The 8 Questions in This Cluster
The eight questions inside this problem
Each page below answers one specific question that comes up while a manufacturer is putting this contract in place. Start with the one that matches where you are stuck:
05FAQ
FAQ
Marketing delivers the lead and sales does not work it. How do I align them? +
Write a one-page contract: what marketing delivers (volume plus four mandatory fields — company, application, volume, deadline), what sales commits to (first attempt within 2 working hours, 5 attempts across 10 working days), and what happens when either side breaches. Then put both teams on the same number: qualified meetings scheduled, reviewed every two weeks in a 45-minute meeting with the CRM report on screen. Without the consequence clause and the fortnightly review, the contract dies in the second month.
How fast does the rep have to call a new lead? +
Two working hours for the first attempt. An industrial buyer who fills out your form usually filled out two or three competitor forms in the same session — whoever calls first frames the specification. If your team cannot hold 2 hours, start at 4 and measure; what matters more than the exact number is that it is written down and counted from the CRM every fortnight.
Whose fault is it when the lead does not turn into a sale? +
The question is unanswerable without discard reasons, which is why the argument repeats every month. Force every discarded lead to carry a reason from a closed list of five — wrong segment, region not served, volume below minimum batch, no deadline in 12 months, wrong contact data. After 60 days the distribution tells you where the problem is: if most discards are wrong segment, it is targeting; if most are wrong contact data, it is the form; if most have no reason logged at all, it is the sales process.
What has to be in an SLA between marketing and sales? +
Four items and nothing else: the monthly volume marketing commits to, the mandatory fields that make a lead eligible, the response deadline and number of attempts sales commits to, and the consequence when either side misses. Keep it to one page with quantities and dates — no adjectives, no mission statements. Anything longer does not get read, and anything without the consequence clause does not get followed.
Do I need a CRM to align marketing and sales? +
You need one shared place where the attempt and the discard reason are recorded — a CRM is the practical option, but a manufacturer with 2 reps and 40 leads a month can start on a shared spreadsheet with locked columns. What does not work is each rep keeping leads in their own notebook or WhatsApp, because then the fortnightly numbers cannot be produced and the meeting becomes opinion against opinion.
Should marketing and sales share the same target? +
They should share one intermediate number, not the revenue target. Marketing does not control whether the order closes and sales does not control how many people fill the form, so pinning either team to the other end of the funnel produces excuses rather than work. Qualified meetings scheduled is the number both teams can move inside a fortnight, in the middle of a 60-to-180-day industrial cycle.
How often should marketing and sales meet? +
Every two weeks, 45 minutes, fixed agenda. Monthly is too slow to correct a campaign that is bringing the wrong segment — you lose four weeks of budget before anyone notices. Weekly is too frequent for an industrial cycle and turns into a status update nobody prepares for. The meeting has one named owner who opens the CRM report on screen; without an owner it gets skipped in the first busy week and never comes back.
My sales team does not use the CRM. How do I fix that? +
Cut what you ask them to fill in to the minimum that produces the fortnightly numbers — attempt logged, outcome, discard reason. Most industrial reps abandon the CRM because someone configured 20 mandatory fields for reporting nobody reads. Then tie the number to the routine: if the attempt is not in the CRM it did not happen, and the fortnightly meeting reads the count out loud by rep name. Enforcement in the meeting does more than any training session.
Tired of refereeing the fight between marketing and sales?
We write the contract with both teams in the same room, set the response deadline and the discard reason list inside your CRM, and install the fortnightly ritual on the single number. Book a diagnosis and bring your last 90 days of leads.
