01Where the Handoff Breaks
Where the handoff actually breaks
The Shared Inbox Problem
In most Brazilian manufacturers the lead does not get lost inside a system. It gets lost in an email that three people read and nobody answers.
The usual route is: form on the site → notification to [email protected] → inside sales, the regional rep and the commercial manager all receive it. Each one assumes one of the others picked it up. On Friday afternoon nobody picked it up. When somebody finally calls on Tuesday, the buyer has already requested a quote from two competitors. Nothing was lost technically — the record exists, the email is there. What was lost is the only thing that mattered: a person with a name who was responsible for that lead by Monday morning.
The second break is quieter. Marketing sends the lead but not the context: the seller receives "João, Metalúrgica X, wants a quote" without knowing that João downloaded the technical sheet for a specific alloy, came back twice in one week and read the page about delivery lead times. The seller then opens the call asking what the company does — and the buyer, who had already gone three steps down the road, has to walk back to the beginning. That is not a bad lead. That is a lead delivered without its baggage.
02The Package That Travels
The package that has to travel with the lead
A handoff is not a notification. It is a delivery with contents. Three blocks, all of them fillable by the site and the form — no extra work for the seller:
What Goes in the Package
Block 1: Who
Company, CNPJ or city, role of the person, phone with area code and email. If the form only captures name and email, the seller starts the call blind and the handoff has already failed.
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Block 2: What For
Application, estimated volume and deadline — the three fields that let the seller decide in 30 seconds whether to call today or schedule for Thursday. In a manufacturer these three are worth more than any score.
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Block 3: The Trail
Origin channel, landing page, materials downloaded and the free-text message exactly as typed. The verbatim message is the highest-value field of all and the one most often stripped in the forward.
Practical test:
Take the last five leads that came in and hand them to a seller who was not involved. If they cannot open the call without asking marketing anything, the package is complete. If they have to ask "where did this come from?", it is not.
A note on scope: which of these fields make the lead eligible to be passed at all is a different decision, and it is the one that ends in argument. That criterion is discussed in who should qualify the lead, marketing or sales. Here we assume the lead was already approved to be passed.
03Named Owner
One named owner, one accept, one reject
Rule 01
Routing Before Notification
The lead is assigned to a person before anyone is notified. Route by state, by product line or by round-robin — the criterion matters less than the fact that it is written and automatic. In a company with three sellers and two product lines, a routing table fits on half a page.
Structural
Rule 02
Explicit Accept
Receiving is not accepting. The seller has 2 business hours to mark the lead as accepted. No accept within the window and the lead reassigns automatically to the next in line. This single rule is what converts an inbox into a handoff — until the accept exists, the lead is in a state nobody can audit.
High Leverage
Rule 03
Reject With a Written Reason
The seller can refuse the lead — as long as the reason goes back to marketing in writing within 48 hours, from a closed list of five or six options: wrong region, volume below minimum, competitor, student, existing customer, no application fit. A refusal without a reason is a lead thrown away twice.
Feedback Loop
04The Handoff Clock
The handoff clock — and what to measure
A handoff you cannot time is a handoff you cannot fix. Three numbers are enough, and all three can be pulled from any CRM or from a spreadsheet: time from form submission to assignment (target: under 5 minutes, it is automatic), time from assignment to accept (target: under 2 business hours), and the share of leads with no accept and no reject after 48 hours (target: zero — this is the leak).
The third number is the one that hurts. In most first diagnostics it sits between 30% and 50% — that is, one in three leads the company paid for never got an accept or a reject from anyone. Not lost in the system. Lost in the silence between two teams.
Review these three numbers in the same weekly meeting where the pipeline is reviewed, with both teams in the room. Once accept and reject start being logged, a different problem tends to surface: leads that were accepted and then simply never worked. That one is covered in marketing generates the lead and sales does not follow up. To turn these targets into an agreement both sides sign, see the SLA between marketing and sales.
05FAQ
FAQ
How do I pass a lead from marketing to the seller without losing it? +
Assign it to one named seller before notifying anyone, send the full package with it (company, application, volume, deadline, origin, page and the verbatim message), and require an accept or a reject within 2 business hours. If no accept comes, reassign automatically. The loss happens in shared inboxes, not in systems.
What information should go with the lead when it is passed? +
Seven fields: company, role and contact of the person, application, estimated volume, deadline, origin channel with the page visited, and the free-text message exactly as typed. The verbatim message is the field most often stripped and the one sellers use most.
Should the lead go to a shared sales inbox or to one person? +
One person, always. A shared inbox like comercial@ creates diffused responsibility: everybody sees it, everybody assumes somebody else took it. Keep the shared inbox as a copy for visibility if you want, but the assignment has to name someone.
How long should a seller take to accept the lead? +
2 business hours to accept or reject — this is the acknowledgement, not the first contact. Accepting is a click; it only says "this one is mine". If no answer comes in the window, the lead should reassign automatically to the next seller in the routing rule.
Can the seller refuse a lead that marketing sent? +
Yes, provided the reason goes back in writing within 48 hours, chosen from a closed list: wrong region, volume below minimum, competitor, student, existing customer, no application fit. Free-form refusals do not accumulate into anything marketing can act on.
How do I route leads among several sellers or reps? +
Pick one written criterion and automate it: by state or region, by product line, or plain round-robin. Which criterion you choose matters far less than having it written and automatic, because manual distribution by the manager adds hours of delay and reopens the argument every week.
Do I need a CRM to organise the handoff? +
Not to start. A shared spreadsheet with lead, assigned seller, arrival timestamp, accept timestamp and reject reason already exposes the leak in the first week. A CRM makes it sustainable at volume, but it does not create the rule — companies with a CRM and no assignment rule lose leads exactly the same way.
How do I know how many leads are being lost in the handoff? +
Count the leads from the last 90 days with no accept and no reject logged after 48 hours, and divide by the total. That single percentage is the size of the leak. In first diagnostics it usually lands between 30% and 50%.
Want to know where your leads are dying?
We take the last 90 days of leads, measure assignment time, accept time and the share that got neither, and hand back the routing rule your team can put in place the same week.
