Ten questions on the system between marketing and sales. Quality handed to sales beats volume reported to the board. This grades which one you actually run.
01You score accounts, not form-fills. A download alone never reaches sales.
02Sales and marketing share one written definition of a sales-ready lead.
03That definition gets reviewed with sales on a recurring cadence.
04Intent data decides who gets called first, not just who gets ads.
05A propensity or fit model ranks accounts, not just activity points.
06Scored accounts get worked within a day of crossing the line.
07Every SAL rejection comes back with a reason code that someone reads.
08Every waterfall stage (MQA → SAL → SQO → Won) has one named owner and a target.
10Sales actually works the scored list, in order, and would say so.
Scales: 1 = not true · 5 = completely true.
F42/100
Strict by design. An A takes confident yeses across the board. One loose joint makes the whole quality system decorative.
There is no lead-quality system — there's a hand-off and a hope. Fixable, and worth fixing before anything else: pointed at unscored leads, every dollar of sales capacity underperforms.
Your top gaps
You score accounts, not form-fills. A download alone never reaches sales.
Move the unit of measure from person to account. Intent + fit + stage decide who sales calls this week, not who filled the form.
A propensity or fit model ranks accounts, not just activity points.
Activity scoring rewards the busiest browser, not the likeliest buyer. Build a fit + propensity rank, even a simple one, and sort the queue by it.
The board hears quality metrics (MQA→SQO, win rate), not MQL volume.
Swap the volume slide for a quality slide: cost per MQA, MQA→SQO, win rate. Volume worship upstream buys noise downstream.