Operating Cadence
The cross-functional service-level agreement (SLA) that gets marketing and sales aligned on lead definitions, handoff timing, follow-up commitments, and shared accountability. The components, the negotiation process, and what good looks like.
The classic B2B failure mode: marketing generates "leads"; sales says the leads are bad and complains they're not following up because they're garbage; marketing says sales is dropping balls and complains the pipeline isn't closing. Both teams are pointing at the other, conversion suffers, and revenue stalls.
A Marketing-Sales SLA is a documented agreement between the two teams that defines lead quality criteria, handoff timing, follow-up commitments, and the metrics each team is accountable for. It moves the conversation from finger-pointing to shared accountability.
Most SLAs fail at this step. Marketing defines MQL based on what's easy to measure (filled out a form, downloaded a piece of content). Sales defines SQL based on what they're seeing in their pipeline (intent signals, fit signals, real budget).
The fix: write the definitions together. Marketing and sales leadership in the same room, working through what makes a lead actually likely to close. The output is a definition both teams own.
For more sophisticated programs, lead scoring (numerical thresholds across fit and intent signals) replaces binary MQL/SQL definitions.
Many programs go beyond MQL volume to track pipeline-influenced revenue: deals that marketing touched at any point along the journey, weighted by influence. This addresses the structural unfairness of last-click attribution that gives all credit to whoever made the final touch.
Modern attribution platforms (LeanData, Bizible (now Adobe), 6sense) calculate pipeline-influenced revenue automatically. The metric becomes the shared scoreboard both teams optimize against.
Defining MQL too loosely. Marketing hits the number but the leads don't convert. Sales loses faith.
Defining MQL too tightly. Marketing can't produce enough volume. Pipeline starves.
No real consequences. The SLA is written but no one's comp or planning depends on it. It becomes decorative.
No regular review. Set once, forgotten. Markets and products evolve; SLAs need quarterly revisiting.
Excluding sales operations / RevOps from the conversation. The team that builds the lifecycle infrastructure must be part of the SLA design.