The conversation usually goes one of two ways: marketing says the leads are fine and sales is not working them, or sales says the leads are unqualified. Both are describing the same failure from opposite ends, and neither owns the part that is actually broken.
The gap nobody owns
Marketing is measured on volume and cost per lead. Sales is measured on closed revenue. The handover between them — qualification, routing, follow-up speed — sits between two sets of metrics and appears in neither dashboard. That is where the deals go.
The four common causes
- No agreed definition of qualified — so marketing optimises for volume against a bar nobody wrote down.
- Slow first contact — interest decays quickly, and response time is one of the few variables entirely within your control.
- Routing by availability rather than fit — the enquiry reaches whoever is available rather than whoever can close it.
- Capture that outran qualification — removing form friction raised volume and lowered the average buyer quality, which looks like success on one report and failure on another.
Why the usual response makes it worse
The instinct is to generate more leads. If the conversion path leaks, more volume multiplies the waste and buries the signal — the team is now busier, the cost per customer is higher, and the underlying problem is harder to see because everyone is working.
The difficulty is not knowing that qualification matters. It is defining qualified from your actual closed-won data rather than from opinion, building scoring the sales team trusts enough to use, and instrumenting the handover so the leak becomes visible.
What this means for your business
Before increasing spend, measure two numbers for a fortnight: time to first contact, and close rate by source. Those two usually locate the problem precisely. Our CRO guide covers the on-site half; the Revenue Leakage Audit covers the rest of the path.