Part one. The Definitions
The Four Definitions
What a lead is. What done means. Which number is the number. Who the customer is.
Read the transcript
Four words carry more weight in an operation than any others, and almost no organisation has written any of them down. What a lead is. Ask sales and ask marketing separately. If marketing counts a form and sales counts a booked call, the number at the top of the board is two numbers stacked on each other. What done means. Done at the point of handoff is almost always a smaller thing than done at the point of receipt. Which number is the number. Ask each function what it would sacrifice to move theirs. Who the customer is. The buyer, the user and the person who renews are frequently three different people. Ask all four of every function, separately, in writing. Do not discuss first. The disagreements are the finding.
Four words carry more weight in an operation than any others, and almost no organisation has written any of them down.
What a lead is. Ask sales and ask marketing separately. If marketing counts a form fill and sales counts a booked call, the pipeline number at the top of the board is not a number, it is two numbers stacked on top of each other, and every conversion rate calculated from it is wrong.
What done means. Ask the person who hands off and the person who receives. Done at the point of handoff is almost always a smaller thing than done at the point of receipt, and the gap between them is where rework lives.
Which number is the number. Every function has a metric it optimises. Ask each one what it would sacrifice to move theirs. If two functions would sacrifice each other, they are in a fight nobody has scheduled.
Who the customer is. The buyer, the user and the person who renews are frequently three different people, and a team optimising for the wrong one of the three will produce excellent work that does not sell.
The exercise is to ask all four of every function, separately, in writing, and then put the answers side by side. Do not discuss first. The disagreements are the finding, and discussing first destroys them.
Two things worth doing, neither of which costs anything
Read the standard in full, free and in the open, before you pay anything or give anyone an address.