Leads and sales
Why does sales say the leads are rubbish?
By Doug Taylor and Jake Mayell, Co-Founders · Last reviewed 16 October 2026
Because forms, event scans and bought lists let half-complete leads straight into the CRM. Sales gives up calling them, and the ad platform is told those were the good ones. Agreeing together what a lead worth calling looks like, checking it as it lands, and telling marketing what happened to every lead fixes both sides.
Leads that turn into customers · 1 min
What the video says
Marketing says the leads are good. Sales says they're rubbish. Both are right.
A lead form is built to accept any job title and any email address. An event scan arrives with no company. A bought list comes with people who left two years ago.
As a result, half-complete leads land in CRM as strangers. Sales gives up on calling them, but the ad platform is told those were the good ones.
The answer is agreeing, together, what a lead worth calling looks like, checking it as it lands, and getting the good ones to the right person straight away.
When sales tells marketing what happened to every lead, every channel learns which leads were qualified.
Struggling to find leads that turn into customers? Let's have a chat.
So what would you like to know next?
How we fix it
What we do
Agree what a lead worth calling looks like, design how leads are scored and routed, set the time to first contact, and define the handover and what sales reports back.
Where bad data gets in
Lead forms, event scans, bought lists and website forms that check nothing.
What it breaks further down
Duplicates in the CRM, salespeople who stop trusting leads, and platforms told the wrong leads were good.
What moves
Share of leads sales accepts, time to first contact, and leads that become opportunities.
Usually owned by
Marketing Director and Sales Director
An example
Example
Catamaran Gurus
The challenge. A Florida catamaran dealer running four businesses under one roof: new boats from six manufacturers, brokerage, a sailing school and deliveries. Every one generated data, and none of it joined up. Boat shows, listing portals, course bookings and webinars each told a different story, and only 145 of nearly 7,000 buyers even had a brand of interest recorded.
What changed. We worked with the CEO and his team to bring every touchpoint together against the person, over 7,000 of them, so a buyer’s whole history sits in one place: which shows they visited, which courses they took, which boats they looked at, and what finally closed the deal.
The result. The data overturned an assumption. The sailing school wasn’t feeding new boat sales; it was helping close them, sold as part of the package that won the deal. Now the team knows what actually wins a buyer, and sells it on purpose.
