The Sales-Marketing SLA Reboot — 60-Min Training

Question

Pulse RevOps · The Machine · Accepted Answer

### Direct Answer

> **TL;DR — The Sales-Marketing SLA Reboot is a 60-minute joint training where sales, marketing, and RevOps leaders sit in the same room, agree on a single MQL-to-SQL definition, sign a bidirectional SLA (marketing commits volume + quality, sales commits speed + feedback), schedule the weekly Smarketing meeting, and diagnose where leads are dying today.** Run it once per quarter. Bring laptops. Leave with a signed document and a recurring calendar invite — not a deck.

Most B2B SaaS teams in the $25K-$500K ACV band lose 30-60% of marketing-sourced pipeline at the handoff, and almost none of it is a lead-gen problem. It is a **definitional** problem (marketing and sales disagree on what an MQL even is), a **speed** problem (reps touch leads in days, not minutes), and a **feedback** problem (sales never tells marketing what closed). Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah coined "Smarketing" in *Inbound* (2014) for exactly this reason; Jon Miller productized it at Marketo and Engagio; SiriusDecisions (now Forrester) built the Demand Waterfall to make the leakage measurable. This hour fixes the contract, not the campaigns.

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## Section 1 — Open & Diagnostic Cold Read (5 min)

**Goal: surface the disagreement before anyone gets defensive.**

Open by writing one question on the whiteboard: *"What, exactly, is an MQL at our company?"* Hand every person a sticky note. Sixty seconds. No talking. Stick them up.

- **Read them aloud verbatim.** You will hear 6-9 different answers in a room of 8 people.
- **Name the gap out loud.** "We have been arguing about a word we have never defined together."
- **State the hour's deliverable.** One MQL definition. One signed SLA. One recurring meeting. One leakage map.

Per Forrester's 2023 B2B Buying Survey, **65% of B2B buyers regret a purchase within 12-24 months when sales and marketing handoff was poor** — the cost of fuzziness is not internal politics, it is churn.

---

## Section 2 — The MQL-to-SQL Definition Fight (15 min)

**Goal: write one definition, on the wall, today.**

The reason this fight never resolves is that teams confuse **fit** (does this account look like a customer?) with **intent** (are they actually shopping?). You need both, scored separately, then combined.

Use the **HubSpot Smarketing two-axis model** (Halligan/Shah, *Inbound*, Ch. 7):

- **Fit score (firmographic + ICP):** industry, employee count, tech stack, geography. **Threshold: 60/100.**
- **Intent score (behavioral):** demo request, pricing page 3+ visits, repeat sessions within 14 days, content downloaded past TOFU. **Threshold: 40/100.**
- **MQL = Fit >= 60 AND Intent >= 40.** Not OR. **AND.** This single change typically cuts MQL volume by 35-50% and raises MQL-to-SQL conversion from ~13% (industry median per Forrester) to 25-30%.

Write it on the whiteboard verbatim:

> **MQL Definition (signed [DATE]):** A contact at an account scoring >=60 on Fit AND >=40 on Intent in the last 30 days, OR any inbound demo request from an ICP-matched account regardless of score.

**SQL Definition** is what sales accepts after a discovery call: **BANT-light** (Budget acknowledged, Authority identified, Need articulated, Timeline within 6 months) or **MEDDIC's M-E-C** at minimum. Sales — not marketing — owns this gate.

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    A[Anonymous Visitor] --> B{Fit Score >= 60?}
    B -- No --> Z[Nurture / Disqualify]
    B -- Yes --> C{Intent Score >= 40?}
    C -- No --> D[Marketing Nurture Track]
    C -- Yes --> E[MQL: Routed to SDR]
    E --> F{SDR Discovery in 5 days?}
    F -- No --> G[SLA Breach: Return to Marketing]
    F -- Yes --> H{BANT-light Met?}
    H -- No --> I[Recycle: Marketing Nurture]
    H -- Yes --> J[SQL: Accepted by AE]
    J --> K[Opportunity Created]
```

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## Section 3 — Drafting the Bidirectional SLA (10 min)

**Goal: both sides sign, both sides have skin.**

The classic mistake is a one-way SLA: marketing promises X leads, sales promises nothing. Jon Miller's Engagio playbook (and his 2016 *ABM Done Right*) makes this bidirectional. Write the template on the wall and fill it in live:

- **Marketing commits to Sales:**
  - **Volume:** 240 MQLs/month minimum (matching the ICP definition above).
  - **Quality:** >=25% MQL-to-SQL conversion rolling 90-day. Below 20% triggers a definition review.
  - **Speed:** MQL routed to a named SDR within **5 minutes** of scoring threshold (Marketo/HubSpot workflow, not human).
  - **Enrichment:** Every MQL ships with company, role, intent signal, and last 3 touched pages.

- **Sales commits to Marketing:**
  - **Speed-to-lead:** First touch within **5 business minutes** for demo requests, **24 hours** for scored MQLs. InsideSales/Velocify research (Oldroyd, MIT, 2007) still holds: 100x drop in qualification odds after 30 minutes.
  - **Working the lead:** Minimum **6 touches across 12 business days** before disposition (Rain Group cadence standard).
  - **Disposition:** Every MQL closed-lost or recycled gets

The Sales-Marketing SLA Reboot — 60-Min Training

Direct Answer

Section 1 — Open & Diagnostic Cold Read (5 min)

Section 2 — The MQL-to-SQL Definition Fight (15 min)

Section 3 — Drafting the Bidirectional SLA (10 min)

Section 4 — The Weekly Smarketing Meeting (10 min)

Section 5 — Leakage Diagnosis Workshop (15 min)

Section 6 — Close, Sign, & Calendar (5 min)

FAQ

Sources

The Sales-Marketing SLA Reboot — 60-Min Training

Direct Answer

Section 1 — Open & Diagnostic Cold Read (5 min)

Section 2 — The MQL-to-SQL Definition Fight (15 min)

Section 3 — Drafting the Bidirectional SLA (10 min)

Section 4 — The Weekly Smarketing Meeting (10 min)

Section 5 — Leakage Diagnosis Workshop (15 min)

Section 6 — Close, Sign, & Calendar (5 min)

FAQ

Sources

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