A lead that nobody owns
A prospect fills in a form on a Friday afternoon. The notification goes to a shared inbox. Marketing assumes sales will pick it up. Sales assumes marketing will qualify it first. On Tuesday, someone notices, copies it into the CRM and assigns it to whoever is free. The prospect has already booked a call with a competitor.
Buying a new tool won't fix that. The form works. The CRM works. What's missing is a named owner, a rule for when the clock starts and a point where someone checks. That is the first thing we separate in any engagement. Which problems come from the tools, and which come from unclear responsibility.
1. Walk the current process
We ask each person involved to describe the last real time the process ran. Not the process document, the actual last run. What they opened, what they copied, who they asked and what they waited for.
Along the way, we look for three things.
- Duplicate work. Two people doing the same step, or one person doing it twice in different tools.
- Missing authority. A decision that someone makes because nobody else will, without the right to make it.
- Decisions made in spreadsheets. Side files that hold the real rules because the system doesn't.
2. Design the replacement
Then we design the process from scratch, keeping the parts that work. Here is an illustrative example of the same lead before and after the redesign.
| Step | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Shared inbox, nobody named | Sales development rep for the lead's region |
| Clock starts | Whenever someone notices | When the form is submitted |
| Review point | None | The owner confirms fit within an agreed window, during business hours |
| Escalation | Someone eventually spots it | If not picked up in time, the team lead is alerted |
| Manual step kept | Copying into the CRM | Qualification call, because it needs judgment |
Some steps stay manual on purpose. A step that needs judgment, carries risk or happens rarely is often better left with a person. We say which ones and why.
Real constraints shape the design. CRM permissions, business hours, approval rules and data that only one team can see all go on the map before anything gets redesigned.
3. What the engagement produces
- A process map of how the work happens today and how it should happen.
- A list of priorities, in the order worth fixing.
- Acceptance criteria for the new process, so you can tell when it's working.
- An implementation scope for the first change, whether that's a configuration fix, a new rule or a custom build.
You can carry the plan forward with your own team, another vendor or us. If the next step is software, our AI workflow automation work builds it from the scope you already have.
Read the guide: How to audit a marketing automation workflow.