The handoff is where deals get won or lost organisationally. Architecture decisions:
1. Lead capture and enrichment
- Marketing channels create Leads: forms, events, MQL imports.
- Enrichment — third-party tools (Clearbit, ZoomInfo) or Pardot/MCAE adds firmographic data.
- Lead scoring — combine demographic + behavioural to compute fit + interest.
2. Lead qualification stages
- MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) — meets marketing's criteria; ready for sales touch.
- SAL (Sales Accepted Lead) — sales has reviewed and accepted ownership.
- SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) — sales has confirmed budget, authority, need, timeline (BANT).
Each stage has explicit criteria and SLA for movement.
3. Routing
- Lead Assignment Rules route to regions, segments, AEs.
- Round-robin within a queue for fair distribution.
- SLA on first touch — escalation if not contacted in X hours.
4. Lead conversion
- When SQL: Convert the Lead — creates Account, Contact, Opportunity.
- Mapping: Lead fields -> Account/Contact/Opportunity fields.
- Custom logic — sometimes additional records (Subscription, Asset) created.
- Original Lead retained — read-only post-conversion.
5. Campaign attribution
- Campaign Influence — which campaigns touched the lead/contact during the deal cycle? Multiple attribution models for revenue credit.
6. Reporting
- Funnel metrics: MQL volume, MQL->SAL conversion rate, SAL->SQL, SQL->Opportunity, Opportunity->Closed Won.
- Velocity metrics: time at each stage.
- Source ROI: revenue per channel.
Common architectural decisions:
- Lead vs Contact-driven model — some orgs skip Lead and capture all in Contact directly. Simpler but loses funnel visibility.
- Account-Based Marketing (ABM) — focus on Accounts, not Leads. Different shape.
- Pardot/MCAE vs Marketing Cloud Engagement — B2B vs B2C tooling.
Senior consultants align Sales and Marketing on shared definitions of MQL/SAL/SQL — without that, the handoff fights forever.