The Lead That Fell Between Two Departments

Marketing ran a campaign, generated a genuinely strong lead — right company size, right pain point, filled out the form themselves. It landed in the CRM, got auto-assigned to a rep... who was on vacation that week, with no backup coverage set up.

By the time he got back, the lead was nine days cold. He called anyway. They'd already signed with a competitor the week before.

Nobody dropped this on purpose. It fell into the gap between 'marketing's job was to generate it' and 'sales' job was to work it' — a gap that only shows up when you actually trace one lead's entire journey instead of just looking at the totals. Leak #1, hiding in a handoff nobody had actually designed.

If your best-fit lead came in tomorrow while the assigned rep was out, does anyone else even know to pick it up?