Marketing and sales SLA: how to make it stick

A marketing and sales SLA is a written agreement that sets what counts as a lead, the criteria for handing it off from one team to the other, how quickly and how it's handled, and what sales reports back to marketing about each one. For it to be met, it has to live in the CRM and be measured automatically, not sit in a document someone presented once.

What a marketing and sales SLA is

A marketing and sales SLA is the internal contract that governs the handoff of a lead from one team to the other, with commitments in both directions. Marketing commits to delivering leads that meet an agreed definition and arrive with the context needed to work them. Sales commits to handling them within a set time, with a defined number of attempts, and to recording what happened with each one.

It isn't a volume target. It's the rule that decides what happens to each lead from the moment it comes in until it becomes an opportunity or is discarded with a reason. Even if you don't have a marketing team as such, you still need an SLA: something generates the demand, even if it's just the website, and someone handles it.

Why most SLAs die in a document

Most SLAs fail for the same reason: they're written once, presented in a meeting and never looked at again. Usually it comes down to one of these:

The definitions are ambiguous: "quality lead" means one thing to the team that generates it and another to the team that receives it.
The CRM doesn't record what the SLA promises: without a timestamp for assignment or first contact, the deadline can't be checked.
Nobody owns the agreement: when something isn't met, there's nobody to ask.
There is no feedback loop: sales discards leads without saying why, and marketing keeps producing the same thing.

The symptoms are easy to recognise: requests from the website wait until someone has a spare moment, each rep qualifies on gut feel, and a contact referred by a customer goes into the same queue as a cold one.

Start with a shared definition of "qualified lead"

The SLA starts by agreeing what a qualified lead is, because without that definition any commitment on response times isn't worth the paper it's written on.

The definition rests on three elements: the company's fit with your ICP, the person's role within it and the intent they have shown. Someone who has asked for a meeting isn't the same as someone who has downloaded a resource, even if both work at a company that fits. If your ICP isn't yet written with verifiable criteria, start there: how to calculate your real ICP.

The minimum definitions

An SLA that works defines, at a minimum, these lifecycle stages and who decides the move from one to the next:

Lead: any contact that comes in, with its source recorded.
Marketing-qualified lead (MQL): meets the ICP fit and has shown an intent that the agreement considers sufficient.
Sales-accepted lead: sales has reviewed it and confirms it deserves a conversation.
Opportunity: there is an open sales conversation with a specific next step in both parties' calendars.
Discarded: with a reason chosen from a closed list, not written as free text.
Returned to marketing: it fits, but the timing is wrong; it goes back into a nurture track instead of being lost.

Document the response time, not the intention

A useful SLA sets specific deadlines per type of lead, not promises like "we'll respond quickly to good leads". The formula that works is "every lead that meets criterion X receives first contact in under Y hours", with X and Y defined by your team.

The deadlines don't have to be the same for everything that comes in. For example, an agreement might say:

A meeting request from the website receives first contact within the same working day.
A contact referred by a customer is handled by the person who looks after that account, within the first 24 hours.
A content download from a company that fits receives a follow-up within the week.

As well as the deadline, the SLA says how many attempts, and through which channels, before a lead is considered uncontactable, what happens if it has no owner, and how long sales has to accept or reject it. In the other direction, it sets what each lead brings with it: the source, what they asked for, the company data and previous interactions. Without that context, the conversation starts from zero.

Make it visible in the CRM, not just agreed

An SLA gets met when you can see in the CRM whether it's being met, without anyone having to remember to check. So you wire it into the system instead of leaving it to memory:

States as a closed field: a dropdown with the agreed values, not free text.
Automatic timestamps: the CRM records creation, assignment, first contact and acceptance or rejection on its own. Without those dates, the deadline can't be measured.
Rule-based assignment: according to written criteria, such as segment or territory, not according to whoever grabs it first.
A mandatory, short discard reason: a few closed reasons. With a long list, the field ends up filled with any value just to be able to save.
Alerts before the deadline: to the person responsible when the deadline is approaching, and to the team lead once it's been missed.
The conversation, recorded: if first contact happens on WhatsApp and leaves no trace in the CRM, as far as the system is concerned that lead is still unhandled.

With that in place, the shared dashboard practically builds itself: time to first contact by source and by person, leads accepted versus rejected, discard reasons and how many accepted leads end up as opportunities. It's the same dashboard for both teams, with a glossary, so that the report for the same month doesn't give two different numbers.

Review it every quarter

Review the SLA in a standing quarterly meeting, because qualification criteria change with your ICP, and an agreement that is never reviewed ends up describing a process that no longer exists.

An agenda that works:

Leads rejected by sales, grouped by reason. If a reason keeps coming up, the definition of qualified lead has a gap.
Accepted leads that didn't become opportunities, and what they had in common.
Deadline compliance by type of lead and by person.
Changes to the ICP, the offer or the channels that require the agreement to be changed.

Log each change with its date and update the CRM the same week. Between reviews, check the dashboard in the weekly pipeline meeting.

How the SLA connects to handoffs and pipeline visibility

The marketing and sales SLA is the first of several handoffs in the sales process, and the same logic applies to the others. The handoff from prospecting to sales and the one from sales to customer success need the same things: definitions, deadlines, context that travels with the lead or the customer, and a record in the CRM. If what was promised during the sale isn't written down by kick-off, you have a handoff without an SLA.

It's also the foundation of pipeline visibility. If what comes in isn't measured, conversion between stages and the forecast are calculated on incomplete data, and the error carries through to the close of the quarter.

Where to start

Write the minimum definitions and check whether your CRM records the timestamps the SLA needs; if not, that's the first job. The free online self-assessment (in Spanish) helps you see whether the problem lies in qualification or somewhere else.

We build this system — shared scoring, a documented SLA and a dashboard connected to the CRM — within the RevOps & GTM Projects, alongside handoffs and forecasting. If what's missing is someone to keep it running every week, that's part of Fractional Revenue Operations. And if you're not sure where the leads are being lost, the RevOps & GTM Diagnostic confirms it with evidence before building anything.

Frequently asked questions

Who should own the SLA?

A single person with authority over both teams or, if there isn't one, the Revenue Operations function. If the owner is marketing or sales, the agreement ends up tilting towards their side.

What happens if sales misses the deadline?

The alert arrives before the deadline, not after. If it keeps happening, it goes to the quarterly review: sometimes the deadline's unrealistic, sometimes lead routing is badly set up, and sometimes it's a discipline problem.

Does an SLA replace lead scoring?

No, it uses it. Scoring ranks leads by their fit and their intent; the SLA sets what happens to each score band and how quickly.