Alignment gets you halfway there. Here's the RevOps execution layer, SLAs, re-engagement, and spot checks, that actually keeps leads from falling through.
If you've already done the work of aligning sales and marketing, you know the drill. Shared definitions of what counts as an MQL and SQL. A feedback loop so sales tells marketing which leads were actually good. On paper, the system works.
But here's what I often see with 7-8 figure teams. Alignment isn't the problem. Execution is. The agreements are solid, but the daily mechanics that carry those agreements out still have gaps, and that's where leads quietly disappear.
If you're past the "let's get everyone on the same page" stage, here are the three things I'd focus on next.
Most teams have some version of a response time goal. Fewer have one that actually holds up across every channel a lead can come from.
Leads don't just arrive through forms. They come through phone calls and live chat too, often with much less patience for a slow response. So the SLA needs some detail behind it:
None of this is complicated on its own. Make sure to have a report about it, your team remembers it, and knows exactly what to refer back to if they're unsure, so documenting it in one central place is worth the effort.
Here's something every team eventually notices. A meaningful chunk of leads/deals will sit with no response. Sometimes it's timing. Sometimes it's a no show on a discovery call. Of course, decent effort should go into analysing what causes this and trying to improve it, but in the meantime, whatever the reason is, these prospects are still sitting there, and marketing already paid to generate them.
The fix isn't more manual chasing. It's automation on both sides of the handoff:
These leads aren't the hottest ones anymore, but you don't want to give up on them completely.
This is the one leadership habit that catches everything the automation misses.
As a CRO, I started my day looking at a dashboard and a filtered view only I could see, capturing all leads that met the SQL definition, either by lifecycle stage or by lead score threshold. It gave me an idea of what my sales team started the day with, then again by a set time to see whether those statuses had actually moved the way they should.
This 2 min check ritual mattered more as the systems matured, because there will always be random leads that don't get surfaced to the sales team by automation and are left untouched for longer than they should be. I'd read through the outlier leads' journey in the CRM, spot where the automation needed fixing, and flag it to sales to follow up. Once a team runs 20 or more automations across sales and marketing, conditions and exclusions can clash. Also leads either get over-served, hit by multiple workflows at once and annoyed by it, or they sit completely unnoticed, technically qualified but invisible to everyone on the team.
No automation setup is watertight. A regular, deliberate glance at the actual data catches the cracks before they cost you a pipeline or worse, a reputation.
Get specific about your response SLA across every channel. Re-engage leads instead of letting them go cold in a queue. Build a spot check into your own routine so nothing slips through unnoticed. These simple steps can help you close the gap between a team that's aligned on paper and one that actually protects its pipeline day to day.
If you're at the point where you know something's leaking but can't quite see where, that's usually the first sign it's time for outside eyes on the system.
Main image by Jelena Lapina on Unsplash
Nina Jung is a Sydney-based growth strategist who works with founders as a fractional CMO and CRO, bringing senior-level strategy and hands-on execution at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. She also mentors early-stage founders and business students through GrowthMentor, Startmate, and UNSW.
