The Workflow We Fix First: Marketing to Sales Handoff

The handoff or ‘handover’ process is how qualified leads move from marketing to sales. Nine times out of ten, it’s this handoff that needs the most urgent attention. Left unchecked, marketing-qualified leads may never make their way to sales, or when they do, they’re delayed, missing crucial information that will help reps close, and other issues.

What’s more, problems with the marketing to sales handoff can go unnoticed. The automation logic might sit across several platforms or workflows, be assigned to different owners, or be buried inside a CRM that isn’t integrated properly. 

A broken marketing to sales handoff usually creates a series of small disconnects that add up to something bigger.

For example, leads hit the MQL threshold but don’t go anywhere. Notifications are delayed, unclear, or never sent. Sales doesn’t know who to follow up with, or why. Marketers are forced to follow up on deal outcomes and not because they want to micromanage, but because their reporting is full of gaps.

When this happens, MQLs can go cold, the sales team loses faith in lead quality, and marketers are left trying to justify campaign performance and spend, without a clear view of what happened at or after handover. When the business relies on accurate attribution to secure future budget, this is a serious roadblock.

The irony is that fixing this workflow is often faster, easier, and more impactful than launching something new.

When the marketing to sales handoff is working well, it feels seamless. Sales has what they need to take the next step, and marketing can easily track what happens after a lead is passed on.

At a minimum, the handoff process should:

• Be triggered in real time when a contact reaches the agreed MQL threshold.

• Include all relevant context for sales: what the contact has done, what they’ve seen, and how they got here.

• Be tied to a clear follow-up action, whether that’s an assigned task, a call queue, or entry into an automated sales sequence.

• Be visible in reporting, so marketing and sales leaders can measure what’s working and what isn’t.

None of this is particularly complex or exciting, but it does require intentional design. That means mapping out lifecycle stages properly, agreeing on lead scoring and qualification criteria between teams, and building automation that reflects sales capacity.

Not sure if your marketing to sales handoff is working as it should? A few questions can reveal a lot:

• How quickly does an MQL reach a salesperson once qualified?

• What information does sales receive when they’re notified?

• Is there a consistent follow-up process in place?

• Can marketing see whether leads have been contacted and what happened next?

If you don’t have clear answers, or if different people on your team would answer differently, that’s a sign your lead handover needs reviewing.

In some cases, the workflow exists, but it’s not being used consistently. In others, there are technical issues or gaps that mean contacts never actually make it to sales, even though they’ve qualified. Both are common. Both are fixable.

The exact setup of the handoff will vary depending on your platform.

In HubSpot, lifecycle stages and lead status properties play a key role. You’ll want to ensure MQL definitions are being used consistently and that your workflows are properly routing leads based on criteria like recent activity or engagement scores. Internal notifications, task assignments, and integration with tools like Sequences help support fast, structured follow-up.

In Salesforce, the marketing to sales handoff can happen through lead assignment rules (Account Engagement aka Pardot), campaign member statuses, or automated Flows (Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced) that convert and assign leads based on score thresholds. If you’re using Salesforce Marketing Cloud alongside Sales Cloud, it’s important to ensure alignment between platforms so that qualification logic in one reflects properly in the other.

For businesses using both HubSpot and Salesforce, this handoff is even more sensitive. Mismatched definitions, syncing delays, or misaligned fields can all break what should be a straightforward process.

From a technical perspective, the marketing to sales handoff isn’t the most complicated automation you’ll build. But from a commercial perspective, it’s arguably the most important.

This one process determines how quickly qualified leads are actioned, how much insight sales has going into a conversation, and whether marketing can claim accurate attribution for the leads they generate. It has a direct line to ROI.

Answer honestly: How fast does an MQL get to your sales team today?

If sales-ready leads are being left to rot, followed up inconsistently, or handed off without context, you’re not alone, and you’re not stuck with this situation. Once the right fix is in place, you unlock the full value of your automation software, whether it’s HubSpot or Marketing Cloud.

Need a second pair of eyes on your lead handoff workflow? MarCloud will help you tighten the loop between marketing and sales so no lead gets left behind. Get in touch.