---
title: "The 70% nobody measured: sales and marketing | SalexHub"
description: "Why sales leaders, sellers and marketing count the same leads differently, read from fourteen published studies and surveys, and what narrows the gap."
url: "https://salexhub.com/research/the-70-percent-nobody-measured"
kind: "Review"
area: "Sales"
published: "2026-10-14"
author: "SalexHub"
---

# The 70% nobody measured

Marketing counts the leads it passed on, sellers the ones worth a call, the head of sales what reached the forecast. A reading of fourteen published studies and surveys on where the three counts part.

[Research](https://salexhub.com/research.md) · Review · [Sales](https://salexhub.com/research/sales.md) · 14 October 2026

Method: Fourteen published sources from 2006 to 2026, each read on its primary release and marked with who ran it and whom it asked.

The question: Why do the head of sales, the sellers and lead generation count the same leads differently, and what does each side ask for?

Marketing counts the leads it handed over. Sellers count the ones worth a call. The head of sales counts what reached the forecast. All three are counting the same people, and each arrives at a different number. The dispute over whose number is right is an old one. A study from 2006 opens on it: marketing complains that sales follows up poorly, and sales complains about the quality of the leads [1].

We read fourteen published sources from 2006 to 2026 on that handover: ten peer-reviewed studies, one release of official statistics, one independent survey and two surveys by firms that sell software or advice to the people they asked. Beside every reference we say what kind of evidence it is and whom it asked. Every number below is taken from its primary release. For eight of the ten studies that release is the published abstract, not the full paper, and the reference says so. The selection, and what we make of it, are ours.

## Key findings

- **Each side traces the same failure to the other, and the research says why.** A study of the "thought worlds" of the two functions found that they differ in what they speak for, the customer or the product, and in knowledge and skills [2]. The oldest study here, from 2006, opens on the complaint each side makes: marketing blames the follow-up, and sales blames the leads [1].
- **Inside sales, leaders and sellers describe the same leads differently.** Asked for their sales organization's top source of leads, 42% of top executives named referrals and 24% the sales team's own prospecting. Among individual contributors it was 23% and 44% [3].
- **Sellers give leads from marketing a small part of their time.** Among 461 sales reps at four B2B firms, leads from marketing took 5.7% of working time on average, and leads the reps found themselves 15.6% [4].
- **The most quoted number in this dispute was not measured by the study that made it famous.** The claim that sellers never contact 70% of marketing's leads comes from trade publications. The study cites it, measures something else, and notes that the figure reflects on marketing as much as on sales [4].
- **Better qualification wins sellers' time. Closer tracking does not.** In the same study, a 1% higher rating of how well leads were qualified went with 1.12% more time on them, and 1% more tracking by managers with 0.14% less [4].
- **Pay that rewards one side widens the gap.** Among 196 sales and marketing managers, rewards focused solely on sales or solely on marketing widened the distance between the integration they had and the integration they wanted, and that distance went with lower firm performance [5].
- **Not every difference should be closed.** Market performance was higher where one side argued for the customer and the other for the product. Differences in product knowledge went with lower performance [2].

## Do sales and marketing mean the same thing by a lead?

**They start from different places.** No source here counts how many companies share one definition of a qualified lead. What the research describes is why a definition is hard to share. A study of the "thought worlds" of the two functions found differences of two kinds. One is orientation: one side speaks for the customer and the other for the product, one for the short term and the other for the long term. The other is competence: product knowledge and interpersonal skills [2]. A study of 337 companies based in the European Union found five distinct arrangements of marketing and sales, and concluded that the roles of the two vary a great deal from company to company [6]. A lead is defined inside one of those arrangements. There is no definition that holds across them.

The two sides also read the same failure differently. In interviews with 42 people in 21 pairs of a sales person and a marketing person, the same breakdown set off different explanations on each side, and the response each side chose sometimes worked against fixing it [7]. The complaint the 2006 study opens on has the same shape: each side names the other's work as the cause [1].

## Do the head of sales and the sellers count the same leads?

**Not by their own account.** A software vendor's survey of more than 6,200 people in 99 countries asked which source brings their sales organization the most leads. Overall, 37% named leads the sales team finds itself, 32% referrals and 28% leads from marketing. Split by job title, the answers part. Top executives named referrals most often (42%) and the sales team's own prospecting least (24%). Individual contributors answered the other way round: 23% and 44%. Managers were closer to the individual contributors (22% and 49%), and vice presidents and directors closer to the executives (39% and 33%) [3].

**Figure 1. Executives credit referrals. Individual contributors credit the sales team's own prospecting**

Which is the top source of leads for your sales organization? Share naming each source

| Measure | Top executives | Individual contributors |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Referrals | 42% | 23% |
| Leads the sales team finds itself | 24% | 44% |

Answers by job title in a software vendor's survey of more than 6,200 people in 99 countries, run from February to March 2018 [3]. Top executives are the survey's C-level group. The third answer, leads from marketing, is not drawn because the two groups gave it almost the same share: 30% and 31%. Managers answered 22% for referrals, 49% for the sales team's own leads and 27% for marketing's; vice presidents and directors 39%, 33% and 26%. The report does not give the number of people in each group.

Both ends of the company gave marketing about the same share, 30% and 31%. The disagreement inside the sales organization is over where the rest comes from: relationships the company already has, or work the sellers do. The survey is from 2018 and most of its respondents were the vendor's own contacts, so read it as a pattern, not a measure.

## What happens to a lead after it is handed over?

**It competes for a seller's time, and mostly loses.** The one study we found that measured this asked 461 sales reps at four B2B firms (scientific instruments, chemicals, copiers and computers) how they divide their time. On average 5.7% went to leads from marketing, 15.6% to leads the reps had found themselves, and 78.8% to everything that is not winning a new customer [4].

**Figure 2. Leads from marketing get about a quarter of a day in a seller's week**

Share of their working time, as 461 sales reps at four B2B firms reported it

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| All other work | 78.8% |
| Their own leads | 15.6% |
| Marketing's leads | 5.7% |

Each bar is a five-day week, and the coloured part is the average share of time the reps gave to that work: 5.7% is a little over a quarter of a day. Their own leads are the ones the reps found themselves, and all other work is everything that is not winning a new customer. Self-reported by 461 sales reps at four B2B firms [4]. The shares are printed as the study rounds them and add up to 100.1%. Reps who gave leads from marketing no time at all, 39 of them, were left out of the study's analysis, so the true average is lower.

The pay explains part of it. The reps were paid mainly on quota, commission and bonuses for sales, some of it tied to winning new customers. At none of the four firms did any part of the pay reward following up a lead from marketing [4].

**The famous number is borrowed.** The same paper opens with the sentence that made the "sales lead black hole" known: sales reps never contact about 70% of the leads their marketing departments generate. The paper does not measure that figure. It cites two trade publications for it, and adds in a footnote that there can be more leads than reps could pursue even if they wished to, so the figure reflects on marketing as well as on sales [4]. Among the sources we read there is no peer-reviewed measurement of the share of leads that are never contacted.

More leads do not help by themselves. A study built with one large home improvement retailer followed inquiries through to appointments and sales. Its authors conclude that a high volume of leads can hurt later sales, through effort wasted on poorly qualified leads and through delays in follow-up when the sales force has limited capacity [1]. In the four-firm study, 1% more leads from marketing went with a 0.07% smaller share of time spent on them [4].

## Why do sellers pass over leads they were given?

**Because they rate them low.** In the 2018 survey, respondents rated the quality of leads from each source on a scale of 1 to 5. 59% gave referrals one of the two top marks, 49% gave them to leads the sales team found itself, and 28% to leads from marketing. 27% gave marketing's leads one of the two bottom marks [3].

**Figure 3. Leads from marketing get a top mark less than half as often as referrals**

Share rating the quality of leads from each source 4 or 5 out of 5

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Referrals | 59% |
| Leads the sales team finds itself | 49% |
| Leads from marketing | 28% |

The two top marks on a scale from 1, very poor quality, to 5, very high quality, added together, in a software vendor's survey of more than 6,200 people in 99 countries, run from February to March 2018 [3]. The question stands in the report's section on sales. The report does not give the number of people who answered it.

Marketers in the same survey ranked the sources the other way. Asked which source gives the sales team its best leads, 60% named inbound marketing, 21% the leads the sales team finds itself and 18% outbound work such as cold calls and trade shows [3]. Each side rates its own leads highest.

The four-firm study shows what a low rating does. Reps scored how well their firm qualifies leads before passing them on at 2.87 on a scale of 1 to 7, on average. Where they rated it higher, they gave the leads more time: across the sample, a 1% higher rating went with 1.12% more of their time on marketing's leads, and between 0.58% and 1.64% more at each of the four firms [4].

**Figure 4. Better qualified leads win sellers' time. Closer tracking and more leads do not**

Change in the share of time sellers give leads from marketing when each factor is 1% higher

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| How well leads are qualified before the handover | 1.12% |
| How closely managers track follow-up | -0.14% |
| How many leads marketing sends | -0.07% |

Estimates for the whole sample from a model of how 461 sales reps at four B2B firms divide their time [4]. Qualification and tracking are the reps' own ratings of their firm. The estimates differ by firm: for qualification from 0.58% to 1.64%, and for tracking from negative at two firms to positive at the other two. They are associations in one survey, not the result of an experiment.

**Checking on sellers does not bring the leads back.** Tracking by managers went the other way: across the sample, 1% more of it went with 0.14% less time on marketing's leads. The direction differed by firm. It was negative at the instruments and chemicals firms and positive at the copier and computer firms, most of all at the copier firm, whose reps were the least experienced (8.83 years on average, against 11.92 overall). With experience, reps responded less to tracking and to the number of leads, and more to how well the leads were qualified [4]. Tracking is the head of sales' usual lever. On experienced sellers, in this study, it worked backwards.

## Who decides what counts as qualified?

**Often a third team, which answers to one of the two sides.** Many B2B companies put a sales development team between marketing and the sellers: people who research a lead, make the first contact and pass it on. A field study that interviewed 13 people at eight firms describes those three steps (lead research, engagement and handover) and four settings in which they differ: inbound or outbound, aimed at a person or at an account [8].

In a consultancy's survey of 351 B2B companies, most of them North American software companies, 60% of these teams report to sales, 26% to marketing and 10% to a C-level executive, a split the survey says has held since 2012. 60% of the reps were at quota, the lowest share in the survey's history [9]. The step the definition dispute is about usually sits inside one of the parties to it.

Above the two functions there is rarely a referee. In an independent survey of top marketers, 72% said marketing and sales work together on an equal basis, 10.3% that marketing sits within sales and 7% that sales sits within marketing [10]. Where the two are equals, a dispute over a definition has nobody to settle it short of the chief executive.

## What does each side ask for, and what works?

- **Sellers: leads worth the call** Sellers ask for leads that were checked before they arrive. It is the factor their time followed most closely, and they scored their firms' checking at 2.87 out of 7 [4].
- **Lead generation: follow-up on what it sends** Marketing's standing complaint is poor follow-up by sales [1]. The time study gives it some ground: marketing's leads got 5.7% of sellers' time, and 39 of the reps surveyed gave them none [4].
- **The head of sales: sellers who work the leads** The manager's lever is tracking what sellers do with the leads they are given. In the time study, more tracking went with slightly less time on marketing's leads, and experienced reps responded to it least [4].

**Working together goes with better results.** A study of collaboration between sales and marketing found a direct and positive relationship with business performance. It names five things that come before collaboration: the attitude of senior management, less conflict between the departments, better communication, organizational learning and market intelligence systems [11]. Among the five arrangements found across 337 companies, the most successful had strong structural links between marketing and sales, and a marketing unit that knew the market well [6].

**Sameness does not.** The study of thought worlds separates differences that hurt from differences that help. Differences in product knowledge and in interpersonal skills went with lower market performance. Performance was higher where one side argued for the customer and the other for the product, and where one side argued for the short term and the other for the long term. That gain outweighed what the difference cost in cooperation [2]. What the evidence supports is a shared count and a shared language. It does not support a single point of view.

**Pay matters.** In a survey of 196 sales and marketing managers at several firms, rewards that focused solely on sales or solely on marketing widened the gap between the integration managers had and the integration they wanted, however much the two functions depended on each other. A wider gap went with lower firm performance [5].

**Figure 5. One in four says sales and marketing work to a written agreement or are tightly aligned**

How would you characterize your company's sales and marketing relationship?

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Generally aligned | 47% |
| Tightly aligned, or there is a service-level agreement | 26% |
| Rarely aligned | 11% |
| Do not know | 9% |
| Misaligned | 7% |

A software vendor's survey of more than 6,200 people in 99 countries, run from February to March 2018 [3]. The survey offered tight alignment and a service-level agreement as one answer, so the 26% cannot be split between them.

A written agreement between the two functions is the usual advice, and it is not the usual practice. In the 2018 survey, 26% described their company's sales and marketing as tightly aligned or working to a service-level agreement, a written statement of what each side owes the other [3].

## Can a score settle it?

**Only where there is a record to score.** A review of 44 studies of lead scoring, published from 2005 to 2022, sorts the methods into two families. Traditional scoring rests on rules and points set from sales people's experience and judgment, and the review calls it prone to error because the values are chosen by hand. Predictive scoring is driven by data, and in the studies reviewed it had the more positive effect on sales performance, measured most often by the share of leads that become customers [12].

Our reading: a rule written by one side is that side's opinion with a number on it, and the other side will treat it as one. A score built from what happened to past leads is at least an account both sides can check. The review itself traces low conversion mostly to the low quality of the leads in the queues sales teams work from [12], which is the sellers' complaint, put in a researcher's words.

Either kind of score needs one place where a lead, its source and what became of it are written down. In the European Union in 2025, 28.51% of enterprises with ten or more persons employed used CRM software: 24.69% of the small ones and 65.43% of the large ones [13]. Where there is no shared record, each side counts from its own list.

The research has a gap in the same place. A systematic review of more than 25 years of studies of how sales and marketing work together names four directions the field has still to cover. Two of them are digital technologies and small and medium-sized firms [14]. That suggests most of what is known comes from companies large enough to have two departments.

## What this does not show

- **The studies that measure the handover are old.** The peer-reviewed work that looks at lead follow-up directly dates from 2006 to 2013, before most of the tools teams use now. The newer evidence is surveys, interviews and reviews of earlier studies.
- **Two of the fourteen sources come from firms that sell to the people they asked.** One is a software vendor's survey and one a consultancy's. We sell business software too. Read their numbers, and our reading of them, with that in mind.
- **We read eight of the ten studies in abstract only.** What we report from them is what their authors put in the abstract. The full papers may qualify it, and two of the abstracts do not give the size of the sample.
- **The time study is four firms.** It covers 461 reps at four B2B firms with field sales forces, who reported their own time. Nobody measured it. Reps who gave marketing's leads no time were left out of the analysis.
- **These are associations.** No source here gave a practice to some teams and withheld it from others. "Went with" does not mean "caused".
- **The survey of lead sources is from 2018.** Most of its respondents were the vendor's own contacts and partners, and it does not say how many people are in each job-title group.
- **Nobody has measured the share of leads that are never contacted.** The figure of 70% is quoted from trade publications.
- **No source here counts how many companies share one definition of a qualified lead.** The studies describe why the two sides differ. They do not say how often.
- **Companies without two departments are missing.** The research was done where marketing and sales are separate units, and the official figures cover enterprises with ten or more persons employed. Where one person finds the leads and also sells, none of these sources applies directly.

## What we build from this

Each need below is one the evidence names. Beside it is what SalexHub does about it today, with the page that shows it. Where we have nothing to show, the row says so.

| The need | What SalexHub does today | Where to see it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| One definition of a qualified lead | A lead is a contact that moves through stages you name. They start as Lead, Qualified and Handed to sales. For each stage you list what must be filled in before a contact may enter it, so "qualified" means the same thing whoever moves the contact. | [CRM](https://salexhub.com/product/crm.md) |
| A lead that arrives with its source and an owner | A request from your site is filed as a contact with where it came from and every answer in a note. With one setting it opens a deal, and an assignment rule gives it an owner, who is told. | [Turn a website request into a deal](https://salexhub.com/use-cases/website-request-to-deal.md) |
| Leads judged the same way every time | You write what a good request looks like. A workflow has the Agent read each new request against it, give it a score from 1 to 5 and tell the owner which are worth a look. There is no score learned from your own past leads. | [Score every new request before anyone reads it](https://salexhub.com/use-cases/score-new-requests.md) |
| A first reply that does not wait for a free hour | The Agent drafts the first reply from the deal. You edit it if you like, and send it from your own address. | [Reply to a new request from your own address](https://salexhub.com/use-cases/reply-to-a-request.md) |
| Follow-up that lead generation can see | Email from a connected mailbox is filed on the contact and the deal, and whoever can see the record can read it. By default a member sees only their own records and those with no owner, so for marketing to follow a lead after the handover, an admin shares those records with a rule. Calls and meetings are logged by hand. | Nothing to show yet |
| A lead nobody has answered | The overview counts new contacts nobody has touched for two days, and a Mini reports each deal that has had no activity for 14 days. We do not measure the time to a first reply on a lead, and nothing warns you within the hour. | [Follow up on deals that went quiet](https://salexhub.com/use-cases/follow-up-quiet-deals.md) |
| One count of what each source brings | You can build a report of visitors by source and deals created by source, and a funnel of how many contacts move from each stage to the next. Neither comes ready-made, and there is no ready report of won deals by source. | [Put traffic and pipeline by source on one board](https://salexhub.com/use-cases/traffic-and-pipeline.md) |
| A reason when a lead is turned down | A lost deal can carry a reason, and you can make the reason required. A contact marked Unqualified has no field for the reason today, so that answer reaches marketing only if someone writes a note. | Nothing to show yet |
| Proof that it narrows the gap | We have not measured whether any of this changes how many leads are followed up, or how the two sides rate each other. Until we do, we make no claim about it. | Nothing to show yet |

## References

1. Smith, Gopalakrishna and Chatterjee. [A Three-Stage Model of Integrated Marketing Communications at the Marketing-Sales Interface](https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.43.4.564). Journal of Marketing Research, 43(4), pages 564 to 579, November 2006. Peer-reviewed study. The leads, appointments and sales of one large home improvement retailer. Read in abstract.
2. Homburg and Jensen. [The Thought Worlds of Marketing and Sales: Which Differences Make a Difference?](https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.71.3.124). Journal of Marketing, 71(3), pages 124 to 142, 2007. Peer-reviewed study. Business units with separate marketing and sales. The abstract does not give the size of the sample. Read in abstract.
3. HubSpot. [State of Inbound 2018: Global Results](https://www.hubspot.com/hubfs/assets/hubspot.com/research/reports/State%20of%20Inbound%202018%20Global%20Results.pdf). HubSpot Research, June 2018. Vendor survey. More than 6,200 respondents in 99 countries, surveyed from February to March 2018. Mostly voluntary responses from the vendor's contacts and partners, with a smaller number from a survey panel.
4. Sabnis, Chatterjee, Grewal and Lilien. [The Sales Lead Black Hole: On Sales Reps' Follow-Up of Marketing Leads](https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/handle/10453/117150). Journal of Marketing, 77(1), pages 52 to 67, 2013. Peer-reviewed study. 461 sales reps at four B2B firms (scientific instruments, chemicals, copiers and computers), from 562 surveys returned. Read in the authors' accepted manuscript of July 2012, which the link opens.
5. Sleep, Lam and Hulland. [The sales-marketing integration gap: a social identity approach](https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2018.1513796). Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 38(4), pages 371 to 390, 2018. Peer-reviewed study. 196 sales and marketing managers at several firms. Read in abstract.
6. Homburg, Jensen and Krohmer. [Configurations of Marketing and Sales: A Taxonomy](https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.72.2.133). Journal of Marketing, 72(2), pages 133 to 154, 2008. Peer-reviewed study. 337 companies based in the European Union, across industries. Read in abstract.
7. Malshe, Johnson and Viio. [Understanding the sales-marketing interface dysfunction experience in business-to-business firms: A matter of perspective](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.10.014). Industrial Marketing Management, 63, pages 145 to 157, 2017. Peer-reviewed study. In-depth interviews with 42 people in 21 pairs of a sales person and a marketing person, in several B2B industries. Read in abstract.
8. Terho, Salonen and Yrjänen. [Toward a contextualized understanding of inside sales: the role of sales development in effective lead funnel management](https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-12-2021-0596). Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 38(2), pages 337 to 352, 2022. Peer-reviewed study. Interviews with 13 people at eight firms, most of them software companies. Read in abstract.
9. Bertuzzi. [Sales Development Models, Metrics & Compensation: 2025 Research Report (10th ed.)](https://www.bridgegroupinc.com/research/2025-sdr-models-metrics-report-the-bridge-group). The Bridge Group, 2025. Vendor survey. 351 B2B companies, 78% of them based in North America and 83% selling software as a service, surveyed by a sales consultancy.
10. Moorman, The CMO Survey. [Overcoming the Marketing-Sales Turf War: Six Strategies to Integration](https://cmosurvey.org/overcoming-the-marketing-sales-turf-war-six-strategies-to-integration/). The CMO Survey, blog, Survey of February 2013. Independent survey. Top marketers, asked in February 2013 by a survey run from a business school. The post gives no count.
11. Le Meunier-FitzHugh and Piercy. [Does Collaboration Between Sales and Marketing Affect Business Performance?](https://doi.org/10.2753/PSS0885-3134270301). Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 27(3), pages 207 to 220, 2007. Peer-reviewed study. The abstract does not give the sample. Read in abstract.
12. Wu, Andreev and Benyoucef. [The state of lead scoring models and their impact on sales performance](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9890437/). Information Technology and Management, 25(1), pages 69 to 98, 2024, online since 2023. Peer-reviewed study. A systematic review of 44 studies published from 2005 to 2022.
13. Eurostat. [E-business integration](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=E-business_integration). Statistics Explained, 2025 data, extracted in May 2026. Official source. EU enterprises with 10 or more persons employed.
14. Biemans, Malshe and Johnson. [The sales-marketing interface: A systematic literature review and directions for future research](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2022.02.001). Industrial Marketing Management, 102, pages 324 to 337, April 2022. Peer-reviewed study. A systematic review of more than 25 years of research. Read in abstract.

Eurostat figures: source Eurostat, © European Union. Reuse is authorised provided the source is acknowledged. The values are printed as Eurostat publishes them.

The Bridge Group asks that its report be cited as: Bertuzzi, M. (2025). Sales Development Models, Metrics & Compensation: 2025 Research Report (10th ed.). The Bridge Group. https://www.bridgegroupinc.com/research/2025-sdr-models-metrics-report-the-bridge-group

### Kinds of evidence in this piece

- Peer-reviewed study (10): Published in a journal after review by other researchers.
- Official source (1): Statistics or rules published by a public authority.
- Independent survey (1): A survey by an organization that sells nothing to the people it asked.
- Vendor survey (2): A survey run or paid for by a company that sells to the people it asked.

## Changes

- 14 October 2026: First published.

## Cite this piece

SalexHub (2026). The 70% nobody measured. https://salexhub.com/research/the-70-percent-nobody-measured

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The same page for people: https://salexhub.com/research/the-70-percent-nobody-measured. Index of this site for agents: https://salexhub.com/llms.txt