Where your lead hand-off from marketing to sales typically breaks

A busy day (a webinar, an ad burst, an import) uses up a daily limit on form posts or on calls between tools. What comes after the limit can be delayed or refused, and the gap shows up as a hole in the CRM.

Why it happens. Daily limits are built into the tools, and the connection does not warn anyone before it hits them.

Usually fixed by: Marketing operations with the CRM admin (limits and batching).
Kind of break, one of six: Arrival: did it show up in the next tool in time?
Sources: Vendor documentation · Vendor documentation

A new lead from a company you already sell to goes round-robin to whoever is next, not to the account's owner. The customer gets a second rep, or a cold sequence.

Why it happens. Routing looks at the lead's own fields and does not look the company up first.

Usually fixed by: Sales operations (routing rules).
Kind of break, one of six: Condition: does a rule that should always hold, hold?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

New leads fall sharply. A broken form, a removed tracking script, a consent change or a browser change cuts the count, and the weekly report just shows a slow week.

Why it happens. Counts are looked at when they are reported, not compared with traffic and spend as they happen.

Usually fixed by: Web or marketing operations, with whoever changed the site that week.
Kind of break, one of six: Count: do the numbers at each end agree? Freshness: is the step still running, and on time?
Sources: Vendor documentation

After a conversion or an import, the same person can exist twice: an early-stage record and an account record, or a second record in the other tool. Each has its own owner, its own history and its own emails.

Why it happens. The conversion or the sync creates a new record instead of linking to the existing one, usually when the owner or queue setup is unusual.

Usually fixed by: CRM admin, with sales operations (who wins ownership).
Kind of break, one of six: Condition: does a rule that should always hold, hold?
Sources: Community thread

The integration signs in as a named person. When that person leaves, changes role or their password expires, the connection stops or loses permissions, and nothing new moves.

Why it happens. Connections are often set up under whoever built them, and nobody lists them in the leaver checklist.

Usually fixed by: CRM admin and marketing operations.
Kind of break, one of six: Freshness: is the step still running, and on time? Arrival: did it show up in the next tool in time?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

A rep tries to enrol a lead and is blocked: the address bounced before, the person unsubscribed, or they are already in another sequence. When enrolment is automatic, the failure is silent.

Why it happens. In some tools, safety rules (bounce, spam, opt-out, one sequence per person) are enforced by the sales tool, but the lead was routed without checking them.

Usually fixed by: Sales operations (rules) with marketing operations (suppression data).
Kind of break, one of six: Arrival: did it show up in the next tool in time?
Sources: Vendor documentation

A person was enrolled, then the CRM record was merged, converted or deleted. The sales tool keeps pointing at the old one and activity cannot be written back.

Why it happens. Record changes in the CRM are not always carried into the sales tool.

Usually fixed by: CRM admin and sales operations.
Kind of break, one of six: Condition: does a rule that should always hold, hold?
Sources: Vendor documentation

A prospect replies or books a meeting, but the CRM shows no activity. Marketing sees a lead that never engaged, sales sees a hot reply in their inbox, and campaign results undercount.

Why it happens. In many tools, activity is logged only when the reply's address matches a person in both systems, so a second email address, a missing record or an auto-reply breaks the link.

Usually fixed by: Sales operations (activity capture) and the CRM admin (email fields).
Kind of break, one of six: Return path: does what the next tool did get back to the first?
Sources: Vendor documentation