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GullySales

Marketing and sales stop arguing about leads, because both signed one definition.

Gully Sales writes the agreement between your two teams: what counts as a qualified lead, who owns it, how fast it must be contacted, what happens when it is returned, and how both sides are reviewed on the same report.

  • One written definition of a qualified lead that both teams have agreed to
  • A response time for every lead type, with an owner and a fallback named
  • A joint review where both sides are measured on the same report
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Gully Sales Private Limited works with small and medium businesses across India, and writes the agreement around your own stages, teams and lead volumes.

In one paragraph

What is Marketing-to-Sales SLA Development?

Marketing-to-sales SLA development is the written agreement between your marketing and sales teams. Gully Sales defines what counts as a qualified lead, sets the response time for each type, names the owner and the backup, agrees how leads are rejected or returned, and puts both teams into one monthly review against the same numbers.

The problem

Both teams are working hard, and the lead still goes cold.

Marketing sends what it believes are good enquiries. Sales calls the ones that look promising and gets on with the deals already in hand. Neither side is careless. The trouble is that nobody ever wrote down what a good enquiry is, who picks it up, or how quickly. So the same conversation repeats every month, with two versions of the same numbers, and the enquiry that mattered sits untouched in between.

You will recognise it as

  • Marketing reports a strong month and sales says the leads were not worth calling. Both are reading different lists.
  • An enquiry arrives on Friday evening and somebody calls on Tuesday, if at all.
  • Nobody can say who owns a lead between the marketing inbox, the WhatsApp number and the salesperson's phone.
  • Leads returned as junk carry no reason, so the same kind of lead arrives again next month.
  • Your monthly review becomes a debate about whose figures are right instead of a decision about what to change.

What it costs the business

  • Enquiries you paid to create are contacted after the buyer has already spoken to two competitors.
  • Marketing keeps optimising for volume, because nobody told it which leads sales actually accepted or closed.
  • Salespeople quietly stop trusting inbound leads and fall back on their own contacts, which hides the real conversion rate.
  • New joiners learn the handoff by asking a colleague, so every person runs a slightly different process.

Why it persists. The handoff sits between two owners, which usually means it has no owner. Marketing is measured on enquiries, sales on closures, and the gap between the two belongs to neither. Most SMBs run it on a verbal understanding that worked when the founder saw every lead. When volume grows, or a person leaves, the understanding does not travel. Buying a CRM does not fix it either, because software enforces rules only after somebody agrees what the rules are.

If it stays unresolved. The cost stays invisible, which is why it survives. You keep paying for enquiries that are never worked, keep reporting a conversion rate that is not real, and keep making budget decisions on it. As the team grows, the disagreement grows with it, and the first serious argument usually arrives in a quarter when the number is missed and neither side can prove what happened.

What changes

What changes once the agreement is written and running.

In the first weeks

  • One definition of a qualified lead, written down and accepted by both teams.
  • A named owner and a stated response time for every lead source you run.
  • A single lead list both sides read, instead of two spreadsheets that disagree.

In how the work runs

  • Returned leads come back with a reason, so marketing can correct the source rather than guess.
  • Handoffs are recorded in the CRM, not in messages nobody can find a month later.
  • Cover is defined for leave, site visits and busy days, so a lead never waits for one person.
  • New salespeople are onboarded into a written rule, not into somebody's memory.

In sales and marketing

  • High-intent enquiries are contacted sooner, because the clock and the owner are both defined.
  • Marketing spend shifts towards the sources that produce leads sales accepts and progresses.
  • Fewer paid enquiries are lost simply because nobody picked them up.

In what management can see

  • You can see, by source and by stage, exactly where leads slow down or stop.
  • Both function heads are reviewed on the same report, so the meeting starts from agreed facts.

Over the longer term

  • The agreement survives new hires and new tools, because the rules are documented rather than remembered.
  • Each review tightens one number instead of reopening the whole argument.

Gully Sales controls the definitions, the written agreement, the reporting and the review discipline. What follows commercially depends on your offer, pricing, market and the effort your team puts into each conversation. We do not promise a conversion rate or a revenue figure.

Who it is for

This is for you if the handoff, not the lead flow, is the problem.

The businesses it suits

  • You have separate marketing and sales functions, even if each one is a single person or an agency.
  • Leads arrive from more than one source and land in more than one place.
  • You already run a CRM, or are about to, and want the rules agreed before more automation is added.
  • Your monthly review keeps stalling on whose numbers are correct.
  • You are adding salespeople and cannot keep briefing each one verbally.
  • You spend on campaigns and cannot say how many of those enquiries were actually worked.

What usually prompts the call

  • A campaign spent well and produced enquiries that nobody followed up.
  • A salesperson resigned and their untouched leads surfaced weeks later.
  • You appointed a marketing agency and cannot tell whether the leads it sends are any good.
  • You are moving from founder-led selling to a team and need the rules stated once, clearly.
  • A buyer told you a competitor called back the same day and you did not.

What Gully Sales does

The work, component by component.

Lifecycle stages and definitions

We agree the stages a lead passes through, from first enquiry to accepted opportunity, and write entry and exit criteria for each one. Every stage gets a plain-language definition and two worked examples from your own records, so a new joiner can classify a lead correctly on day one.

Why it matters:
Most disagreements about lead quality are really disagreements about vocabulary. When marketing and sales use the same word for different things, no report can be trusted.
You receive:
A stage map with entry and exit criteria, plus worked examples drawn from your own leads.
Business value:
Every report after this counts the same thing, so conversion rates become comparable across months and sources.

Qualification signals

We identify the signals that genuinely predict a real buyer in your market: budget indication, decision role, timeline, location, product fit, and the behaviour that shows intent. Marketing agrees to collect them; sales agrees that a lead carrying them will be worked. Signals that sound impressive but do not predict anything are removed.

Why it matters:
Sales rejects leads it cannot judge. Giving both sides one checklist removes opinion from the handoff and makes rejection a factual matter.
You receive:
A qualification checklist with the required and optional signals for each lead source.
Business value:
Marketing collects what sales needs, and sales can no longer reject a lead that meets the agreed standard.

Ownership rules

We write who owns a lead at each moment, and when ownership passes. That covers territory, product line, account size and existing-customer overlap, and it names a backup for every owner. It also settles the awkward cases: a referral to the founder, a walk-in, a call to the office landline, a message on the company WhatsApp number.

Why it matters:
A lead with two owners is treated like a lead with none. Naming the owner and the backup removes the pause where everybody waits for someone else to act.
You receive:
An ownership matrix by source, territory and account type, with a named backup for each route.
Business value:
Every enquiry has one person accountable for it from the minute it arrives, including on the days that person is unavailable.

Response times

We set a first-contact time for each lead type, matched to how your buyers behave rather than to a textbook number. High-intent enquiries such as a quotation request or a demo booking get the tightest clock; slower research enquiries get a longer one. We define what counts as a genuine contact attempt, how many attempts are required, and over what span.

Why it matters:
A response promise without a definition of contact becomes a single missed call logged as done. The rule has to say what actually counts.
You receive:
A response-time table by source and intent, with the required attempt sequence written out.
Business value:
Your fastest-moving buyers hear from a person while they are still deciding, and the standard does not depend on who is on duty.

Exceptions and recycling

We write the rules for everything that is not a clean handoff: leads returned as unqualified, leads that go quiet, duplicates of existing customers, out-of-territory enquiries, and periods when volume spikes or the team is short. Returns carry a reason code, go back to marketing on a defined route, and are re-entered into nurture rather than deleted.

Why it matters:
Exceptions are where most agreements fail. If the document only covers the ideal case, the team improvises on every real one and the discipline erodes.
You receive:
A rejection and recycling process with reason codes, a return route, and an escalation path for breaches.
Business value:
Nothing you paid for is thrown away, and marketing learns from every rejection instead of repeating the same mistake.

Monitoring and joint review

We build the scorecard that shows both sides of the agreement: what marketing delivered against the agreed volume and quality, and what sales did against the agreed response and follow-up. It runs weekly for the operating teams and monthly for both function heads, with a fixed agenda and a place to record decisions.

Why it matters:
An agreement nobody reports on is an opinion. The scorecard is what turns it into a working commitment, and it must be quick enough to produce every week.
You receive:
An SLA scorecard in your CRM or reporting tool, plus a monthly review agenda and decision log.
Business value:
Review meetings begin from agreed facts, so the time goes into fixing one thing rather than defending two versions of the truth.

Optimisation cycle

Thresholds set at the start are estimates. We revisit the definitions, the qualification signals and the response clocks on a fixed cycle, using what the scorecard shows: which signals actually predicted a closure, where the clock is unrealistic, and which source deserves a different standard. Changes are versioned so you can see what was altered and why.

Why it matters:
Markets, products and teams change. An agreement that cannot be amended is quietly abandoned within two quarters.
You receive:
A recalibration record showing each change to definitions, signals and thresholds, with the reason for it.
Business value:
The agreement stays believable, because the numbers in it reflect how your business actually sells today.

What you will have at the end.

  • A written marketing-to-sales SLA in plain language, signed by both function heads.
  • Definitions for every lifecycle stage, with entry and exit criteria and worked examples from your own leads.
  • A qualification checklist both teams accept, listing the signals that matter for your buyers.
  • A response-time table by lead source and intent, with the required contact attempts spelled out.
  • An ownership matrix naming an owner and a backup for every source, territory and account type.
  • A rejection and recycling process with reason codes and a defined return route to marketing.
  • An escalation path for missed clocks, leave, volume spikes and disputed rejections.
  • An SLA scorecard showing both sides' commitments against actual behaviour, weekly and monthly.
  • A monthly joint review agenda with the questions to answer and a decision log to fill in.
  • A one-page summary of the agreement for the CRM home screen or the sales room wall.
  • A short recorded walkthrough so new joiners can be onboarded into the agreement without a meeting.
  • An anonymised sample SLA extract you can read before the engagement begins.

How it runs

The engagement, step by step.

  1. 1

    Baseline and evidence

    We take a read-only look at how leads reach you today: every source, every inbox, every number, and what the CRM already records. We measure lead volume, field completeness, time to first contact and stage conversion, and we sit with two or three salespeople to hear which leads they actually work and why. This becomes the evidence both teams will later argue from, rather than impressions.

    You provide:
    Read access to your CRM or an export, access to lead inboxes and forms, and an hour each with marketing and sales.
    We produce:
    A baseline report showing volume, completeness, response times and conversion by source, with the gaps named.
    Done when:
    Both teams have seen the same set of facts about the current handoff and accept them.
  2. 2

    Definition workshop

    We run a working session with both teams in the same room and settle the vocabulary: what an enquiry is, what makes it qualified, what an opportunity is, and which signals genuinely predict a buyer in your market. Disagreements are resolved against the baseline data, not by seniority. Everything agreed is written down before anybody leaves.

    You provide:
    Both function heads, one or two salespeople, and whoever runs your campaigns, for one session.
    We produce:
    Agreed stage definitions and a qualification checklist, circulated the same week for correction.
    Done when:
    Both sides can classify the same twenty sample leads and reach the same answer.
  3. 3

    Response and ownership design

    We set the response clock for each lead type and write the ownership matrix, including the backup for every route and the rules for referrals, walk-ins and messages to the company number. Clocks are set against what your team can genuinely sustain on a busy day, because a standard nobody can meet is worse than none.

    You provide:
    Your territory, product and account split, team rosters, working hours and leave patterns.
    We produce:
    A response-time table and an ownership matrix, both reviewed with the people who must follow them.
    Done when:
    Every source has a named owner, a named backup and a response time the team has accepted.
  4. 4

    Exceptions and recycling rules

    We write the rules for the messy cases: rejection with reason codes, the route a returned lead takes back to marketing, duplicates against existing customers, out-of-territory enquiries, volume spikes and periods when the team is short-handed. We also define the escalation path when the clock is missed, and who decides a disputed rejection.

    You provide:
    Examples of the awkward leads that caused arguments in the last quarter.
    We produce:
    The exception, rejection and recycling section of the agreement, with reason codes and escalation steps.
    Done when:
    Every case your team raised in the workshop has a written answer in the document.
  5. 5

    Instrumentation and reporting

    We configure your CRM so the agreement can be measured rather than merely believed: stage fields, source capture, owner and timestamp on handoff, reason codes on rejection. Then we build the SLA scorecard that shows both sides' commitments in one view, and check the numbers it produces against the baseline.

    You provide:
    Administrator access to your CRM or forms, and time from whoever administers it today.
    We produce:
    Configured stages, capture fields and reason codes, plus a working weekly and monthly SLA scorecard.
    Done when:
    The scorecard reproduces last month's numbers correctly and can be refreshed without manual work.
  6. 6

    Launch, sign and train

    The agreement is signed by both function heads and taught to the people who must live inside it. We train marketing on what to capture, sales on the clock and the return process, and managers on how to inspect it. Each team practises on live leads, not on slides, and the one-page summary goes where they will see it.

    You provide:
    One training session per team and a leadership commitment to review it in the monthly meeting.
    We produce:
    Role-based training, the one-page summary, and a recorded walkthrough for future joiners.
    Done when:
    Both teams have run a full week of leads under the agreement with the scorecard live.
  7. 7

    Review, tune and hand over

    We chair the first joint reviews so the meeting learns its shape: read the scorecard, name the breaches without blame, decide one change, record it. Thresholds proven unrealistic are amended. Then we hand the chair to your own manager, with the agenda, the decision log and the version history in your hands.

    You provide:
    Attendance from both function heads at each review, and a nominated internal owner for the agreement.
    We produce:
    Tuned thresholds, a recalibration record, and a handover pack with the agenda and decision log.
    Done when:
    Your own manager has chaired a review without us and the decisions were recorded.

Ways to work with us

Choose how much of the agreement you want us to carry.

SLA sprint

The baseline, the definition workshop and the written agreement, signed by both teams. Suited to a business whose CRM is already tidy and whose managers can instrument and enforce it themselves.

SLA with instrumentation

Everything in the sprint, plus the CRM configuration and the scorecard, so the agreement can be measured from launch day rather than argued about. Includes role-based training for both teams.

Governed rollout

The full engagement, with Gully Sales chairing the joint reviews for an agreed number of cycles, tuning thresholds against real data, and handing the chair to your manager once the meeting runs cleanly on its own.

Refresh of an existing SLA

For businesses that already have an agreement nobody follows. We audit it against actual behaviour, rewrite the parts that failed, rebuild the scorecard and restart the review discipline.

Why Gully Sales

What you are actually choosing when you choose us.

We write it with both teams in the room.

An agreement drafted for one side is never honoured by the other. We facilitate the disagreement in one session, settle it against your own data, and get both function heads to sign the same document.

The rules are fitted to your CRM, not to a template.

Every clause is written so it can be recorded and reported in the system you already use. If a rule cannot be measured in your CRM, we either instrument it or we do not write it.

Commitments run in both directions.

Marketing commits to volume, field completeness and qualification standards. Sales commits to response times, attempt counts and honest reason codes. A one-way document is just a complaint in formal language.

It is written for how Indian SMBs actually sell.

Enquiries arrive on WhatsApp, on the landline and through walk-ins. Salespeople spend days on site visits. Festival weeks change everything. The agreement accounts for that instead of pretending every lead is a web form.

Measurement is built before the launch.

We construct the scorecard and check it against your historical numbers before anybody signs, so the first review argues about the work rather than about whether the report is trustworthy.

We hand it back to your own manager.

The point is a review your team can chair without us. We chair the early cycles to set the tone, then hand over the agenda, the decision log and the version history.

Where it applies

The same service, in different businesses.

Industrial manufacturing

The situation:
Enquiries arrive through the website, trade portals, exhibitions and the office landline, and are shared with whichever engineer is free that day.
How it applies:
Ownership is split by product line and region, technical enquiries get a longer clock than quotation requests, and every enquiry is logged with source and owner before it moves.
Likely benefit:
Quotation requests are acknowledged the same working day, and the sales head can see which trade source actually produces orders.

Healthcare clinics and hospitals

The situation:
Appointment enquiries come from the website, from calls and from social media, and the front desk handles them alongside walk-in patients.
How it applies:
A qualified enquiry is defined by service line and location, the front desk gets a tight clock for appointment requests, and the marketing team receives a reason whenever an enquiry is not converted.
Likely benefit:
Patients who enquire are contacted while they are still deciding, and campaign spend moves towards the services that fill the calendar.

Real estate and property

The situation:
Portal leads, site-visit walk-ins and channel-partner referrals all land at once, and site staff are away showing units for most of the day.
How it applies:
Portal leads carry the tightest clock with a named backup for anyone on site, walk-ins are logged before the day ends, and channel referrals follow a separate ownership route.
Likely benefit:
Fewer portal leads go cold while the team is on site, and the developer can compare portal cost against site-visit conversion honestly.

Professional and B2B services

The situation:
An external agency generates enquiries, the partners take the ones they like, and nobody can settle whether the agency is performing.
How it applies:
The agreement defines what the agency must deliver and what the partners must do with it, with rejection reasons flowing back to the agency every week.
Likely benefit:
The agency conversation shifts from opinion to a shared scorecard, and the partners work leads they previously ignored.

Education and training institutes

The situation:
Admission enquiries spike around intake season and counsellors work through a shared list with no order to it.
How it applies:
Enquiries are staged by course and intent, counsellors are assigned by course with defined cover during the peak, and unconverted enquiries return to nurture with a reason.
Likely benefit:
Peak-season enquiries are contacted in a defined order instead of by whoever reaches the list first, and later intakes inherit a clean pool.

Retail chains and distributors

The situation:
Bulk and dealer enquiries come to a central number, are forwarded on WhatsApp to a branch, and are then untraceable.
How it applies:
Handoffs move into the CRM with an owner and a timestamp, branch response times are agreed, and the central team can see what each branch did with what it was sent.
Likely benefit:
Head office can tell which branch converts enquiries and which one lets them sit, and neither side is arguing from memory.

Proof

Work we can point to.

Premier Marketing

The problem:
Enquiries were arriving from domestic and industrial segments faster than the handoff between marketing and the sales team could absorb them.
What we did:
Gully Sales worked on their reach and on the way leads were handled through to the sales team, across both domestic and industrial sectors.
The result:
Lead handling was streamlined and sales moved faster across domestic and industrial sectors.
Read the case study

Kambar Group

The problem:
Sales activity ran on individual habit, so what happened to a lead after it was generated depended on who received it.
What we did:
Gully Sales worked on their sales process through strategic planning, lead generation, sales enablement and closure technique.
The result:
Sales processes became more efficient, with planning and enablement supporting how leads were carried to closure.
Read the case study

Questions buyers ask

Before you enquire, the answers you will want.

What exactly is a marketing-to-sales SLA?

It is a written, two-way agreement between your marketing and sales functions. Marketing commits to how many leads it will pass, with which fields completed and against which qualification standard. Sales commits to how quickly each lead type will be contacted, how many attempts will be made, and how a lead will be returned if it does not meet the standard. It is short, specific and signed, so nobody has to rely on memory.

How quickly must sales act on a qualified lead?

Each lead type gets its own clock and its own owner. A quotation request or demo booking is classed as high intent, assigned to a named person by territory or product line, and carries the tightest response time in the agreement. A backup is named for every route, so leave or a site visit does not stall the lead. Missed clocks appear on the weekly scorecard and follow a written escalation path.

How long does it take to agree an SLA?

We do not quote a fixed timeline before seeing your situation, because the work depends on how many sources and teams you run and how much your CRM already records. A business with one CRM, two lead sources and a willing leadership team moves quickly. One with several branches, scattered inboxes and no shared record takes longer. After the assessment we give you a written scope with sequenced stages so you can see what happens when.

What inputs do we need to provide?

Read access to your CRM or an export of leads, access to the forms and inboxes where enquiries land, and time from your people: both function heads, one or two salespeople and whoever runs campaigns. You also need a nominated internal owner for the agreement, and a leadership commitment to hold the monthly review. That commitment matters more than any document we write.

How is compliance with the SLA measured?

Against a baseline both teams agreed before we started. The core measures are field completeness on incoming leads, time to first genuine contact, adherence to the agreed clock by owner, stage-to-stage conversion, the share of rejections carrying a valid reason, and the time your manager spends building the report. We read these weekly for the teams and monthly with both function heads.

What does the SLA engagement not cover?

We do not run your campaigns, make your sales calls or manage your salespeople day to day. A full CRM implementation, a lead scoring model, routing automation and pipeline clean-up are separate pieces of work, though we will tell you plainly if the assessment shows one is needed first. We also do not write commitments your team has told us it cannot keep.

Do we need a CRM before this is worth doing?

You need some shared record where a lead, its owner and its timestamp can be seen by both teams. That is usually a CRM, and a simple one is enough. If leads currently live in personal inboxes and WhatsApp threads with nothing shared, we will say so at the assessment and recommend the smallest system that lets the agreement be measured, rather than writing rules nobody can check.

What if sales refuses to accept the response times?

Then the times are wrong, and it is better to find out before signing. We set clocks against what your team can sustain on a genuinely busy day, using the baseline as evidence rather than an industry number. A standard the team cannot meet is abandoned within weeks and damages trust in the whole agreement. It is far easier to tighten a realistic clock later than to rescue an unrealistic one.

4 more questions

What happens to leads sales sends back?

Every rejection carries a reason code from an agreed list, which is what makes it useful. The lead returns to marketing on a defined route and goes into nurture rather than being deleted, so it can come back when the timing is right. Marketing reviews the reason codes weekly and adjusts targeting, forms or messaging accordingly. Disputed rejections follow a written escalation path to a single decision-maker.

Will this create more admin work for salespeople?

It should reduce it. Most of the admin in a broken handoff is re-explaining, searching old messages and rebuilding lists for the monthly meeting. The agreement asks for a few fields at the moment of handoff and an honest reason on rejection, and the scorecard is generated from the CRM rather than assembled by hand. We test each rule against the extra clicks it costs before writing it in.

Can this work when an outside agency does our marketing?

Yes, and it is often where the value shows fastest. The agency becomes a party to the agreement: it commits to volume, field completeness and qualification standard, and receives rejection reasons every week. Your review then compares delivery against those commitments instead of debating whether the leads felt good. Most agencies welcome it, because it also protects them from leads being ignored.

We are a small team. Is this too formal for us?

The agreement should be as short as your business is simple, and for many SMBs one page is enough. Formality is not the point; a shared definition is. Small teams often benefit most, because a single missed enquiry is a larger share of the month, and because the rules are what let you hire the next salesperson without repeating the whole conversation.

Talk to us

Get both teams to define a good lead the same way.

The assessment is a working session, not a sales pitch. You will leave with a clear view of where your leads slow down between marketing and sales, whether or not you engage us afterwards.

  • No obligation and no sales script
  • A reply from someone who does the work
  • Your details are never sold or shared

Your data stays yours. We work from read-only access or an anonymised export where you prefer, sign a non-disclosure agreement on request, and never share your lead data, client names or numbers with anyone else.

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