Deciding which system owns the MQL, and making the number defensible

The problem

The play

1. 1
   Deciding who owns the MQLGong

   Made the marketing automation platform the sole owner of MQL, lead score and the hand-raiser flag, and reduced the CRM to reacting, stamping MQL dates, routing, and returning cold records to nurture. Deactivated the conflicting return-to-marketing movers so only the intended Gong-triggered flow survives.

2. 2
   Reconciling the count

   Root-caused the dashboard swing to a counting-method problem rather than a data problem, then reconciled the CRM to the marketing platform one-to-one at the record level for a full quarter, so the number is defensible before anyone reports on it.

3. 3
   Lead source and first/last-touch rebuild

   Rebuilt third-party-sourced lead attribution to route by the record owner's role instead of flat-tagging everything as prospecting, standardized the UTM-channel-to-lead-source mapping, restored BDR as its own lead source, and backfilled historical records so first- and last-touch land together.

4. 4
   Hand-raiser reporting that survives automation

   Rebuilt hand-raiser reporting on the hand-raise event date, which survives return-to-marketing, instead of a live checkbox, and corrected the marketing performance dashboard so hand-raisers stop under-counting.

5. 5
   Inbound routing rebuild

   Rebuilt inbound lead distribution: an even round-robin across the small domestic BDR team that also absorbs location-unknown leads, a separate path for known international leads, and 180-day activity-based stickiness so a returning lead goes back to whoever worked it, deployed to production with monitoring dashboards.

What it moved

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