Four reasons to record when Japan sales returns a lead

HQ marketing says it is passing Japan the leads that meet the MQL definition. Japan sales says the quality is low and does not follow up.

The dashboard shows MQLs on target and a conversion rate that does not move.

Ask what happened to the leads sales did not chase and you usually get one of two answers. They were sent back to the MQL list and sit there, or nobody touched them.

Either way, the reason sales declined is recorded nowhere.

”Low quality” does not tell you what to fix

A survey of sales and marketing teams asked both sides the same questions. It is Softbrain’s cross-department collaboration survey, fielded by IDEATECH on 4 to 6 October 2024 (sales n=159, marketing n=139).

Sales’ top complaint about marketing, at 42.1%, was that lead information is insufficient. Marketing’s complaints about sales were that acquired leads are not put to good use (39.6%) and that follow-up has not been improved (47.5%).

It is a vendor-sponsored survey with small groups of about 150, so read the figures as order of magnitude.

What matters is the direction of the complaints.

Sales says the lead arrives without material to act on. Marketing says the lead was passed and not used. Each side sees the same event as the other side’s problem.

When “low quality” comes up in that state, nobody can decide where to fix.

Is the target wrong? Is it too early? Was the lead simply not explained? Each answer calls for different work.

Why sales did not chase a lead falls into four reasons, each with a different fix

Sort the leads sales declined by reason and they mostly land in four groups.

Why sales did not chase	Where to fix
1. Wrong target (not an account you sell to)	The ideal customer profile; ad and campaign targeting
2. Too early (not buying yet)	Timing of the handoff; nurture after it
3. Shallow interest (curious, not worth a call)	The MQL criteria
4. Not explained (sales cannot see why to chase)	The handoff itself: what is passed and how sales is notified

Groups 2 and 3 both look like thin activity, so they blur. Set the rule first.

If there is anything that points to timing (the buyer named a quarter, a contract renewal or budget cycle is known to be later), it is group 2. If there is no timing signal and the activity is a one-off, such as a single download, it is group 3. When in doubt, use group 3.

“Low quality” hides all four.

If most declined leads are group 1, tightening the MQL criteria changes nothing, because the target is still wrong. If most are group 4, retuning the score threshold does not help until sales sees why this person, now.

Group 4 is different in kind. It is not a flaw in the lead.

It is a flaw in the handoff, and usually nobody is slacking. There is just no place at the boundary for the reason to sit.

Our hypothesis is that a good share of what gets labelled “low quality” is actually group 4. We have not counted it, though. Count your own and the largest group will be obvious.

Japanese buyers have already compared vendors before sales calls

“Why this person, now” matters because the buyer is further along than the dashboard suggests.

In a survey by IDEATECH and Hiroyasu Kitagawa of Demagen Research (23 to 26 March 2026, office workers and executives who had been involved with two or more people in introducing, reviewing, switching or renewing B2B products with annual contract value of 3 million yen or more, n=307), the purchasing process was on average about 40% complete by the time the buyer first engaged seriously with sales. About 90% had already shortlisted several vendors.

The survey is run by a company that sells survey PR, uses a panel, and covers large, multi-person purchases only. Do not read it as all of Japanese B2B.

In the same survey, the factors that most influenced adding the eventual vendor to the shortlist were “a case study from a company of similar size” (44.3%) and “features clearly addressing our problem” (40.3%), top three choices, n=298.

The survey describes buyer behavior. It does not prescribe a handoff.

The next step is our reading: if buyers are already comparing, what a Japan rep needs at first contact is not job title or download count but what this person is comparing and where they likely stalled.

MQL criteria typically measure whether the lead looks good for the seller.

They do not measure why now, and when that is missing from the criteria the receiving rep has little to act on.

Put four options on the screen where the lead is declined

The change is small. Where a rep returns a lead, or decides not to chase it, put the four reasons as a pick list.

Do not rely on free text alone: it costs the writer effort and the reader cannot count it.

Do not put it on the lifecycle stage. Keep lifecycle stage moving forward only; if you move it back, returned leads sit as MQL or re-enter the workflow that makes them MQL again.

Put the reason on the field that describes the lead’s status. In HubSpot that is the disqualification reason on the Leads object; in Salesforce, lead status plus a reason pick list.

The standard field names, and how far you can edit their options, depend on the tool and its configuration, so check what already exists before adding fields.

Settle a few points in advance:

• Fix the options to the four above. If you add “other,” limit it to one line.
• Capture the reason on the same screen as the action. Reconstructing it later brings back “low quality.”
• Sales picks. But agree up front that when group 4 is chosen, marketing reviews the handoff. At the monthly review, name one person in marketing who owns the group 4 follow-up and reports at the next review what was changed. If picking changes nothing, reps stop picking.

Review once a month. Look at the split of the four reasons together and fix the largest first.

The meeting topic moves from “quality is low” to “which reason is largest.”

In one engagement we worked on, that shift was the biggest change: the abstract, negative phrase went away and the talk became what to fix.

If many leads come back with no reason at all, that is the first finding. It means there is no material yet for deciding where to fix.

If marketing is judged on MQL count, nobody has a reason to tighten the criteria

Tightening the handoff criteria can lower the MQL count.

If marketing is evaluated only on MQL count, its team has no reason to tighten. The incentive design decides behavior, not the individual’s ability.

Even if the log shows group 3 dominates, changing the criteria lowers their number, so it does not get changed.

The pick list will not last unless it is paired with how marketing is measured.

Alongside MQL count, look at the share of leads sales accepted as worth pursuing, in the same review. The purpose is to see whether the lead moved after the handoff, not only how many were passed.

In Japan this has an extra edge. When the buyer’s decision usually passes through two approval stages (60.9% in the survey above, n=307), “too early” often means no approval path exists yet, not that the buyer is uninterested.

Group 2 deserves its own follow-up rather than being folded into “not interested.”

This week: look at five leads sales did not chase

Pick five recent leads that marketing passed and sales did not pursue. Open each one with the Japan sales rep and ask:

“Looking only at this screen, what would you say to this person today?”

If there is no answer, the information is there but it is not material for deciding the next action.

Sort each of the five into the four reasons. Count which group is largest. That is your first candidate for what to fix.

If none fits, or the answer is “I don’t know,” that is also a result: there is no form yet for recording the reason.

How the boundary between departments fits into the revenue system is in What Is Revenue Architecture.

Related reading

Defining the handoff on buyer behavior rather than score is covered in Japan lead handoffs: record the buyer action behind the score. If your returned leads cluster in group 3, start there.

Other notes on the same problem are collected under Demand generation.