Set up a B2B demand generation operating workflow that holds

What to take away

Decide first who owns each stage, because an unowned handover is where leads stall.
Write entry and exit criteria for every stage so a lead moves on evidence, not optimism.
Run one weekly review that clears exceptions rather than re-planning the programme.
Keep the workflow shortfive or six stages beat a diagram nobody follows.
Record the handover from marketing to sales in writing, with a named person on each side.

What does a demand generation operating workflow include?

An operating workflow is the fixed sequence of stages a lead passes through, plus the owner, the evidence required and the action taken at each one. It is not a campaign plan.

Most teams run six stages: target, capture, MQL, SQL, opportunity and closed-won. MQL means a marketing-qualified lead, one marketing judges ready for sales contact against agreed criteria; SQL means a sales-qualified lead, one sales has accepted and is working. Define every stage as a status in your CRM so the workflow lives in the system rather than in a spreadsheet.

Here is that workflow on one page, with owners and criteria filled in:

Targetowner: marketing. Entry: an agreed ideal-customer profile. Exit: a named account and contact list loaded into the CRM.
Captureowner: marketing. Entry: a campaign, event or form response. Exit: a complete contact record with consent recorded.
MQLowner: marketing. Entry: a response that matches the qualification criteria. Exit: the lead passes the marketing-to-sales threshold.
SQLowner: sales development. Entry: sales accepts the handover at the agreed service level. Exit: need, authority, budget and timing confirmed.
Opportunityowner: account executive. Entry: a live buying process with a decision route. Exit: proposal or quote issued.
Closed-wonowner: account executive. Entry: a commercial agreement signed. Exit: the outcome, or the loss reason, fed back to targeting.

Six-stage demand workflow

Targeting
Capture
Qualification
Handover
Follow-up
Closed-loop reporting

For each stage, name one owner. Shared ownership across two teams usually means nobody acts. In practice marketing owns target, capture and MQL; sales development owns SQL; account executives own opportunity and closed-won; and revenue operations owns the CRM, the data and the reporting. Agree the boundaries in writing before you assign anything.

Where a quote, configuration or pricing step sits inside the workflow, the CRM record should carry it. Tools such as Salesforce CPQ exist to keep quoting and revenue data on the same record as the opportunity, which removes a common reconciliation task.

Decide deliberately which system holds the workflow. HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Pipedrive and Marketo are the common choices in UK B2B teams. The CRM should own the stage field and the lead owner, while the marketing-automation platform handles capture, scoring and nurture. Whichever you use, one field must hold the stage and another the owner, or the workflow drifts back into spreadsheets.

How do you set entry and exit criteria?

Write criteria as observable facts. "Buyer has confirmed budget and a decision date" is checkable. "Lead feels warm" is not.

Exit test at each stage

Does the lead meet the written exit criteria?

Yes

advance to next stage

hold or return with reason logged

Each stage needs an entry test and an exit test. If a lead fails the exit test, it stays put or returns to the previous stage with a reason logged.

This matters most at the marketing-to-sales handover. Agree the threshold once, in writing, and review it quarterly. Changing the threshold mid-quarter resets every conversation you have had about performance.

For the wider delivery picture, including how workflow sits alongside planning and reporting, the B2B demand generation operations guide is worth reading before you redraw anything.

Who owns each handover?

Every handover needs a sender, a receiver and a service level. Marketing sends; sales receives. The receiver confirms receipt and either accepts or returns the lead with a coded reason.

Coded reasons beat free text. Ten codes cover most cases: no budget, wrong contact, timing, competitor chosen, no response, duplicate, unqualified size, outside territory, data quality, other.

Review the codes monthly. If one code dominates, the problem is upstream in targeting or qualification, not in sales effort.

What rhythm keeps the workflow running?

Run a weekly thirty-minute review. The agenda is exceptions only: leads stuck at a stage, handovers rejected, data gaps.

Do not re-plan the programme in that meeting. Strategy belongs in a monthly or quarterly session with a different agenda.

A daily stand-up of ten minutes works for high-volume teams. Keep it to blockers, not status updates.

How do you keep records and skills current?

Document the workflow in one page. Version it, date it and store it where both teams can find it.

Because a lead record is personal data, the workflow sits inside UK data protection law. UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) govern what you may store, how long you may keep it and whether you may contact someone. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is the regulator, and its guidance is the reference to follow when you write retention and consent rules into the workflow.

Skills gaps usually appear at qualification and handover. Structured training helps here; the digital marketing training courses from the Chartered Institute of Marketing cover campaign and channel skills that feed the top of the workflow.

Treat general business continuity as part of the same discipline. GOV.UK's guidance on keeping your business running covers the practical arrangements, from records to insurance, that keep a service running when people are absent.

Glossary

Stage: a defined step a lead passes through.
Entry criteria: the evidence needed before a lead enters a stage.
Exit criteria: the evidence needed before it leaves.
Handover: the transfer of a lead between owners.
Service level: the agreed response time at a handover.
Exception: a lead that fails a criterion and needs a decision.

Common questions

Short answers to the questions that come up most often when teams build and run this workflow.

How many stages should the workflow have?

Five or six. Fewer than four hides real work; more than eight is rarely followed. Add a stage only when a distinct owner and a distinct decision exist.

Should the workflow live in the CRM or a document?

Both. The CRM enforces the stages; a one-page document explains the criteria and owners. If they disagree, the document is wrong and should be updated.

How often should criteria change?

Review quarterly. Change mid-quarter only if the definition was clearly wrong, and tell both teams the same day.