A marketing report can become more impressive as it becomes less useful to the colleague who receives its enquiries. A single contact total has the advantage of simplicity. It can be compared with an earlier period, displayed prominently and connected to the activity that produced it. The difficulty is that a contact is not a uniform unit of commercial readiness. One organisation may have a developed space brief and a clear decision process; another may be trying to understand whether it needs a different workplace at all. Treating those starting points as equivalent can obscure the very work that the next conversation must accomplish.
I do not think marketing should respond by dismissing early enquiries. An undeveloped brief can be a legitimate beginning, and a person exploring options may later become a serious prospective occupier. The question is how the account describes that beginning. Interest should not have to disguise itself as immediate readiness to be considered valuable. A useful report can show that marketing has opened a conversation while preserving what remains to be understood before leasing colleagues can take it further. That is a more demanding form of accountability than choosing the most expansive total available.
### Ask what the next colleague can actually do
Our February 2024 review examined forty-two enquiries over a selected period. Eighteen contained enough information for a leasing specialist, fourteen needed a clearer space brief and ten lay outside the current proposition. Those categories were created to improve a handover, not to predict future behaviour. An organisation in the second group might develop its requirements; one in the first might decide against a lease. The classification did not replace the specialist's commercial judgement. It described what marketing knew and what the next colleague would still need to establish.
The receiving team's experience was important. When an enquiry arrived with too little context, the specialist could spend the opening conversation reconstructing questions that marketing might reasonably have asked earlier. That did not mean every campaign should collect a complete negotiation brief. It meant identifying the relevant facts needed to make the referral useful. We discussed the proposed use, the degree to which the requirement had been developed and the question the prospective occupier expected to address. The enquiry should arrive as an account of a real consideration, not simply as a name attached to a campaign source.
I also wanted the outside-fit category to remain visible. A mismatch with the current proposition was not necessarily a poor enquiry or an unimportant organisation. It could reflect a requirement that our assets or offer did not meet. Passing it along as though it were ready for the same discussion would waste attention and distort the report. The useful response might be a clear explanation of the limit rather than an attempt to preserve the contact inside an optimistic commercial total. Marketing has a responsibility to represent the proposition honestly in both directions: to the prospective occupier and to the colleague receiving the enquiry.
### Keep the categories even when the headline shrinks
The campaign team preferred a single total because it made activity easy to compare. That preference had an organisational context. Teams are often asked to explain their contribution through a small number of figures, and a more qualified report can appear less decisive. I did not want the review to become a criticism of colleagues for responding to the incentives around them. I wanted to change the account we considered useful. If the CMO continues to celebrate only the largest contact number, a more exact handover process will remain a secondary task no matter how clearly it is described.
We therefore reported eighteen as ready for the specialist discussion, alongside fourteen requiring further brief development and ten outside the current fit. Forty-two remained the total reviewed, but it no longer stood alone as the main commercial implication. The decision reduced the headline count of immediately usable enquiries. It also created work for marketing to clarify questions before transfer. I accepted both consequences within a ten-week, ₹1.1 Cr programme. The authority covered the review and changes to the handover; it did not represent rental income or a leasing objective that my function could claim to have achieved.
Keeping the categories does not mean treating them as permanent labels. A brief can become clearer, the offer can change and an organisation's timing can move. A report should identify the relevant cutoff and allow later developments to be recorded without rewriting the earlier position. That is different from using an eventual transaction to imply that the initial enquiry was already commercially complete. The point of the classification is to support the decision at the time it is made. If the account is continually restated in light of the most flattering later outcome, it becomes difficult to learn what the original handover actually required.
### Evaluate the handover without borrowing the transaction
Dev Talwankar's leasing team retained responsibility for approved rents, commercial qualification and negotiation. My team could improve the preparation without taking ownership of the conclusion. That separation matters in a leadership profile because marketing cases can easily absorb outcomes produced through many subsequent decisions. A contact may progress through specialist work, an occupier's internal approval and a negotiation before a lease is agreed. Describing the entire result as the consequence of the campaign would require evidence that our review did not provide. I prefer to make the marketing decision clear rather than borrow the transaction to make it seem larger.
The supported result was a revised handover record and a more explicit account of the next task. We did not run an evaluation capable of establishing a conversion uplift or attributing rental income to the change. That limit leaves room for further assessment. We could examine whether the receiving colleagues find the relevant facts more useful and where repeated questions still arise. We could also review whether the early discussion helps prospective occupiers understand the offer. Those are practical questions about the process we changed, rather than a demand that every improvement immediately prove a broader financial effect.
The lesson for me is that accountability improves when a measure retains the event it actually describes. An enquiry total records contact; a prepared brief supports a conversation; a concluded lease is a different event with different responsibilities. A senior marketing account should be able to connect those stages without collapsing them. I want the report to help colleagues decide what to do next and understand what has already been established. A smaller, more exact headline can be a better contribution than an expansive number whose commercial meaning has to be supplied by the reader.