Every business has someone like Mary.
She’s reliable. She’s fast. She never complains. And you probably think she’s fine.
She’s not.
I worked with a law firm where the intake conversion rate had crashed from 14 percent to 4.5 percent in six months. New leads were coming in but almost none were converting. The partners knew something was wrong but couldn’t figure out what.
When we looked at the data, the answer was obvious. One person was doing everything.
Mary was the intake coordinator. She was answering every enquiry, qualifying every lead, following up, and closing. She was doing the job of three people. And she was drowning.
People like Mary don’t tell you they’re drowning. They just work harder, stay later, absorb more. Until something breaks.
When we mapped out what Mary was actually doing, we found three distinct jobs crammed into one role. The specialist, who takes the initial call and determines whether someone is a fit. The closer, who converts a qualified lead into a paying client. And follow-up, chasing people who didn’t respond and keeping the pipeline moving.
Different skills. Different conversations. Different energy. Mary was doing all three every day with no script, no documentation, and no support.
The fix was straightforward. We split the role. Specialist qualifies, closer converts, clean handoff between them. We added intake support to take the administrative load off Mary. And we built a two-page intake script covering the qualifying questions, handoff criteria, and closing conversation.
Conversion started recovering almost immediately.
Their marketing was fine. Their intake was broken.
Here is the check. Pick the person on your team you rely on most. Write down everything they actually do in a week. Not their job description. What they actually do. If that list has more than five distinct functions, you have a Mary. And if one of those functions is revenue-critical, you are sitting on a conversion problem you cannot see from the outside.
The fix is almost always the same. Separate the functions. Document the process. Add support where the bottleneck is tightest.
