What qualifies as a Sales Emergency?

A sales emergency is a time-sensitive situation where inaction or delay would directly result in lost revenue, a damaged client relationship, or a missed contractual obligation. These are not routine planning needs — they require immediate, cross-functional response. 

Examples of a Sales Emergency:

A client has signaled they are actively evaluating a competitor and a decision is imminent. A high-value deal is at risk of falling through due to an unresolved objection, pricing conflict, or internal misalignment before a hard deadline. A key account has escalated a concern that, if unaddressed in the near term, could lead to churn or contract non-renewal. A late-breaking RFP or proposal opportunity has surfaced with a short turnaround that requires coordinated input across teams. A seminar or event is less than 30 days out and critical sales logistics, materials, or coordination are incomplete. A system outage or malfunction in HubSpot or Wide Orbit is actively blocking the ability to process orders, manage pipeline, or execute on a live campaign. 

What is NOT a Sales Emergency:

General pipeline reviews or forecasting discussions. Early-stage prospecting where no deal timeline has been established. Requests for strategy sessions on accounts that are stable and have no pending decision point. Routine check-ins or relationship-building calls with no specific risk or opportunity trigger. Internal disagreements about account ownership or territory — these should go through standard management channels. Seminar planning for events more than 30 days out where standard timelines can still be met. HubSpot or Wide Orbit questions that are training-related, preference-based, or cosmetic rather than operational blockers. 

How this applies to specific request types:

Pre-Sales Strategy Call — Reserved for deals where a qualified opportunity is in motion and the team needs to align on positioning, pricing, or competitive response before a defined next step with the buyer.

Client-Facing Call — Warranted when a client or prospect has raised an issue, objection, or request that requires bringing in additional expertise or leadership to protect or advance the deal — not for introductory or exploratory conversations that can be scheduled through normal channels.

Omnichannel Strategy Session — Appropriate when there is an active, time-bound need to coordinate messaging and outreach across multiple channels for a specific deal or account situation — not for general brand or campaign planning.

Seminars (Less Than 30 Days Out) — No Seminar should ever be last minute or classified an emergency. Within a Seminar, what qualifies as an emergency is when a scheduled seminar or event is within a week and there are unresolved gaps in registration logistics, audience targeting, speaker coordination, promotional materials, or venue/platform setup that put attendance or execution at risk.

Before requesting a net-new seminar build on a compressed timeline, ask about existing seminars that are available to host. Pre-built seminar packages and assets can be repurposed to significantly speed up the process and reduce the coordination lift when time is tight.

Best Practice: Seminars should be live and open for registration at least one month before the event date. This allows adequate time for proper promotion across all channels. Less lead time means less promotion, which directly translates to fewer attendees. If you're inside that 30-day window, understand that attendance expectations should be adjusted accordingly — and that leveraging an existing seminar format rather than building from scratch gives you the best chance of maximizing turnout on a shortened timeline.

If the event is more than 30 days away, use the standard request process. This gives all teams the lead time needed to plan, promote, and deliver a well-attended event without emergency escalation.

Non-IT Systems Operation Support (HubSpot, O&O Support, Wide Orbit, etc.) — Qualifies as an emergency when a workflow, integration, or core function within our system is broken, misconfigured, or otherwise preventing the team from executing active sales operations. This includes issues like orders not processing in Wide Orbit, deal stages or automation workflows malfunctioning in HubSpot, data sync failures between systems that affect live campaigns, or reporting errors that are impacting client-facing deliverables. This does not cover feature requests, new report builds, user preference changes, dashboard customization, general "how do I" training questions, or enhancements that can be submitted through the standard support queue.   

Rule of thumb: If you can wait a full business week without material impact to the deal or relationship, it's not an emergency — submit it as a standard request instead.

Client Strategy is the analytical and strategic brain behind media performance. The group partners with sales and account teams to grow revenue on new business, protect revenue on existing accounts, and support the vendor and product ecosystem that makes campaigns run. Their work spans the full client lifecycle—from presales research and competitor analysis through ongoing optimization, performance reviews, and annual planning. If a question starts with “What should we do about this account?” it probably belongs here. 

The Data Lab is the attribution and analytics hub for Local Solutions. The group focuses on Elite and Key accounts by providing data products & reporting that help sales teams prove ROI, retain clients, and spot upsell opportunities. Their work ranges from Multi-Channel data-based recommendations, AIM audience-intelligence reports, CEO-level matchback analyses, full conversion tracking implementations, and NinjaCat dashboard support. If it involves pulling data together to tell a client’s performance story, the Data Lab is where the ticket goes. 

Sales Acceleration is the full-service support arm for the local sales organization. The group exists to equip sellers with everything they need to win and retain business—from live call support and pre-call coaching to polished collateral, structured training, and market-facing events. It operates through two sub-groups: Sales Acceleration, which handles day-to-day seller support and materials, and Seminars, which manages the end-to-end creative and promotional pipeline for local market events. Together, they ensure reps never walk into a pitch unprepared and markets have a turnkey path to hosting client-facing seminars that fill seats. 

Seminars is the event-production arm of Sales Enablement. When a market wants to host a client-facing seminar, this team takes the event details and produces everything needed to fill seats and deliver a polished experience—from Eventbrite pages and promotional banner ads to LinkedIn posts, HubSpot email sequences, day-of pamphlets, and landing pages. Markets provide the speakers, date, location, and topic; Seminars handles the rest.

Required Inputs from Markets

• Guest speakers (at least one, does not need to be finalized)
• Date and time (must be at least one month before request)
• Seminar location
• Event topic and brief description
• Parking details (free or paid)
• Food plans (type, and whether provided or attendee-paid)
• Event incentive or giveaway details
• Event logo
• Eventbrite event page
• Flyers with QR code for in-person invitations
• Banner ads for O&O sites and campaigns
• LinkedIn post copy
• Sales sequences for seller outreach
• HubSpot marketing email
• Landing page highlighting event details and incentives
• Pamphlet with speaker info and incentive details

Promotional Creative

• Event logo
• Eventbrite event page
• Flyers with QR code for in-person invitations
• Banner ads for O&O sites and campaigns

Outreach Materials

• LinkedIn post copy
• Sales sequences for seller outreach
• HubSpot marketing email

Day-of-Event Materials

• Landing page highlighting event details and incentives
• Pamphlet with speaker info and incentive details

System Operations Support keeps the machinery running. This group handles everything related to owned-and-operated digital inventory, ad delivery, revenue reconciliation, order management, and cross-system troubleshooting. They are the team you call when a campaign is not delivering correctly, when Wide Orbit numbers do not match expectations, when a HubSpot deal needs setup help, or when something is just broken and you are not sure which system is at fault. If the other groups build strategy and tell the story, Sys Ops makes sure the plumbing work.