Marketing says: "Sales doesn't follow up on our leads."
Sales says: "Marketing sends us unqualified garbage."
Both teams hit their individual metrics while company revenue targets are missed.
This is the sales-marketing misalignment problem: teams optimizing for different goals, measuring different things, and blaming each other when results don't materialize.
Real alignment isn't about more meetings or better communication. It's about shared goals, clear handoffs, mutual accountability, and systematic feedback loops.
Here's how to build sales-marketing alignment that drives revenue, not resentment.
The Alignment Foundation: Shared Revenue Goals
Misalignment starts with conflicting incentives.
Common misaligned goals:
- Marketing measured on MQLs generated
- Sales measured on revenue closed
- Result: Marketing optimizes for volume, sales optimizes for quality, nobody wins
Aligned goals:
- Both measured on revenue from marketing-sourced deals
- Marketing shares responsibility for conversion rates
- Sales shares responsibility for lead follow-up speed
Specific shared metrics:
Metric 1: Marketing-sourced revenue
Total closed revenue from deals originated by marketing.
Both teams win when this number grows. Forces marketing to care about lead quality and sales to care about lead follow-up.
Metric 2: Lead-to-customer conversion rate
% of marketing leads that become customers.
Marketing can't game with volume. Sales can't ignore leads and blame quality.
Metric 3: Speed to first contact
How fast sales contacts marketing leads.
Holds sales accountable for timely follow-up. Prevents "lead went cold because sales waited 3 days."
Metric 4: Deal velocity
Time from MQL to closed deal.
Incentivizes marketing to send qualified leads and sales to move them quickly.
When both teams share these metrics, finger-pointing stops and collaboration starts.
The Lead Handoff: Where Alignment Breaks
Most sales-marketing conflict centers on lead handoffs. Marketing generates leads, sales complains they're not qualified, leads sit in limbo.
Fix this with clear lead definitions and SLAs:
Lead stage definitions:
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead):
- Meets ICP criteria (title, company size, industry)
- Demonstrated intent (attended demo, downloaded content, requested pricing)
- Marketing validates: "This person should talk to sales"
SQL (Sales Qualified Lead):
- Sales has contacted
- Prospect confirmed active interest
- Discovery call scheduled
- Sales validates: "This is a real opportunity"
Opportunity:
- Discovery completed
- Budget/authority/need/timeline confirmed
- Formal sales process initiated
Agreement on what constitutes "qualified":
Don't leave "qualified" ambiguous. Define specific criteria.
Example MQL criteria:
- Director+ title (or IC at company <50 people)
- Company size: 50-5,000 employees
- Industry: B2B SaaS, E-commerce, or FinTech
- Intent signal: Demo request, pricing page visit, or content download
- NOT: Newsletter signup or blog reader
When marketing and sales agree on these criteria upfront, quality disputes disappear.
Lead handoff SLA:
Marketing commits:
- Deliver X MQLs per month meeting agreed criteria
- Pass leads to sales within 4 business hours
- Provide context: form fill data, web activity, engagement history
Sales commits:
- Contact MQLs within 24 hours (prioritize demo requests within 2 hours)
- Provide feedback on lead quality within 72 hours
- Mark leads "disqualified" with specific reason (wrong fit, no budget, not interested, etc.)
SLAs create accountability on both sides.
The Weekly Alignment Ritual
Most companies try to fix alignment with quarterly planning sessions. Too infrequent.
Weekly sales-marketing alignment meeting (30 minutes):
Agenda:
1. Pipeline review (10 minutes)
- How many MQLs converted to SQL this week?
- How many SQLs converted to opportunities?
- What's converting well? What's not?
2. Lead quality feedback (10 minutes)
- Sales shares: Which leads were great fits? Which weren't?
- Marketing shares: Why did we think they were qualified?
- Agreement: How do we adjust targeting or scoring?
3. Campaign performance (5 minutes)
- Which marketing campaigns are driving best leads?
- Which should we double down on?
- Which should we pause?
4. Content gaps (5 minutes)
- What objections is sales hearing that marketing content doesn't address?
- What customer questions need new collateral?
Who attends:
- VP/Director of Marketing
- VP/Director of Sales
- Demand Gen lead
- Sales ops or rev ops
Keep it small, focused, and action-oriented.
The Feedback Loop: Sales to Marketing
Sales talks to prospects daily. Marketing needs those insights.
Systematize sales-to-marketing feedback:
Feedback mechanism 1: CRM disposition codes
When sales marks leads "disqualified," require specific reason:
- Wrong company size
- Wrong industry
- Wrong title/role
- No budget
- No pain point/need
- Competitor customer
- Not decision timeframe
Marketing reviews weekly: "60% of disqualified leads are wrong company size. We need to tighten targeting."
Feedback mechanism 2: Win/loss insights sharing
After win/loss interviews, share key findings with marketing:
- What messaging resonated?
- What content helped close?
- What objections came up that marketing could address?
- What competitors are we seeing most?
Marketing adjusts campaigns, content, and positioning based on front-line reality.
Feedback mechanism 3: Quarterly content request survey
Sales fills out short survey:
- What objections do you hear that we don't have good content for?
- What customer questions take the most time to answer?
- What would make your demos/pitches more effective?
Marketing prioritizes content creation based on this feedback.
The Feedback Loop: Marketing to Sales
Marketing sees data sales doesn't. Share it.
Data marketing should share with sales:
Website behavior data:
"This prospect visited pricing page 5 times this week and downloaded competitor comparison guide."
Sales can use this intel to personalize outreach and prioritize follow-up.
Campaign engagement:
"This lead attended our webinar on [topic], which means they care about [pain point]."
Sales can tailor discovery around that pain point.
Content consumption:
"This prospect read 3 articles about [specific use case]. That's probably their primary need."
Sales can focus demo on that use case instead of generic pitch.
Intent data:
"This company is searching for [category keywords] and visiting competitor sites. High buying intent."
Sales knows to prioritize and move fast.
Implementation:
Build alerts or dashboards in CRM/MAP that surface this data when reps open lead records.
The Closed-Loop Reporting
What happens to leads after sales gets them? Marketing needs to know.
Monthly closed-loop report:
Marketing should track for every campaign/channel:
- MQLs generated
- MQLs accepted by sales (what % did sales agree were qualified?)
- SQLs created (what % of MQLs converted?)
- Opportunities created
- Deals won
- Revenue generated
Example closed-loop analysis:
Campaign: Q4 Webinar Series
- 500 registrants
- 200 MQLs passed to sales
- 180 accepted by sales (90% acceptance = good quality)
- 45 converted to SQL (25% conversion)
- 12 became opportunities
- 4 closed-won
- $200K revenue
Insight: High-quality MQLs but lower SQL conversion. Need to improve lead nurturing between MQL and SQL stage.
This visibility lets marketing optimize for revenue, not just lead volume.
The Content Collaboration Process
Sales needs content. Marketing creates content. Misalignment = wrong content created.
Quarterly content planning session:
Sales and marketing jointly decide:
What content to create:
- Sales shares: Top 5 objections prospects raise
- Sales shares: Gaps in current collateral library
- Marketing proposes: Content to fill those gaps
What content to sunset:
- Sales shares: Content nobody uses anymore
- Marketing archives or refreshes
What content to refresh:
- Sales shares: Content that's working but outdated
- Marketing updates with new examples, data, customers
Content request process (ongoing):
Create simple form where sales can request content:
- What prospect situation needs this?
- What objection or question does it address?
- What format would be most useful? (one-pager, case study, video, etc.)
Marketing triages requests and prioritizes based on frequency and deal impact.
The Launch Alignment Process
New product launches fail when sales isn't prepared to sell.
Launch alignment checklist:
4 weeks before launch:
- Marketing briefs sales on new product, positioning, messaging
- Sales provides feedback: "Prospects will ask X, do we have an answer?"
2 weeks before launch:
- Marketing delivers: Battle cards, demo scripts, FAQs, objection handling
- Sales practices: Mock demos and objection scenarios
Launch week:
- Marketing generates demand through campaign
- Sales armed with collateral and training
- Daily syncs to address emerging questions
Post-launch:
- Weekly check-ins: What's working? What questions are we getting?
- Iterate on messaging and content based on real prospect feedback
Don't launch to market before you've launched to sales.
The Account-Based Alignment
For enterprise/ABM strategies, sales and marketing must coordinate tightly.
ABM account selection:
Marketing and sales jointly select target accounts based on:
- ICP fit
- Buying signals (intent data, website visits)
- Existing relationships (warm intros, past conversations)
ABM campaign coordination:
Marketing's role:
- Run targeted ads to decision-makers at account
- Send personalized content based on account research
- Generate awareness and engagement
Sales' role:
- Social selling and direct outreach
- Leverage marketing touches as conversation starters
- Coordinate timing of outreach with marketing campaigns
Shared visibility:
Both teams see account engagement dashboard:
- Who from account is engaging?
- What content are they consuming?
- What touchpoints have happened?
- What's the next play?
Common Alignment Killers
Killer 1: Conflicting comp plans
Marketing bonused on MQLs, sales on revenue. Incentives aren't aligned.
Fix: Tie both to shared revenue metrics.
Killer 2: No agreed definitions
"Qualified lead" means different things to marketing and sales.
Fix: Document and agree on lead stage definitions.
Killer 3: One-way communication
Marketing talks at sales, sales ignores marketing.
Fix: Create two-way feedback loops.
Killer 4: Lack of shared visibility
Marketing doesn't see pipeline, sales doesn't see campaign data.
Fix: Shared dashboards and regular data reviews.
Killer 5: Attribution fights
Who gets credit for deals where both contributed?
Fix: Multi-touch attribution model that gives credit to both.
The Real Goal
Sales-marketing alignment isn't about getting along. It's about driving revenue more effectively together than either team could alone.
Create shared goals, clear processes, systematic feedback loops, and mutual accountability.
When sales and marketing operate as one revenue team, targets get hit and finger-pointing ends.
That's when alignment becomes a competitive advantage.