Achieving Sales and Marketing Alignment- Here’s How to Get Started

6 minutes read

Sales and marketing are meant to drive growth together. Yet misalignment between these departments remains one of the biggest challenges for B2B companies. Everyone talks about “sales and marketing alignment”, but few organizations actually understand what meaningful alignment looks like in practice. Executives nod enthusiastically when consultants preach about “breaking down silos,” but when it comes to implementing real change, many teams find themselves lost—unsure where to begin or what specific actions will move the needle. When sales and marketing teams operate with conflicting goals, separate data sources, and misaligned processes, it creates inefficiencies that directly impact revenue.

In this article, we’ll explore the reasons behind this misalignment and also explore some strategies to get sales and marketing work together.

Why Companies Struggle with Sales & Marketing Alignment

In many organizations, sales and marketing departments operate on separate tracks. Here are some of the biggest roadblocks to alignment:

  1. No Clear Definition of “Alignment”: Many organizations use the term “alignment” without truly defining what it means for their teams. Without a common definition/understanding, both departments continue operating in silos with different expectations.
  2. Lack of a Single Source of Truth: Sales and marketing often rely on separate systems, processes, and data sets, leading to conflicting insights. This fragmentation results in poor decision-making and a lack of trust between teams.
  3. The Ownership Problem: Marketing owns marketing systems, and sales controls the CRM. Lack of joint ownership leads to poor processes, handoffs, and unnecessary spends. The situation worsens when specialized teams like demand generation, field marketing, marketing operations, outbound sales, sales enablement, and sales analytics operate independently, each with limited visibility into the others’ work.

Why Alignment Matters: Business Benefits

Tightly aligned sales and marketing functions experience higher customer retention rates and sales win rates. Here are other business benefits of sales and marketing alignment:

  1. Unified Data for Consistency and Accuracy
    When sales and marketing teams operate from a single source of truth, they get a clear view of campaign results, customer interactions, and sales efforts. This eliminates silos and makes sure both teams are working with the same information, metrics, and goals.
  2. Actionable Insights at Every Level
    With aligned systems and processes, organizations gain both micro and macro insights that drive decision-making. At the micro level, teams can track individual campaign effectiveness and lead progression. At the macro level, they can understand overall business performance.
  3. Process and Technology Optimization
    Sales and marketing alignment drives operational excellence through optimized processes and better technology utilization. This streamlined approach not only improves efficiency but directly contributes to business growth by ensuring that both teams can execute their strategies more effectively, ultimately driving better business outcomes.

Additionally, with better targeting and nurturing, companies spend less on acquiring new customers. Every dollar spent is more effectively allocated, leading to more revenue.

How to Align Sales & Marketing Functions

Despite the benefits, achieving alignment remains challenging. As per Forrester’s Q2 2024 Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey, 65% of sales and marketing professionals believe there is a lack of alignment between sales and marketing leaders in their organizations While aligning these teams is a long-term game, here’s how your organization can get started:

  1. Smart Customer Journey Tracking
    What It Means:
    Create a comprehensive tracking process across all platforms that monitors how contacts advance through each stage of their buying journey.
    How to Execute:
    • Map out key touchpoints in your customer lifecycle
    • Identify specific triggers that move contacts to the next stage
    • Monitor the time contacts spend in each stage, and how many times do they repeat a stage
    Business Impact: Better pipeline forecasting and ability to optimize the customer journey at each stage.
      • Scoring What Matters
        What It Means:
        Build a scoring model that identifies truly sales-ready leads by measuring engagements that directly indicate buying intent.
        How to Execute:
        • Weight content interactions based on their correlation with sales readiness
        • Track and score participation in high-value events
        • Measure meaningful offline interactions with prospects
        • Incorporate sales team feedback on lead quality signals.
        Business Impact: Sales teams can confidently prioritize prospects who are genuinely interested in making investments, while marketing can focus on activities that generate qualified opportunities
              • Unified Performance Reporting
                What It Means:
                Establish a single source of truth for all marketing and sales performance metrics, from individual activities to overall business impact.
                How to Execute:
                • Create shared dashboards showing both team-specific and combined KPIs
                • Set up clear goals in your CRM for all teams – Sales rep quotas and activity targets, Marketing campaign performance metrics, Demand generation goals, Revenue operations benchmarks
                • Track real-time progress against targets
                • Include both detailed (micro) and high-level (macro) insights
                Business Impact: Teams work from the same data, make faster decisions, and stay aligned on progress toward shared business objectives.
                      • Impact Measurement Framework
                        What It Means:
                        Create a transparent system that properly credits both marketing and sales activities throughout the buyer’s journey.
                        How to Execute:
                        • Define clear attribution rules for all types of engagement
                        • Set up weighted distribution of credit across touchpoints
                        • Track the influence of both marketing campaigns and sales activities
                        • Measure the combined impact on opportunity progression
                        • Document ROI for different types of sales and marketing investments
                        Business Impact: Fair recognition of all activities that contribute to wins leads to better budget allocation and more effective collaboration between teams.
                              • Data Quality Management
                                What It Means:
                                Build processes that safeguard valuable lead information and maintain data integrity across all systems.
                                How to Execute:
                                • Implement automated data quality checks
                                • Set up regular system audits
                                • Create early warning alerts for potential issues
                                • Establish clear protocols for data cleanup and maintenance
                                Business Impact: No valuable leads slip through the cracks, and teams can rely on accurate, up-to-date information for decision-making.
                                      • Cross-Team Feedback System
                                        What It Means:
                                        Create structured channels for sales and marketing teams to share insights, review performance, and continuously improve their joint efforts.
                                        How to Execute:
                                        • Schedule regular performance review meetings
                                        • Create standardized feedback formats for both teams
                                        • Establish monthly/quarterly joint performance reviews
                                        • Document and track action items from feedback sessions
                                        • Implement improvements based on shared insights
                                        Business Impact: Teams can quickly address issues like low-quality leads or missed follow-ups before they affect revenue.
                                              • Coordinated Customer Communication
                                                What It Means:
                                                Create a process where sales and marketing teams are aware of each other’s interactions with prospects. This avoids duplicate content and helps teams deliver a seamless experience.
                                                How to Execute:
                                                • Create a shared view of all customer interactions
                                                • Set up alerts for sales when prospects engage with marketing content
                                                • Coordinate email and outreach schedules
                                                • Establish clear handoff protocols between teams
                                                Business Impact: Prospects experience a coherent buying journey without repetitive messages or gaps in communication, leading to increased trust and higher conversion rates.

                                                      The RevOps Approach: The Missing Link to Alignment

                                                      A lot of times, organizations operate with separate Sales Ops and Marketing Ops teams, each optimizing for their own department’s success. However, these siloed approaches create inefficiencies and data gaps.

                                                      A unified RevOps strategy brings a holistic approach to revenue growth, ensuring that marketing, sales, and customer success operate from the same data, metrics, and objectives. Rather than optimizing for individual functions, RevOps aligns the entire revenue engine, making collaboration seamless and measurable.

                                                      Want to learn more about how adopting a RevOps strategy can drive business growth? Book a 1:1 Consultation today!