‘Marketing gives us pretty brochures. We close the deals.’
‘Sales wouldn’t recognise a qualified lead if it bought them lunch.’
All the best jokes are grounded in truth. In most organisations, there’s a deep misalignment between the sales and marketing teams. Marketing teams pour resources into B2B marketing strategies, crafting campaigns and generating leads, only for Sales to say they’re terrible leads. Meanwhile, Sales like to hustle to hit their targets, bypassing the carefully constructed messaging that Marketing built.
The result? Wasted time, lost leads, and customer experiences with more twists and turns than an F1 track – and most importantly, missed targets. However, when sales and marketing work together, it’s magic. It’s no surprise that companies with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams see faster revenue growth, higher customer retention rates, and a smoother customer experience. This magic is clear to see in some of our most successful campaigns.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into sales and marketing alignment and show you how to get it right in your company. Let’s get started.
Why alignment matters
If sales/marketing alignment sounds like a corporate buzzword, consider these stats from HubSpot :
- 87% of sales and marketing leaders believe sales/marketing alignment enables critical business growth
- 22% of salespeople said the biggest benefit of sales and marketing teams becoming more aligned was that it helped them close more deals
- 76% of B2B marketers say ABM-based approaches (requiring collaboration with sales) deliver a higher ROI than other marketing initiatives
Companies with more alignment also report improved lead conversion, shorter sales cycles, and messaging that speaks to customers where they are.
The key is realising that both sides share the same overarching goal – revenue growth. While that may be more apparent for salespeople (as it’s reflected in their pay packets), life is a lot easier and more fun for marketers in an organisation that’s growing. When messaging is consistent across the organisation rather than disjointed, when Sales value the leads Marketing hands them rather than avoiding following up, and when the customer journey lives up to expectations, the company is a lot more exciting a place to work.
The first step: engaging sales and leadership
If, as a marketer, you wait until you launch a campaign to bring in Sales, you’re too late. By that time, you’ve already finalised the personas and messaging. You’ve probably already scheduled the content (not that it matters if Sales are going to ignore it anyway).
Real alignment starts before you write a single line of your marketing plan. Get Sales in the room when you define your ICP and construct your personas. Be confident enough to let them poke holes in your assumptions. After all, they’re the ones who talk to prospects and customers every day. They know the pain points. They also understand the decision-making processes behind why a prospect buys – or doesn’t.
But make it official. Schedule regular joint strategy sessions to align on goals and challenges. Set shared KPIs that both teams can be accountable for, such as lead quality, conversion rates, and sales velocity. When Marketing is measured on pipeline performance rather than just MQLs, priorities shift from quantity to impact.
Leadership also needs to be in lockstep. If the CMO and CRO don’t promote collaboration and manoeuvre against each other, your project is doomed from the start.
What if Sales doesn’t engage?
If the sales team isn’t immediately on board with your plan, give them an offer they can’t refuse. Start with a pilot. Run a small campaign with one or two sales champions and track the outcomes. Show them what they’re missing. Use data to highlight the opportunity cost of going solo. If you’re still hitting resistance, escalate to the leadership, but bring the evidence.
Once Sales see that alignment makes their job easier rather than harder, they’ll stop seeing Marketing as the ‘brochure team’ and start treating them like the partner in revenue generation that they actually are.
Practical steps to improve alignment
Once your leadership is on board and there’s buy-in from both teams, it’s time to shift your focus to implementation. True alignment reveals itself in how the work gets done:
- How Sales and Marketing communicate
- How they share feedback
- How you measure performance
A great place to start is with regular check-ins. Schedule weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meetings to review your leads, offer feedback to each other, and talk about content leads. These sessions should be less about reporting and more about exchanging insights. What’s resonating in conversations? Which assets are helping move deals forward? What needs adjusting?
Think about how you can share tools between your sales and marketing teams. Both teams should have visibility into the same CRM, campaign dashboards, and content libraries. When everyone works from a single source of truth, there’s less confusion – and performance gaps are easier to identify. You can also create Slack channels for your sales and marketing teams to communicate quickly.
Feedback is always a tricky component of sales and marketing alignment, particularly if the two teams have been suspicious of each other before. In the new era of alignment, it pays to establish structured feedback loops so both sides know how to give and receive feedback and know what to expect. For example, after a campaign, Sales should report how the content supported their efforts or where it fell short. Marketing can then refine their messaging, update assets, or adjust targeting based on what’s happening in the field. This makes future campaigns more relevant and reduces wasted effort.
Incentivising collaboration helps turn alignment into consistent behaviours. This could mean setting joint KPIs – such as lead-to-close conversion rates or pipeline contribution – and linking them to compensation. Recognition also matters. Highlight successful cross-functional efforts in team meetings or internal comms to reinforce the impact of working together.
‘Sales and marketing alignment is about one shared goal: revenue that is delivered or over-delivered every quarter. There will always be tension, but that tension can be positive if there is a culture of clear expectations and communication.’ – Craig Rosenberg, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner
Measuring success
For Sales, Marketing, and your leadership teams, you need to demonstrate the success of your new alignment through metrics. That means tracking the right indicators from the start.
Start with conversion-focused metrics. Look at your lead-to-customer rate. Are leads moving through the funnel more efficiently now that both teams are aligned on quality and follow-up? You must also monitor sales cycle length. Closer alignment often leads to quicker deal wins because the messaging and content help move prospects through the pipeline faster.
Attribution and pipeline contribution are also key. Track how much revenue is being influenced or directly sourced by Marketing, and whether Sales see those contributions as meaningful. When these metrics rise, it’s a sign that the work is more relevant and better timed.
Finally, check in with your teams to see how the new era of alignment is progressing. For example, you could run short internal surveys to gather information. Do sales reps feel the content is valuable? Are marketers getting the insights they need from sales? This sentiment data can highlight alignment wins or uncover minor problems before they become big issues.
Get started today
When Sales and Marketing teams operate in isolation, performance suffers. Leads get missed, messaging is inconsistent, and revenue growth stalls. But when they align, everything improves – lead quality, conversion rates, and a smoother customer journey.
However, alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It requires shared goals, ongoing collaboration, clear communication, and leadership that sets the tone from the top. It also involves effort – building regular processes, creating space for feedback, and making collaboration part of how work gets done.
So, how do you get started?
If you’re looking for a next step, start by auditing your current approach. Are both teams working from the same ICP? Do you have shared metrics in place? Are there regular opportunities for feedback?
Whether it’s a joint campaign, a shared dashboard, or simply getting both teams in the same room more often, every small move toward alignment is a step toward more efficient revenue growth and a better customer experience.
At Bite IT, we’re marketing experts who know how to get your sales team on the same page as you – and vice versa. Reach out for a taster!
Stop the Showdown, Start the Sync-Up!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Vanessa Cardwell is the Chief Marketing Officer and Managing Director at Bite IT Marketing, where she leads innovative marketing strategies, champions the integration of AI in content management, and helps businesses gain the industry recognition they deserve.
