Marketing and sales alignment: signs it is broken and how to fix it
When marketing and sales point at each other for disappointing results, the problem is rarely effort. How to recognise misalignment, and five agreements that fix it.
In many companies marketing says the leads are fine and sales says they are not. Both teams work hard, and both are partly right. The gap is usually not about effort. It is about definitions, handovers and who is held accountable for what.
Short answer: Marketing and sales alignment means both teams work from the same definition of a good lead, the same numbers, the same handover rules and a regular meeting to review results together. Fix it with five agreements: what a good lead is, who owns a lead and when, how fast sales responds, what feedback flows back to marketing, and which metrics both teams share.
Signs that marketing and sales are not aligned
- Each team blames the other for disappointing results. This is the clearest symptom.
- Leads sit untouched in the CRM, or are called days later.
- Sales distrusts lead quality and builds its own prospect lists next to marketing’s.
- Marketing reports leads, sales reports revenue, and nobody connects the two.
- Nobody can say why a lead was rejected. The reason is not recorded, so marketing cannot learn from it.
- Definitions differ. “Qualified” means one thing in a marketing report and another on the sales floor.
If you recognise two or three of these, the problem is structural. Hiring more people or buying more leads will not fix it.
Five agreements that fix it
1. What is a good lead?
Write down, together, who the lead is (fit), what they did (behaviour) and what you expect to happen next. Keep it short enough to remember. Review it every quarter, because the market and your offer change. See also how to build a lead score you can trust.
2. Who owns a lead, and when?
A lead should always have a named owner. Define the moment of handover from marketing to sales, and what happens to leads that are not ready yet. A shared queue with no owner is where leads go to die.
3. How fast does sales respond?
Agree on a target response time and measure it. This is a promise from sales to marketing: if marketing delivers leads that meet the definition, sales follows up within the agreed time. Without it, marketing pays for leads that go cold.
4. What feedback flows back?
Sales should record why a lead was rejected or lost, using a short list of reasons in the CRM. Marketing reads those reasons and adjusts targeting and messages. This closes the loop and turns complaints into data.
5. Which metrics do both teams share?
Marketing and sales should look at the same funnel: leads, meetings, opportunities, pipeline and revenue. When both teams are measured on the later steps, the incentive to fight over lead quality disappears, because both want the same outcome.
A simple rhythm that keeps it going
Agreements fade without a rhythm. A short, regular meeting with marketing and sales together is usually enough: what did we learn from rejected leads, which segments are converting, what do we change next. Treat each change as a small experiment so you can see what worked.
Where the CRM comes in
Everything above depends on a shared source of truth. If marketing and sales keep separate lists and spreadsheets, the agreements cannot hold. The CRM should show who owns each lead, where it is in the process and why it was rejected. Fix the data basics first, because reports built on unreliable data lead to arguments about the numbers instead of the results.
When more alignment is not the answer
- There is no sales process yet. Define the steps first, then align around them.
- The offer or the audience is wrong. Better handovers will not fix a proposition nobody wants.
- Capacity is the issue. If sales cannot follow up on the leads it gets, fixing quality will not help. See how to get more revenue from the leads you already have.
Where to start
Pick the weakest of the five agreements and fix only that one this month. If you are not sure which one it is, the bottleneck quiz helps you name where growth is stuck. For an outside view of your funnel, look at the Growth Audit, or read how a growth partner works with marketing and sales together.
