3 ways leaders can improve sales and marketing alignment

Your marketing team generates what they consider high-quality leads, but your sales team pushes back, saying the leads aren't ready to make a purchase. Meanwhile, prospects are receiving mixed messages from your organization, and deals that should be closed are stalling in the pipeline.

This misalignment costs more than just frustration. When sales and marketing teams work in silos, organizations miss revenue targets and waste resources on activities that don't drive results. The challenge has only grown as buying committees have expanded and deal cycles have stretched longer.

On the other hand, when sales and marketing teams create effective workflows to tangibly improve coordination, teams can measure success and accurately address attribution. Organizations with aligned teams see shorter sales cycles, better win rates, and more predictable revenue growth. 

Here are three proven approaches to strengthen alignment and drive better business outcomes.

Align sales and marketing messaging and strategy

This may seem obvious, but it can’t be overstated. Marketing and sales alignment happens when teams have fluid dialogue and agreement around messaging and strategy.

Here’s an all-too-common example of what it looks like when sales and marketing aren’t working from a coordinated, complementary strategy — A B2B company is launching a new product. Marketing has invested time and resources around messaging, assets, and sales tools. 

The launch happens, yet the sales team continues to focus much of its efforts on a legacy product. Marketing is saying, ‘We need to grow this product. Push this out in the market.’ On the other side, sales is saying, ‘We need to hit our numbers. Plus, we’re better incentivized to sell this other product.’

Marketing and sales can’t afford to set their strategies and goals separately from each other. Progressive leadership must maintain an open dialogue through conversations focused on common goals, establishing feedback loops, and optimizing a buyer-aligned process.

Improve sales and marketing data sharing

Most B2B organizations are swimming in data. Marketing has a wealth of knowledge with website metrics, content downloads, and click-through rates, to name a few. Sales has their own share of metrics like meetings booked, positive replies, conversion rate and more.

So, what’s the issue? It’s difficult to know how to use that data to power both sides. A good place to start is by zeroing in on the right data points. For example, sales can help marketing understand which subject lines generate the most positive replies, which in turn helps them adjust messaging. On the other hand, marketing can help sales teams better understand prospect engagement across a variety of channels.

Use unified platforms for sales and marketing alignment

Technology should enable alignment, not create more friction between teams. Yet many revenue organizations find themselves managing 4-6 disconnected tools that actually make coordination harder.

Marketing generates insights in one platform while sales tracks conversations in another. Each tool works well individually, but the handoffs between systems create delays, data gaps, and missed opportunities.

The real challenge isn't tool adoption; it's data fragmentation. Additionally, when teams incorporate AI, but can't access unified customer intelligence, AI models get trained on incomplete information, leading to conflicting recommendations.

Modern revenue teams are moving toward unified platforms that connect marketing engagement data with sales conversation insights. When teams work from the same data foundation, coordination happens naturally through shared visibility rather than manual processes.

AI agents can then manage routine coordination tasks automatically, suggesting optimal timing for outreach and ensuring consistent messaging across all touchpoints. This turns alignment from an ongoing challenge into something that's built into your platform architecture.

Signs your sales and marketing teams are misaligned

Misalignment often develops gradually, making it easy to miss until it impacts your bottom line. Here are the warning signs that indicate your teams need better coordination:

• Your prospects receive mixed messages. Marketing promotes one value proposition while sales reps pitch different benefits during conversations. Prospects notice the disconnect, creating confusion about what you actually deliver.
• Lead handoffs create delays. Sales reps wait days to follow up on marketing-generated leads, or marketing-qualified leads sit in the CRM without action. These gaps give competitors time to engage prospects first.
• Teams blame each other for missed targets. Marketing insists they delivered enough leads while sales argues the quality wasn't there. This finger-pointing creates tension and prevents both teams from identifying real process issues.
• Content goes unused. Marketing creates sales assets that reps never access, or sales teams develop their own materials because marketing content doesn't address real prospect objections they hear daily.
• Data lives in separate systems. Marketing tracks engagement in one platform while sales manages conversations in another. Without unified visibility, teams can't coordinate timing or build on each other's insights.

Taking alignment a step further

The warning signs of misalignment are clear: mixed messaging confuses prospects, delayed handoffs waste opportunities, and fragmented data prevents teams from working together effectively. The cost of inaction is measured in missed revenue targets and wasted resources.

Focus on one area where misalignment hurts most. Whether it's inconsistent messaging, poor data sharing, or disconnected tools, pick your biggest friction point and address it systematically. Alignment improves when teams work from shared data and coordinated processes rather than hoping better communication alone will solve structural problems.