If you’ve been following my LinkedIn posts this week, you already know the truth:
Surface-level solutions—shared dashboards, common goals, and frequent meetings—aren’t enough to drive real alignment between sales and marketing teams.
Here’s why:
Visibility Isn’t Alignment
Shared dashboards have become a staple for revenue teams, promising better transparency. But transparency alone won’t solve deep strategic disconnects. Dashboards simply make visible the symptoms of misalignment without addressing the root cause. Misalignment isn’t just about seeing what each team is doing—it’s about strategically aligning what they’re working toward.
Action Step: Before investing further in dashboard technology, revisit your strategic alignment. Ensure both teams are not only seeing the same data but actively working toward shared, strategic outcomes.
Shared Goals Aren’t Enough Without Shared Accountability
Most alignment initiatives focus on setting shared goals: hitting pipeline numbers, improving close rates, or growing revenue. However, without explicitly defined joint accountability, shared goals quickly deteriorate into blame games:
-
Marketing complains sales doesn’t follow through on leads.
-
Sales argues marketing delivers poor-quality leads.
Goals alone highlight the problem; shared accountability solves it.
Action Step: Define clear joint KPIs that both teams must own and deliver together. Establish mutual accountability—both teams celebrate wins and equally own setbacks.
Your Go-to-Market Strategy Might Be Sabotaging You
The most overlooked cause of misalignment is often your foundational go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Many GTM strategies unintentionally reinforce departmental silos by:
-
Clearly defining sales roles but vaguely defining marketing’s role in revenue generation.
-
Developing strategy without cross-team input, leading to lack of buy-in or confusion.
-
Creating incentives that reward department-specific outcomes rather than holistic revenue growth.
Misalignment isn’t accidental—it’s built into the very structure of your strategy.
Action Step: Involve both sales and marketing teams in GTM strategy development. Clearly define roles and responsibilities at each stage of your funnel. Ensure incentives align with cross-departmental collaboration rather than individual team goals.
Your Next Steps:
The solution isn’t more meetings or better dashboards. True alignment starts by addressing the deeper, structural problems outlined above.
In future issues, we’ll dive even deeper into practical approaches for restructuring incentives, creating effective joint accountability models, and redesigning your GTM strategy for sustainable alignment.
Why Subscribe?
LinkedIn posts are great for quick insights—but this newsletter is your strategic resource, giving you practical tools and deeper analysis so you can take real action to align your revenue teams.
If you found value here, forward this to a colleague who’s struggling with alignment. The more aligned you become, the faster your revenue grows.
Until next week,
Jeff
RevEngine™ | Built for Revenue Leaders Driving Alignment and Growth—Together
