Most B2B companies try to fix sales and marketing misalignment (sometimes called "smarketing") with an SLA (a service-level agreement for lead follow-up), a shared dashboard, and a weekly sync. Marketing still thinks sales is sitting on good leads. Sales still thinks marketing is chasing volume nobody can close. Nothing changes, because none of those three things touch the actual problem.
Sales and marketing misalignment is not a communication problem. If marketing’s bonus runs on marketing-qualified lead (MQL) volume and sales’ commission runs on closed revenue, both teams are doing what they are paid to do. And both can hit target in the same quarter.
The problem shows up in your numbers before you hear about it in a meeting. Sales take longer, and CAC goes up because of bad leads. The pipeline may look good on paper but falls apart when accounting begins.
Why Sales and Marketing Fall Out of Sync
Marketing tries to hit its numbers through more leads, and sales work to achieve the same by working the accounts most likely to close. Both teams hit their targets in the same quarter, yet revenue goes down: this is the actual gap. Gartner’s 2024 survey of 412 B2B leaders found that marketing and sales together operate just 3 out of 15 commercial activities, and 90% report conflicting priorities.
This is also why the SLA, dashboard, and sync work: these are coordination tools. They work when both teams are moving towards the same direction. Roll them out early, and you have just given both sides a shared document to argue over.
5 Signs of Sales and Marketing Misalignment (Sales and Marketing Silos in B2B)
Here are the five signs your teams are working against each other:
Mismatched ICP
Marketing optimises its ICP (ideal customer profile) for reach and fills the top funnel. Sales optimises for winnability and deal size. When those definitions differ, marketing fills the funnel with accounts that pass the marketing test and fail the sales test. Nobody owns keeping the two definitions in sync, so nobody catches it until the pipeline report doesn’t match the forecast.
Inconsistent Lead Qualification
MQL criteria are written and never revisited. The criteria are fine; the problem is that no one checks them against sales’ actual rejection reasons. When reps disqualify 70% of "qualified" leads for the same reason every month, that’s a criteria fix sitting unused in the CRM. We often see in our audits. One manufacturer was generating 60+ leads a month while sales closed just three, because nobody had agreed on what "qualified" meant.
That is one of the patterns we dig into in What Does a Marketing Audit Actually Reveal About Your Business, alongside the other structural problems audits keep turning up.
Conflicting KPIs
Conflicting KPIs are the root cause of sales and marketing misalignment. Marketing hits 500 MQLs while sales closes 12 deals, and both teams technically make target, because the scoreboards were never built to agree with each other in the first place. Attribution breaks the same way. Marketing claims pipeline sourced, sales claims deals closed, and with no shared model, both sides are right and still arguing over the same number. It’s also why reps ignore most marketing content, because it’s built for a production KPI, not to move a specific deal.
Broken Handoff
Nearly every company sets a deadline for how fast a rep should follow up with a new lead. In practice, the deadline does not hold, because missing it does not cost anyone anything. A lead sits untouched past the deadline, and all that happens is a message in Slack, not any real change for the rep or the marketer who sent the lead. A deadline stays just a policy until something forces people to act on it. That is when it becomes an actual process. TheDIco’s marketing automation and CRM workflows close that gap by turning "someone should follow up" into an action that happens automatically, without anyone needing to remember.
No Ownership of the Buyer Journey
A lead moves from marketing to sales, but nobody actually owns it the whole way through. Trace the problem back far enough, and it starts at the top. The CMO and CRO each have independent targets, both hit their number, and leadership calls that alignment, when it’s really proof the two targets were never connected.
Same root cause, five different places it surfaces.
Is Your Sales and Marketing Alignment Real, or Just Reported?
Don’t take "we are aligned" at face value; leadership’s read on this is usually wrong. Run these with both team leads in the room together; you are watching where the answers diverge, not collecting two survey responses.
- Can both teams recite the same ICP, word for word, right now?
- When were qualification criteria last updated using sales’ actual rejection data, not marketing’s assumptions?
- If marketing hit every KPI this quarter, would sales agree the company grew?
- What happens when the SLA breaks: a real consequence, or just an awkward message?
- Is there one metric both leads are evaluated on together, or only separate ones?
- Who owns a lead in the 48 hours after it is qualified but before a rep touches it?
- Do your CMO and CRO report to the same person, or does every conflict travel up two chains to get resolved?
Two or more shaky answers mean you can stop blaming culture. The structure is broken.
How to Fix Sales and Marketing Misalignment (A Simple Alignment Framework)
Get the sequence right: customer definition first, then qualification, then handoff, then KPIs. Compensation comes last. Build incentives on top of a wrong customer definition, and you are just paying both teams to disagree faster.
More meetings would not fix this. Change what each team is paid on, so working together becomes the only way either side hits their number. Add pipeline-to-close to marketing’s comp instead of volume alone. Give the SLA a real consequence. It’s the same order we follow in every Sales Engine Setup: process first, comp last.
Pick one shared metric, pipeline-to-close or marketing-sourced revenue, and put both leads’ names against it at the next leadership meeting.
Proof: a Tamil Nadu manufacturer built this from zero and closed ₹10 crore in six months, no sales team, one founder doing it alone.
Practical Takeaway
Fix the incentives underneath, and the SLA, the dashboard, and the meetings you already have start working. They were never the problem; they just had nothing to enforce. Before you go further, pull your own numbers: MQL rejection rate, days-to-follow-up, content usage rate. Argue from your pipeline, not from a stat in this article.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is sales and marketing alignment?
Sales and marketing alignment means both teams are incentivised toward the same revenue outcome, not just communicating well or sharing a dashboard.
What causes sales and marketing misalignment?
Mismatched customer definitions, inconsistent lead qualification, conflicting KPIs, an unenforced handoff, and no shared ownership of the buyer journey, all downstream of disconnected incentives.
What is a sales and marketing SLA?
A sales and marketing SLA (service-level agreement) is a documented commitment on lead volume, quality, and follow-up time.
How do you diagnose a sales and marketing alignment problem?
Put both team leads in the same room. Test whether they would give the same answer on the ICP, the qualification criteria, and what happens when the SLA is missed. A vague answer points straight at the open gap.
Does fixing the CRM fix sales and marketing alignment?
No, not on its own. A CRM cleanup fixes data hygiene. Real alignment is a CRM audit that checks whether the ICP, MQL criteria, and lead-ownership rules are the same for both teams.
Should sales and marketing share KPIs, or just communicate better?
Share at least one KPI both teams are evaluated on together. Communication without a shared incentive just makes the disagreement more polite.
Is sales and marketing misalignment costing us revenue?
Yes. Unworked leads past the SLA window, high MQL rejection, and mismatched pipeline numbers are not friction; they are lost revenue.
Filed under
- Sales and marketing alignment
- Lead qualification
- B2B growth
