The Alignment Reality: Why We Stopped Treating Marketing and Sales as Separate Functions
At A Glance
When my role at Scrubbed transitioned from CMO to Chief Growth Officer a little over a year ago, it gave me a completely new vantage point on the gaps in our funnel.
In marketing, we were hosting highly successful webinars. We had built this massive database of warm leads. But as I started looking at the entire buyer’s journey across both teams, I realized these prospects were just sitting there, marinating. They weren’t moving over to sales fast enough.
It wasn’t because marketing was generating bad leads, and it wasn’t because sales couldn’t close. It was a structural issue. We were operating like almost every other growing company: we had two different leaders running two different teams with two different sets of KPIs.
When you manage a team based on how many MQLs they generate or how many meetings they book, natural silos form. At the end of the quarter, if revenue is down, human nature kicks in. Marketing says, “We sent you the leads.” Sales says, “The leads were garbage.”
We realized that if we wanted to scale sustainably, we had to stop managing departmental metrics and start managing the actual buyer’s journey.
The Reality of the Modern Funnel
The truth is, the buyer’s journey is no longer a straight line. It is not a clean handoff where marketing educates a prospect and neatly passes them to sales to close the deal.
As HubSpot has pointed out, it’s a loop. Buyers have endless access to information. They might attend a webinar, read an article, pause for three months because their day job gets busy, and then suddenly re-engage. At any given time, only about 5% of your market is actually ready to buy.
When marketing and sales operate in silos, you create massive leaks in that loop. Someone attends an event, they learn about your brand, and then…nothing happens. Nobody from marketing or sales systematically reaches out to bridge that gap over the long term.
Aligning the Engine
In bringing both disciplines under one umbrella, the goal wasn’t to force salespeople and marketers to act like the same people. It was to give everyone a single, unifying target: top-line revenue growth.
When revenue is the only goal that matters, the friction dissipates. It’s no longer, “Yay marketing, you brought in MQLs” if we didn’t hit our revenue goal. Suddenly, the sales team starts reaching across the aisle to ask marketing for sharper presentation decks, knowing that better collateral helps them close. Marketing gladly puts down what they’re doing to help, because they want the win just as much.
But to make this work, we had to get our hands dirty with the data. You cannot align teams without aligning their source of truth. We had to sit down and clearly define what a lead actually was, what an MQL was, and what gets passed over. We put specific people in charge of our CRM on both the marketing and BD sides. Now, when we run our KPI reports, there are checks and balances.
As a CGO, I can look at the numbers with a high degree of confidence and glean actual insights, rather than worrying if the data is tagged correctly.
The Results of Shared Ownership
We saw the reality of this alignment during our recent “The Future is Fractional” event. It was a 4-hour virtual event, which was a massive lift for the marketing team to build.
But it wasn’t just a marketing initiative. The business development team also tapped into its referral sources. They brought key customers to the table. And most importantly, they had follow-ups teed up and ready to go for the 300+ people who registered. It was a shared lift, and because the handoff was structurally sound, we managed to drive actual ROI.
When leaders ask me for advice on aligning these historically siloed teams, I tell them to avoid the trap of trying to make them one homogeneous group. Marketing and business development still have very specific, different roles to play.
You don’t need to force the teams to meet every single week or blend their daily tasks. Growth doesn’t happen because you forced two teams into the same room. It happens because you built an environment where they trust each other’s processes, share a single source of truth, and take shared ownership of the outcome.
Key Takeaways
- Siloed metrics create friction: Managing teams by separate departmental KPIs (like MQLs vs. meetings booked) builds natural walls between marketing and sales.
- The funnel is a loop: The modern buyer’s journey is continuous and self-directed, requiring systematic, long-term follow-through rather than a single, clean handoff.
- Revenue is the ultimate aligner: Giving both disciplines a single, unifying target of top-line revenue growth eliminates finger-pointing.
- Data is the foundation of trust: You cannot align teams without aligning their source of truth; defining shared metrics and accountability within the CRM is critical.
- Alignment is not homogenization: Teams do not need to blend their daily tasks. Growth happens when distinct teams trust each other’s processes and take shared ownership of the outcome.
As sales and marketing align to drive faster growth, the resulting volume naturally puts pressure on your operations. A unified growth engine requires a financial foundation that can actually support the pace. Scrubbed partners with growing companies to build the financial infrastructure that sustains this kind of momentum. We handle the execution that keeps reporting reliable, so your leadership can focus on scaling the business forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions?
Why do marketing and sales teams often misalign?
They are typically managed by different leaders with different KPIs (such as MQL volume versus closed deals). This creates natural silos, where teams blame each other if revenue goals are missed.
How has the modern buyer's journey changed?
It is no longer a straight line or a clean handoff from marketing to sales. It is a continuous loop where buyers access information, pause, and re-engage on their own timelines.