Why Marketing and Sales Alignment Matters More Than Ever

What every founder should know before investing in marketing.

Recently, I came across an interesting statistic from Forrester's 2024 Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey. It found that 65% of sales and marketing professionals believe there is a lack of alignment between their departments.

The statistic caught my attention because it's something I've observed across different companies over the years.

Marketing celebrates hitting its lead generation targets. Sales receives those leads but struggles to reach its revenue targets because many of the leads aren't the right fit.

That's usually where the frustration begins.

The interesting part is that neither team is necessarily doing a bad job. Marketing may have achieved its KPIs, and sales may be working hard to convert opportunities. Yet the business still isn't getting the results it expected.

It Starts with One Question

Whenever I see this situation, I come back to one simple question: What does a qualified lead actually look like?

It sounds obvious, but it's surprising how often marketing and sales answer that question differently. Marketing may define success by the number of leads generated.

Sales defines success by conversations that have a real chance of becoming customers.

Neither perspective is wrong. They simply measure success differently.

That's why the definition of a qualified lead shouldn't belong to one department. It should be built together.

Sales Is One of Marketing's Greatest Sources of Insight

I've always believed that marketing and sales should work hand in hand. They're like the left and right hands of the same organization. One cannot perform at its best without the other.

One of the biggest advantages sales has is daily conversations with customers.

Sales hears the objections and understand the pain points. Those conversations contain valuable market insights.

Marketing's role is to take those insights and translate them into positioning, messaging, campaigns, and content that speak to the right audience. The closer marketing stays to real customer conversations, the stronger the strategy becomes.

Better Conversations Create Better Leads

One thing I've learned while working with startups and technology companies is that better alignment doesn't necessarily mean generating more leads. It means generating better ones.

When marketing and sales regularly share feedback, marketing can refine its messaging based on real customer conversations rather than assumptions.

As a result, sales spends less time filtering through opportunities and more time speaking with prospects who are genuinely a good fit.

Questions Worth Discussing

If you're building or growing your commercial team, these are a few questions worth asking together:

• How do we define a qualified lead?

• Does marketing use the same definition as sales?

• What objections do customers raise most often?

• Which leads consistently become customers?

• What information from sales could improve our marketing?

  
  

Sometimes these conversations uncover more opportunities than launching another campaign.

Here's what I see

For me, a strong marketing and sales partnership isn't defined by separate KPIs.

It's defined by how well both teams learn from each other and use those insights to make better business decisions.

When marketing understands what sales hears every day, and sales helps shape the marketing strategy, both teams move in the same direction. And that's when commercialization becomes much more effective.

Elena Kazakova is a marketing strategis. She works with deep-tech, climate-tech, and innovation-driven organizations to help turn breakthrough technologies into market traction and real-world impact through commercialization strategy.