Sales and Marketing Alignment Is Not a Meeting Cadence

Every company says they want sales and marketing alignment. Most of them think that means a weekly pipeline review and a shared Slack channel.

That’s not alignment. That’s proximity.

Real alignment is structural

True alignment requires three things most companies avoid because they’re hard:

1. Shared definitions — What is a qualified lead? Not marketing’s definition. Not sales’ definition. One definition, agreed in writing.
2. Shared accountability — Both teams own pipeline. Both teams own revenue. Finger-pointing becomes structurally impossible.
3. Shared data — One source of truth. Not marketing’s dashboard and sales’ dashboard. One dashboard.

Why it’s so hard

The reason most alignment efforts fail isn’t strategic — it’s political. Marketing doesn’t want to be held to revenue numbers they can’t directly control. Sales doesn’t want to share credit for deals marketing sourced.

The fix is executive: the CEO or CRO has to mandate shared metrics and hold both teams to them. Without top-down commitment, alignment is just theater.

Start here

If you can only do one thing this quarter, unify your lead definitions. Get marketing and sales in a room, agree on what “qualified” means, and write it down. Then measure both teams against it.

It’s not glamorous. But it works.