When Marketing and Sales Are Supposed to Be a Team — But One Knocks the Other Out

June 19, 2025

Marketing and sales teams should be working in harmony, but more often than not, they’re operating like two rival teams— each pulling in different directions.

Instead of collaborating to drive growth, misalignment between marketing and sales creates friction, wasted efforts, and lost opportunities.

Misaligned goals lead to confusion and inefficiency.
Lack of shared metrics means no common ground for evaluating success.
Poor handoff between lead generation and conversion leads to missed leads and poor customer experiences.

Does this sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. At Scalemetrics, we help businesses get their teams back on the same page — with shared goals, aligned metrics, and seamless coordination from click to close.

The Cost of Marketing and Sales Misalignment

When marketing and sales teams don’t align, it’s not just a “minor issue” — it’s a major roadblock to your business growth. Misalignment can result in:

Wasted resources: Marketing generates leads that sales can’t close, or sales ignores quality leads from marketing.
Missed opportunities: Potential customers slip through the cracks when the teams don’t work together to nurture them effectively.
Conflicting priorities: Without aligned goals, each team has different priorities, leading to inefficiency and frustration.
Fragmented customer experiences: Prospects get inconsistent messaging and treatment, affecting conversion and retention.

The outcome? Lost revenue, wasted effort, and frustrated teams.

Why Alignment Matters: The Power of Shared Metrics

Shared metrics are the foundation of a successful, unified sales and marketing strategy. Without a shared understanding of what success looks like, it’s impossible to work as a team.

Here’s why aligning marketing and sales metrics is crucial:

Clear accountability: With shared KPIs, both teams can see their contributions to the full pipeline and revenue generation.
Improved decision-making: With consistent data and insights, teams can adjust tactics quickly based on what’s working — and what’s not.
Stronger collaboration: Shared metrics drive discussions on what to optimize, rather than where to point fingers.
Faster scaling: Aligned teams are more agile and responsive, helping you scale faster and more effectively.

Common Problems that Lead to Misalignment

Marketing and sales teams are often misaligned due to three key issues:

1. Misaligned Goals

Marketing’s goal may be generating leads, while sales focuses on closing deals. This can create a disconnect.

Marketing wants volume, while sales wants quality leads.
Marketing focuses on awareness, while sales is concerned with conversion.

The solution: Align goals around revenue. Both teams should be incentivized to generate high-quality leads, nurture them, and close them efficiently.

2. Lack of Shared Metrics

If marketing measures success by website traffic and sales measures it by closed deals, there’s no common ground.

Marketing may be focused on the top of the funnel, while sales focuses on the bottom.
Without a shared metric like MQL-to-SQL conversion rate or lead velocity, teams are on separate tracks.

The solution: Define shared KPIs such as lead conversion rates, customer acquisition costs (CAC), and revenue from marketing-qualified leads to ensure everyone is working towards the same outcome.

3. Poor Handoff Between Lead Generation and Conversion

A poor lead handoff results in a disjointed experience for the prospect and missed opportunities for both teams.

Sales teams often receive leads that are not sales-ready, resulting in wasted time.
Marketing might not know whether the leads they send are effectively closed by sales.

The solution: Improve lead nurturing and define a clear, actionable handoff process. This should include automated workflows, clear definitions of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads), SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads), and a feedback loop between teams to ensure the right leads are getting passed through the system.

How Scalemetrics Can Help Align Your Marketing and Sales Teams

At Scalemetrics, we help businesses create a unified go-to-market strategy that puts marketing and sales on the same page, from click to close.

Here’s how we do it:

1. Unified Metrics and Dashboards

We bring both teams together with a centralized dashboard that tracks performance against shared KPIs, giving both teams visibility into the entire process.

Shared KPIs: Revenue attribution, lead conversion, CAC, and ROI.
Cross-team reporting for transparency and actionable insights.

2. Streamlined Lead Handoff Process

We define a clear lead qualification process that ensures marketing delivers leads that are sales-ready, and sales provides feedback to refine lead scoring.

Automated workflows for seamless handoffs.
Real-time communication channels to keep both teams aligned.

3. Aligning Goals and Incentives

We help your teams align their goals with company-wide revenue objectives, ensuring everyone’s incentives are tied to the same outcomes: driving revenue and scaling effectively.

Is Your Go-To-Market Game Aligned? Let’s Talk.

If your marketing and sales teams aren’t working together like they should, it’s time to make a change. Alignment isn’t just about shared metrics — it’s about shared success.

At Scalemetrics, we bring clarity, structure, and operational sharpness to your sales and marketing efforts, ensuring your teams are working together to drive growth.

Need help realigning your go-to-market strategy? Let’s talk.