Challenge · Marketing and sales alignment

Marketing and sales work hard. Just not always on the same thing.

Marketing generates reach and leads. Sales holds conversations and chases revenue. Both teams are active, but they don't connect. Leads are handed over too early or too late, campaigns don't match real customer questions closely enough and feedback from sales conversations doesn't reach marketing in any structured way. Everyone puts in effort, yet the shared commercial result stays smaller than it could be.

This is often treated as a process question: another dashboard, a new lead definition or a tighter handover. That can help, but only if you first agree on the commercial choice. Who do we want to matter to? Which problem do we demonstrably solve? What behaviour do we expect from the customer at each stage? Without a shared answer, each team optimises its own part.

Signs that marketing and sales aren't aligned

Marketing is measured on lead volume, while sales mainly questions the quality of the leads.
Sales tells a different story from the website, campaigns or propositions.
Nobody can say exactly when an opportunity is ready for the next step.
Insights from customer conversations stay with individual account managers.
Teams report different figures, and so have different conversations.
There are plenty of meetings about handover, but little shared ownership of the customer's path to buying.

Alignment doesn't start with the funnel

A funnel is a useful model, but no substitute for a shared choice. If the audience is too broad, the promise too general or the offer not sharp enough, optimising the process won't solve much. Marketing then attracts scattered attention, and sales tries to squeeze suitable opportunities out of it anyway.

That's why we start before the funnel. We bring together the customer, the context and your commercial ambition. We look at which customers really fit, which problem is urgent enough to make them act and what evidence is needed to earn their trust. Only then do we agree how marketing and sales recognise, develop and qualify opportunities together.

From two departments to one commercial way of working

Being aligned doesn't mean marketing and sales do the same work. It means they work from the same choices and strengthen each other's contribution. Marketing builds recognition and trust around the chosen problem. Sales tests urgency, context and decision-making in conversations. Both teams feed the shared picture of the customer with what they learn.

To do that, we make five things explicit: the ideal customer profile, the core problem, the shared message, the criteria for an opportunity and the moments when teams exchange information and adjust course. That brings clarity without setting up a heavy process.

The STOF rhythm for marketing and sales

Look and listen — we analyse customer insights, campaigns, the pipeline, conversations and the current handover. Not to assign blame, but to make the differences visible.
Make a sharp choice — we decide which customers, problems and propositions the organisation focuses on, and which signals make an opportunity relevant.
Align — we build one story and divide roles across the customer's path to buying. Marketing and sales speak the same language, with room for their own expertise.
Follow through — we set up a practical commercial rhythm: joint reviews, feedback from conversations, content requests and decisions about opportunities.

What changes in practice?

Good collaboration shows in behaviour. Marketing asks more specifically about signals from sales conversations. Sales uses content deliberately, rather than just as an attachment afterwards. Teams speak the same language about opportunities. The pipeline stops being a reporting tool and becomes a place to make better commercial choices together.

We agree up front which improvement counts. Think of sharper qualification, less noise in the handover, more consistent use of the commercial story or less time between first interest and a good follow-up conversation. Figures only mean something once they are linked to different behaviour.

Who is this relevant for?

For growing B2B companies where marketing and sales are professionally set up, but coherence and commercial focus are lagging. Often there's also a positioning question, a fragmented offer or unclear ownership at play. STOF helps you look at those parts not separately, but as one system.

Want to start yourselves? The guide on building a commercial strategy explains how to set channels, roles and the handover between marketing and sales.

Which starting point fits?

Not sure yet what's causing it? Focus, story, offer or capacity? Then start with the Growth diagnosis: in three weeks you know where things get stuck and what needs attention first.
Clear that the collaboration between the teams is the problem? Then the Alignment programme fits: in eight to twelve weeks marketing and sales agree together how they recognise, hand over and follow up opportunities.

For an example of agreements between marketing and sales, see the guide The marketing-sales SLA: what a good lead is, when to hand over, how fast to follow up and how to adjust together.

Frequently asked questions

Do we need a new CRM or dashboard?

Usually not. If marketing and sales make different choices, a new system mainly shows that difference. We start with the shared choice: for whom, which problem and what a good opportunity is. Only if the system really gets in the way of those agreements do we look at what needs to change.

Is this the same as an SLA between marketing and sales?

An SLA can be an outcome: agreements on what a good lead is, who follows it up when, and how sales feeds back. But those agreements only work if both teams have the same customer and the same story in mind. So the choice comes first, the SLA after.

How long before marketing and sales really work together?

In the Alignment programme the agreements are in place within eight to twelve weeks. Whether they land in daily work shows in a fixed rhythm: a joint review each month, and feedback from conversations that marketing actually uses.

Bring marketing and sales together around one choice.

In a free introductory call, we explore where the collaboration really gets stuck: in focus, story, roles or rhythm.

Bring your challenge to the table