Your Sales & Marketing Teams Are Misaligned. And Your Buyers Can Feel It
- Summer Poletti
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
“So what do you guys actually do?”
That question landed like a gut punch in the middle of a sales call. The prospect intending to be rude. He was frustrated. He’d done his research. Or tried to. But the website said one thing. The salesperson said another. And the sales deck? Totally different again.
He wasn’t trying to be difficult. He was trying to get clarity, but what he found was chaos. This wasn’t a sales problem. And it wasn’t a marketing problem either.
It was a misalignment problem.
What You’ll Get From This Blog:
The real cost of sales and marketing misalignment (hint: it’s more than just lost leads)
Early warning signs your teams are out of sync, and what to do about it
Metrics that quietly reveal alignment gaps before they sabotage your revenue goals
Two true stories: one trainwreck, one triumph
Action steps you can take in 30 days (and what results to expect in 6–18 months)
A sneak peek from my the Revenue Remix episode with Jedidah K. on the power of marketing, sales, and alignment in an AI-powered world
The Data Don’t Lie
Misalignment isn’t theoretical. It’s measurable.
Organizations with tight sales-marketing alignment see 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher win rates (HubSpot)
Misaligned teams waste up to 25% of their marketing budget due to poor handoffs and unclear messaging (Forrester)
87% of sales and marketing professionals agree that alignment delivers critical value—but only 17% say they’re truly aligned (LinkedIn State of Sales)
⚡ Thought-Starter:
How much is misalignment costing you every month? And how long has it been quietly bleeding your growth?
1. Your Buyers Feel the Disconnect Before You Do
It starts with subtle signs: website messaging that doesn’t match what your sales reps are saying. An email campaign promoting one angle, while your outbound SDR team pitches another. Content that overpromises, followed by implementation that can’t deliver. Or worse, doesn’t speak the same language.
That buyer confusion turns into buyer frustration. And frustration doesn’t convert. Sometimes you get lucky and close the deal anyway. But that trust? It vanishes the second a new team picks up the relationship and starts using a different set of jargon. “Wait…I thought the system did X?”
No matter how mild the disconnect, for a client standing outside your org chart looking in, it feels like a bait-and-switch.
Real-Life Miss:
One of my clients brought me in after things had gone completely sideways. The sales leader was a featured speaker at an industry event. Big name. Big audience. Huge opportunity. And marketing? Did nothing to promote it. Nothing to repurpose it afterward.
The internal tension was so bad, they stopped sharing content altogether. A brand that desperately needed visibility lost a shot at becoming a thought leader in their space. Because the right hand had no idea (or no interest in) what the left hand was doing.
2. Your Metrics Are Telling You Something
If your sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned, your numbers will whisper it before they scream it. You just have to know what to look for:
Marketing-to-sales conversion rate
Sales cycle length
Lead quality by source
Retention rates
Customer lifetime value
Decline in customer system logins or contacts (calls/emails)
Increase in unsubscribe rates from current customers
Here’s what I see in nearly every misaligned org: Each of these numbers is slightly off. Not bad enough to sound the alarm. But none are where the CEO wants them to be.
And because these teams aren’t talking, no one connects the dots.
These are the early signs of revenue and bottom-line stagnation.
3. How to Spot (and Fix) Misalignment Early
❓ Thought-Starter: When was the last time your sales and marketing leaders sat down to solve a shared problem?
The earliest indicator I look for is simple: channel consistency.
Does the vibe on your social media match your website? Do sales emails echo the language in your marketing content? Are your buyer personas or ideal client profiles aligned, or did each team make their own version?
Eventually, misalignment doesn’t just live between sales and marketing. It creeps into onboarding, customer service, and renewal conversations. And when your buyer hears different answers from different people at different stages, they stop listening.
4. The Fix: Start with a Real Conversation
❓ Thought-Starter: What if your revenue leaders met with curiosity instead of blame?
You can’t fix misalignment with a new dashboard. You fix it with better conversations.
Start with this:
Call a meeting. Bring your sales and marketing leaders together.
Skip the accusations. This isn’t a “Your leads suck” or “Your team never follows up” meeting.
Share business challenges. Treat each other like internal clients. What’s not working? Where are we stuck?
Define a shared goal. Not two separate metrics. A true, shared outcome.
List tangible tactics. For each leader: what’s your role in achieving that outcome?
Set a follow-up cadence. Bi-weekly check-ins, with informal vibe checks in between. Weekly is too much. Monthly is too far apart.
This isn’t about agreeing on everything. It’s about building enough trust to collaborate effectively.
5. One Year Later: The Turnaround
Let’s go back to that same client.
A year later, we returned to the same industry event. But this time, visitors came to the booth already educated. They knew what the company did. They understood the tiers of service. They knew which one they wanted.
Marketing had started speaking directly to buyer pain points. Sales was feeding insights to marketing. Content had become a silent member of the sales team.
The growth that followed? Still the stuff of legend.
6. So What Can You Expect in 30 Days?
Not a miracle turn-around. But momentum.
Slightly better marketing leads
Slightly faster sales conversations
Less re-explaining, less friction, fewer debates
And the beginnings of a trust-based partnership
You’ll also start building the content engine that fills your buyer gap: the 70% of the buying journey that happens before a prospect talks to sales.
I want to be very honest. In total, you're looking at 18 months before this makes a difference in your bottom line. You can shorten that timeframe to 6 months with paid campaigns or repurposed content. But it starts with alignment.
7. What To Watch For (So You Don’t Back-Slide)
Alignment is fragile.
When sales slow down
When goals start drifting apart
When assumptions replace conversations
That’s when misalignment creeps back in.
And if you hear one side start to criticize the other... not just their work, but their intentions, that’s your signal. The relationship is fraying. Step in before it unravels.
Actionable Takeaways
Audit your messaging across every channel
Analyze your funnel metrics for handoff issues
Host a working session: "What’s working, what’s not?"
Define 1 shared KPI and 3 measurable tactics per team
Commit to 2 structured check-ins + 2 informal vibe checks per month
Pro Tip: Sit in on sales calls. Or better yet, invite your marketing lead to.
🎧 From the Podcast: Jedidah K. on Alignment, AI, and Her Secrets to Aligning Sales and Marketing
"Marketers don’t want to be your flier-makers. We want to be your partners in growth. Treat us like collaborators, not service providers."
Jedidah knows product marketing. And she knows what it takes to build trust with sales. In our conversation, we talked about:
Why Klarna got it wrong when they cut half their marketing team and replaced it with AI
How to build an internal AI Council to future-proof your go-to-market engine
How marketing can empower sales to be more effective, without hiring more reps
Listen to the full episode here.
One Final Thought
The smallest change I ever made that had the biggest impact?
During a tough year, I started thinking of my marketing partner as my business therapist.
I brought her objections I couldn’t solve. Alone.
Competitive losses that didn’t make sense.
Deals we should’ve won.
And we figured it out together.
That mindset shift changed everything.
Not just for that quarter. But for every team I’ve worked with since.
Alignment isn’t optional anymore. Your buyers are too smart. Your competitors are too fast. And the stakes are too high. Ready to fix it? Let’s talk.
Rise of Us is a practice run by Summer Poletti, specializing in revenue growth: sales, strategic partnerships, customer success, marketing alignment. We generally work with financial services and SaaS companies from $2MM - $20MM ARR and help them plan and execute for their next stage of revenue growth. We concentrate on strategy, coaching, and organizational alignment.
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