How To End the Blame Game: Sales and Marketing Misalignment

It's funny how business leaders can hear two completely different stories about their company's performance depending on who they speak with.

Talk to Marketing, and you might hear that our metrics are impressive — record website traffic, growing social engagement, and promising lead numbers.

Then, walk down the hall to Sales, and you'll hear that leads aren't converting, prospects aren't prepared for sales conversations, and revenue targets are at risk.

Team tension doesn't bring in money

If you ask either of these teams why there's a disconnect between these two messages, that's often when finger-pointing will begin. 

Marketing believes they're delivering quality leads that Sales isn't following up on properly. Sales insists the leads are unqualified, and Marketing doesn't understand what makes a good prospect. Meanwhile, leaders are sitting at the head of the table watching this tennis match of blame, knowing that our company goals are caught in the crossfire.

Let's be honest — this misalignment isn't just frustrating; it's costing you real money. When your customer acquisition process breaks down between Marketing and Sales, you waste resources, lose opportunities, and damage your brand experience. The most frustrating part? This problem is entirely fixable.

The five issues that spark blame

I've learned that Sales and Marketing misalignment typically stems from five core issues:

1. We speak different languages

Marketing talks about impressions, engagement rates, and brand awareness. Sales focuses on pipeline, close rates, and revenue. Without a shared vocabulary of success, we're destined to talk past each other.

2. Our incentives rarely align

Marketing gets rewarded for generating activity at the top of the funnel, while Sales is compensated for closing deals at the bottom. This creates fundamentally different priorities and perspectives.

3. We build walls instead of bridges

The traditional handoff from Marketing to Sales creates a dangerous gap where leads fall through and blame flourishes. Without shared ownership of the entire customer journey, it's natural to start to assign credit (or blame) accordingly.

4. Sales incentives

Yes, let's talk about it. If your salespeople are less likely to be incentivized when using marketing-generated assets, they won't be inclined to do so.

5. Not reporting holistically 

If you don't have reports showing sales- and marketing-produced leads, you're already creating strife between the two teams. "Marketing did this" and "Sales did this" is a surefire way to make a divide and organically create an environment where your teams see themselves as separate from one another.

So, how do you fix these problems?

Great question. And you have options. 

You can start with a shared scoreboard. The blame game can no longer exist if you have a single dashboard showing your marketing-sourced pipeline and actual closed revenue. Everyone has visibility into the work others are completing, meaning both teams finally have a common definition of success.

You might also consider a unified customer success metric — a shared KPI that both teams contribute to and are evaluated on. This could be a "Customer Acquisition Health Score" that combines Marketing's lead quality metrics with Sales' conversion metrics. When both departments share responsibility for the same core metric, they naturally collaborate rather than compete.

This shifts everyone's focus from "my department's performance" to "our collective impact on business growth." Review this metric monthly with both teams in the same room, celebrating wins and troubleshooting challenges together.

And then, there's the obvious (but perhaps the biggest) game changer: embedding marketers within sales teams (and vice versa).

When a content creator sits in on five sales calls weekly, it'll transform your messaging. And if you have a sales rep join Marketing's campaign planning sessions, providing real-time feedback on what prospects actually care about, the marketers are more likely to spend their time and skills on assets that Sales needs and wants to use.

Let's face it: team balance will never be perfect

Marketing won't always produce the perfect content or updates, just as Sales will never land every prospect using finely-tuned marketing materials. However, using these ideas, the energy previously wasted on internal battles is now directed toward understanding our customers and outmaneuvering competitors.

And you, as a leader, get a team that's aligned and respects what each other does. No more finger-pointing or phone calls keeping you late at work (again).

Is the blame game happening in your company?

If you're seeing these symptoms in your organization, don't wait for the situation to improve on its own. This is a leadership problem that requires deliberate intervention. And while we might be a marketing agency, I've helped many of my clients face this battle (sometimes more than once).

What specific challenges are you facing in aligning these teams? Get in touch with me below — I'd be happy to talk through strategies that might help your situation.