How and why to prioritize sales and marketing alignment in 2025

As your company leadership sets goals and makes strategic plans for 2025, there’s one organizational strategy that you should consider prioritizing: effective sales and marketing alignment.

When sales and marketing are rowing together, the customer experience feels smooth and intentional. This teamwork means potential customers don’t get lost between marketing finding and nurturing leads and sales reaching out to them. Instead, they enjoy a seamless process from learning about the company to making a purchase, which can shorten the time to close a sale and increase success rates.

But if sales and marketing aren’t on the same page, problems like wasted time on poor-quality leads, missed follow-ups, and lost revenue can arise. Studies show that companies where sales and marketing work closely together see more growth and build stronger customer relationships. That’s why aligning these teams isn’t just about making things easier internally; it’s about building a business that customers trust.

So how can sales and marketing teams work better together? Here are some best practices to consider implementing:

Come to an agreement on lead qualification and scoring

The first step towards sales and marketing alignment is establishing shared definitions. Sales and marketing teams need a shared understanding of what qualifies as a marketing qualified lead (MQL), a sales qualified lead (SQL), and opportunity in order to get on the same page.

While marketing teams likely have a good idea of when a lead is ready to be passed off, it’s essential to get sales reps to confirm this a shared definition to avoid disconnects. Depending on the quantity of leads coming in, your teams may decide to implement lead scoring to help prioritize leads based on how active they are and how well they fit the ideal customer profile. 

While creating these shared definitions and understanding is a vital step, it’s also important to maintain some degree of flexibility and open communication for occasions when a lead doesn’t follow the usual path. Some leads might move quickly or skip steps if they’re highly qualified, and a rigid adherence to meeting specific milestones could thwart the opportunity to close a sale.

Build a structured handoff process for leads 

Marketing teams shouldn’t pass leads off to sales teams all willy-nilly; handoff should be a structured step to make sure no necessary information is overlooked. A smooth handoff will include details about who gets the lead (based on territory or segment), as well as any relevant context marketing has gathered, such as webinar attendance or specific interests. Have your sales and marketing teams work together to determine which relevant details the marketing team should pass along about leads to help sales reps make a strong first impression. 

What if marketing hands off a lead that isn’t quite ready for sales to follow up? Does your organization have a process for handing back leads that need a little more nurturing? Consider how you’d like the lead handoff (and if necessary, pass back) process to look and document it clearly so both teams are in agreement and feel confident in their abilities to deliver. 

Set up service level agreements (SLAs) 

With shared understandings about the customer journey and the internal handoff process established, it may be time to establish a service-level agreement (SLA). An SLA keeps revenue teams accountable to each other by setting shared expectations about each team’s responsibilities to each other. 

Typically this will involve defining what is an acceptable quality and quantity of leads for marketing to hand off to sales, as well as how quickly and how persistently sales should follow up with these leads to try to close business. Agreeing on metrics like response time and lead quality builds trust and keeps each team honest and accountable for their role in the shared goal of generating more revenue.

It’s important to keep in mind that an SLA should be a living document; sales and marketing teams should regroup at least a few times each year to adjust the SLA goals as needed. 

Foster helpful feedback loops 

Simply getting everyone on the same page about each team’s responsibility to the other will get your organization pretty far. However, as your organization scales, it’s important to build in regular time for revenue teams to share feedback and refine details. 

A good feedback process should look a lot less like angrily venting frustrations, and more like a future-focused conversation that helps both teams keep improving. Marketing teams benefit from regular feedback to understand which of their strategies are generating the correct kinds of leads, and which ones need tweaking. 

Get executive support for teamwork initiatives 

Leadership plays a key role in making alignment a priority. Executives can create regular opportunities for open discussions to make sure sales and marketing teams are finding common ground. While individual contributors on all teams are concerned with their specific responsibilities and metrics, leaders should try to keep the focus on the shared goal of revenue growth to keep everyone rowing in the same direction.

Achieving lasting sales and marketing alignment

Sales and marketing alignment is almost never a one-and-done process. It requires clear definitions, smooth handoffs, accountability, constructive feedback, regular communication, and above all, a commitment to continuous improvement. By starting with small steps and building as teams grow, organizations can create an alignment strategy that supports long-term growth.