Align sales and marketing to scale
How to align Sales and Marketing in a GTM plan (and actually make it work).
Ditch the silos. Sail toward revenue with a GTM strategy that gets Sales and Marketing rowing in the same direction.
The problem: Sales and Marketing are often in conflict
If you’ve ever been in a B2B or SaaS company during a GTM (Go-to-Market) launch, you’ve likely seen this play out:
Marketing thinks Sales isn't following up on leads fast enough.
Sales thinks Marketing is handing them unqualified leads.
Both teams report to different metrics, use different tools, and rarely share feedback.
Result? A misaligned GTM strategy where effort doesn’t equal results.
In high-growth companies, this disconnect can stall traction, increase CAC, and hurt product-market fit before it’s even established.
Let’s fix that.
First, what is a GTM plan?
A Go-to-Market (GTM) plan is your company’s blueprint for launching a product or growing in a market. It aligns:
Your audience (who you’re targeting)
Your offer (what you’re selling)
Your motion (how you’re reaching and converting buyers)
It should be a shared map that both Sales and Marketing follow — with aligned messaging, goals, timelines, and tools.
Why Sales-Marketing alignment is a growth superpower
When aligned, Sales and Marketing create a growth engine instead of two disconnected machines.
✅ Higher lead quality
✅ Shorter sales cycles
✅ Better conversion rates
✅ More accurate forecasts
✅ Fewer budget battles
But this doesn’t happen by accident.
5 ways to align Sales and Marketing in your GTM plan
1. Co-Create your ICP and Buyer Journey
Don’t just document your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) in a siloed marketing doc. Involve Sales — they have firsthand knowledge of what makes a “real” prospect vs. a dead lead. But go further than that: build your ICP and buyer journey based on a mix of qualitative insight and practical data.
Here’s how to do that at any stage:
🛠️ For early-stage startups (Limited customer data)
Interview your first 3–10 customers or early adopters. Ask about:
What problem were they solving
How they discovered your solution
What almost stopped them from buying
Talk to your network. Interview people who match your target persona, even if they haven’t bought from you yet.
Use audience research tools like SparkToro, Reddit, or LinkedIn to study:
Job titles, pain points, and language used in communities
Use ChatGPT to simulate buyer personas and pressure test messaging or objections.
Start a simple Airtable or Notion database to document buyer feedback patterns early.
🧭 For established companies (With sales & support data)
Interview your internal stakeholders:
CSM / Success:
What are the top 3 challenges customers raise in onboarding?
Sales:
Where do leads stall or ghost in the funnel?
What feedback does Sales get from prospects on your company positioning / messaging / offering.
Support:
What questions do customers ask right before (or after) buying?
Run short qualitative customer interviews (15–20 min max) to explore:
Why they chose you
How long did they search
How they search and find the information they needed
What alternatives did they consider
What outcomes they’ve actually seen
Any WOW-moments or challenges they have noticed
Review CRM and support tickets. Use tagging and AI tools (like Gong or Fireflies) to surface:
Objections
Trigger events
Language patterns
Review Sales processes:
Mine closed-lost opportunities. These are gold for identifying misalignment between your messaging and the market.
Review how Sales is contacting prospects (channels, how many times, etc).
What materials are they using - or what materials do they lack
Pro Tip:
Document every insight using a shared, editable “ICP + Journey Map” doc — ideally in Notion, Airtable, or Miro — so Sales, Marketing, and Product can all contribute and iterate.
2. Agree on funnel definitions, KPIs and metrics
One team says “MQL,” the other says “SQL,” and no one knows what counts as progress. That’s a recipe for missed targets and frustrated teams.
But misalignment isn’t just about language — it’s about not knowing where prospects drop off or why.
🎯 Why this matters:
If you can’t see where your funnel is leaking, you can’t fix it. Understanding your funnel isn’t just a reporting exercise — it’s the key to unlocking scalable growth.
Ask:
Where are the biggest drop-offs?
Where is the buyer losing interest or trust?
Which stages have the longest lag time or friction?
Mapping this to real numbers helps you turn fuzzy assumptions into actionable priorities.
🛠️ What to do:
📊 Define your full-funnel stages together:
Agree on clear, company-wide definitions for each stage. For example:
Lead → MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Proposal → Closed-Won
Make sure everyone knows what each stage means — not just in theory, but in how it’s triggered in your CRM or sales workflow.
📈 Track these shared pipeline KPIs:
Lead to MQL conversion rate (Is Marketing attracting the right people?)
MQL to SQL rate (Is Sales accepting the leads and seeing potential?)
SQL to Opportunity rate (Is discovery compelling and needs-focused?)
Sales velocity (How fast are deals moving?)
Pipeline coverage ratio (Is there enough pipeline to hit targets?)
Time spent in each stage (Where are we stalling?)
Lost reason tagging accuracy (Are we capturing why people don’t buy?)
💡 Bonus Tip: Use a funnel dashboard (HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Looker Studio) to visualize your conversion rates month over month. Then run monthly or quarterly “funnel friction reviews” to identify stuck points in the journey.
🔍 Once you know where people are dropping off, you can ask:
Is this a messaging issue?
A qualification issue?
A timing or offer mismatch?
A sales process breakdown?
This turns your GTM team into a revenue optimization engine, not just a reporting machine.
3. Align messaging & positioning across channels
You’ve mapped your ICP. You’ve identified where prospects drop off in the funnel. Now it’s time to speak their language — consistently, everywhere.
But here’s the common trap:
Marketing controls LinkedIn, website, advertisign, and CRM campaigns.
Sales controls email.
Product controls onboarding.
CSM controls retention messaging.
That’s a messaging minefield — and it confuses the customer at every stage of the journey.
🎯 First, anchor everything to your ICP
Your messaging should flow directly from the pain points, goals, objections, and language uncovered during your ICP and customer journey research (Step 1).
If you're not tailoring your message to what your ideal buyers actually care about and say, you're just guessing — and your GTM effort becomes noise, not momentum.
🧠 Fix it: Create a shared messaging matrix
Develop a centralized, shared messaging framework that aligns Sales, Marketing, Product, and Customer Success. Start with this basic structure for each persona or segment:
Pain Point - Promise - Proof - Call to Action:
Pain: What are they struggling with?
Promise: What transformation can you help them achieve?
Proof: What makes that believable? (Case studies, stats, social proof)
CTA: What’s the next step?
💡 Pro Tips:
Revisit monthly or quarterly based on sales feedback + campaign performance
Use your matrix to guide website copy, outbound scripts, onboarding emails, LinkedIn posts, even ad creative
This ensures every touchpoint — from first ad to final pitch — reinforces the same positioning and promise, tailored to what your best-fit customers actually want.
4. Build joint playbooks, not just campaigns
Campaigns are short-term. Playbooks scale.
Create shared Sales & Marketing playbooks that include:
Discovery email & call templates
LinkedIn message flows
Content suggestions for each stage
Follow-up cadences with AI-powered personalization
🧰 Bonus: Tools like Notion + Zapier make it easy to build and automate this.
5. Review GTM progress as one team, not in isolation
Stop reviewing pipelines and marketing dashboards in separate meetings.
Set a shared GTM standup or bi-weekly sync with:
Pipeline metrics
Campaign performance
Objection trends
Customer feedback loops
And yes — make this session action-oriented, not just a data parade.
Final thought: Alignment isn’t a one-off — It’s a system
A high-performing GTM engine isn’t built on good intentions — it’s built on tight systems, shared insights, and continuous iteration.
If your sales and marketing teams are still rowing in opposite directions, you’re not just wasting budget — you’re risking product-market fit.
Start with a shared audit. Align the buyer journey. Let AI help. Then scale like the wind’s at your back.
Ready to align and scale?
At Growth Ahoy, we specialize in aligning GTM strategy, sales motion, and marketing execution — powered by automation, AI, and 18+ years of B2B expertise.
🚀 Want a free GTM + AI audit template you can use with your team?
→Grab it here
