B2B growth expert Scott Addington tears down the decades-old alignment myth about sales and marketing alignment. He explains why token dashboards can fail and how to construct a genuinely unified go-to-market engine.
Alignment is Dead. Long Live Alignment!
Sales and marketing alignment has been on the B2B bingo card since the first marketer discovered PowerPoint. However, here we are, decades later, still talking about it like it’s some kind of revolutionary new idea.
Every CMO worth their salt drops ‘alignment with sales’ into their strategic pillars, as if it’s a silver bullet. But, in reality it’s nothing more than a token gesture. The problem isn’t that alignment is a bad idea per-se. In fact, the problem is that it’s the wrong idea.
The Reality of Modern Alignment
In essence, alignment for most organisations means a series of awkward weekly calls. In these calls, sales complain about lead quality, marketing complain about follow-up, and everyone leaves with a long list of action items that rarely get completed.
Alignment is just a fancy expression for what’s essentially marriage counselling for two departments that fundamentally don’t trust each other. And, no ‘joint pipeline dashboard’ is going to fix that.
All of this in-fighting, finger pointing and general bickering ultimately means we lose focus on the stuff that really matters; delivering value to customers.
The Cycle of the Strategic Pillar
History has a lesson for us here. Specifically, every time a King dies, the Royal Court shout “The King is dead. Long live the King!” (Or Queen, depending on who the successor is.) The point is that system doesn’t change, just the face on the coin.
Alignment projects are exactly the same. Brand new CRO. New CMO. A new slide deck. And, a new strategic pillar.
Same old bull****.
Four Radical Rules for a Unified Go-To-Market Team
So, what do we do instead? Well, perhaps we should stop talking about ‘alignment’ like it’s a quarterly tick-box exercise and start behaving like a unified go-to-market team. Here are a couple of radical (but actually not radical) ideas to help. In no particular order:
One Number, Not Two
Pipeline and revenue targets should be shared, not split. In fact, if you’re still arguing about what’s ‘marketing sourced’ vs. ‘sales sourced,’ congratulations, you’re half the problem.
One Plan
Campaign calendars and account plans should live in the same place. Actually, if marketing doesn’t know what deals sales is chasing, or sales doesn’t know which campaigns are live, you’re not aligned, you’re blind.
One Story
Customers don’t want the campaign version of your story and then a completely different sales deck. Instead, they want consistency. One narrative, told across every touchpoint.
One Language
Stop the departmental jargon bull****. Marketing shouldn’t talk in MQLs, and sales shouldn’t just shout “just give me more leads” at every opportunity. Pick a shared set of stages, metrics, and definitions and stick to them.
Banning the Word Completely
Alignment is dead. Long live alignment! Or better yet, bin the word completely and build the single team that should have existed all along.
For more thoughts on B2B pipeline building, GTM strategy, and buyer behaviour, visit the Bang Average B2B Substack at https://bangaverageb2b.substack.com/
