Alignment essentials in 30 seconds
- Misalignment between sales and marketing costs B2B companies over 10% of revenue annually
- Three levers matter: unified metrics, shared attribution, and transparent compensation
- Start with incentive alignment before investing in integration tools
- Expect measurable results in three to six months, not three weeks
Why Growing Brands Hit an Alignment Wall
The pattern I see repeatedly in my work with B2B brands between 50 and 200 employees is this: informal processes that worked brilliantly at 30 people collapse spectacularly at 80. Marketing keeps throwing leads over the wall. Sales says the leads are rubbish. Nobody owns the handoff.
Here is the uncomfortable truth. Most growing companies treat alignment as a technology problem. They invest in HubSpot-Salesforce integrations expecting coordination to follow. Reality hits around month four to six when the dashboards are live but marketing and sales still dispute lead quality. The tools surface the data—they do not resolve conflicting incentives.
The real cost of misalignment: According to RevOps alignment statistics from LLCBuddy, misalignment between sales and marketing processes costs B2B companies more than 10% of revenue per year. That figure compounds as you scale.
In my advisory work across UK mid-market organisations, I consistently encounter the same sequence. Leadership approves a significant integration project. Six months later, the dashboards look impressive. The disputes continue. Why? Because a shared CRM does not mean shared goals. When marketing is measured on MQLs and sales on closed revenue, they will optimise for different outcomes regardless of how beautifully their systems connect.
The organisations that break through this wall share one characteristic: they stop treating alignment as an IT project and start treating it as an incentive redesign. Technology enables alignment. It does not cause it.
The Three Alignment Levers That Actually Work
I always advise starting with compensation alignment before investing in integration tooling. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, but the evidence supports it. According to an Accenture RevOps maturity study, companies where revenue functions are aligned experience 19% higher revenue growth—yet only 6% of software and technology businesses have reached scaling RevOps maturity. The gap is not tools. It is priorities.
Three levers to prioritise now
- Unified revenue metrics
Define a single source of truth for what constitutes qualified pipeline. Not MQLs for marketing and SQLs for sales—one shared definition that both teams own. This sounds simple. It rarely is.
- Shared attribution model
Implement marketing-influenced revenue tracking so both functions see how digital media spend connects to closed deals. Traditional last-touch attribution undervalues marketing contribution and breeds resentment.
- Transparent compensation structures
Give both teams visibility into how deals translate to payouts. When commissions are opaque, disputes multiply. When everyone sees the same numbers, finger-pointing decreases.
The sequence matters. I have seen teams invest months building attribution models only to discover sales ignores the data because it does not affect their commission. Fix incentives first. Data adoption follows.
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Identify misalignment symptoms through pipeline velocity audit -
Map data flows and attribution gaps across CRM and marketing automation -
Design unified revenue metrics with both team leads -
Align compensation structures to shared outcomes -
Iterate based on pipeline velocity data and deal cycle analysis
This timeline assumes leadership buy-in from day one. Without it, add two to three months of internal advocacy. For more context on why compensation software specifically accelerates this process, see this analysis of sales compensation software for alignment.
How Commission Transparency Bridges Marketing and Sales
Commission disputes are not just finance headaches. They are alignment killers. The average annual turnover rate for sales positions sits at approximately 35%—nearly three times the 13% average across all industries, according to sales turnover statistics. Compensation sits at the centre of that attrition.
How one Manchester tech firm resolved pipeline disputes
I worked with Sarah, Head of Marketing at a Manchester-based HR tech firm scaling from 80 to 150 staff post-Series A. Her team generated leads that sales consistently rejected as unqualified. Commission disputes escalated monthly. For three months, leadership treated it as a training problem—more handoff documentation, tighter SLAs, weekly alignment meetings. Nothing changed.
The breakthrough came when we restructured the commission model to include a marketing-influenced revenue component. Sales suddenly cared about attribution accuracy because it affected their payout. Within one quarter, lead acceptance rates increased and the weekly escalation meetings disappeared. Same people, same tools, different incentives.
The pattern is consistent. When commissions are calculated in spreadsheets and shared monthly, disputes proliferate. When compensation platforms provide real-time visibility, disputes fall. Research on compensation automation benefits indicates these platforms reduce disputes by up to 40% through automated calculations and real-time access.
Tools like the Qobra tool for sales compensation address this directly by connecting CRM data to commission calculations in real time. When sales and marketing see the same numbers updating live, the “who gets credit” conversation shifts from accusation to analysis.
Start here before investing in tools: Before purchasing any integration or compensation platform, run a simple test. Ask your sales lead and marketing lead separately: “What percentage of closed revenue was influenced by marketing last quarter?” If the answers differ by more than 15 percentage points, you have an attribution problem that no tool will solve until you agree on definitions.
Your Questions About RevOps Alignment
We are a 60-person company. Is RevOps alignment premature for us?
No—this is precisely when alignment becomes critical. Below 50 employees, informal coordination often works. Above 150, you typically have dedicated operations staff to enforce processes. The 50-150 range is where informal systems break but enterprise infrastructure feels premature. Address alignment now before friction compounds.
Our CRM integration already connects marketing and sales data. Why are we still misaligned?
Data integration is necessary but insufficient. Connected systems show you the same numbers. They do not make those numbers matter equally to both teams. If marketing is bonused on MQLs and sales on closed revenue, they will optimise for different metrics regardless of dashboard visibility. Fix incentive structures first.
How long before we see measurable results from alignment initiatives?
In my experience working with growing UK brands, expect three to six months for observable improvements in pipeline velocity and lead acceptance rates. Quick wins—like reduced commission disputes—often appear within weeks of implementing transparent compensation tracking. Systemic improvements take longer.
Should we hire a dedicated RevOps person first, or fix processes first?
Fix the foundational incentive misalignment before hiring. A RevOps hire into a dysfunctional environment becomes a referee rather than an optimiser. Establish shared metrics and attribution agreement first. Then bring someone in to scale and automate what already works.
What comes next for your revenue operations
Your immediate action list
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This week: Ask sales and marketing leads separately for their estimate of marketing-influenced revenue percentage
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Within 30 days: Document every commission dispute from the past quarter and identify root causes
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Within 60 days: Propose a pilot where one commission component ties to shared attribution metrics
The brands that scale successfully through the messy middle do not wait for perfect systems. They start with incentive alignment, measure what matters jointly, and build technology around processes that already work. The question is not whether you need RevOps alignment. It is whether you address it before or after it costs you your next growth target.