Sales and marketing are often called the twin engines of growth, yet in many organizations they operate more like separate silos. Misalignment between these teams isn’t just a cultural frustration – it’s a bottom-line issue. Harvard Business Review estimates that misaligned sales and marketing teams cost companies over $1 trillion per year. Conversely, Forrester research shows that companies with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions achieve 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profitability than those without such cohesion. The stakes are high. To turn rivalry into results, B2B leaders must focus on what actually drives effective sales and marketing team collaboration: a foundation of trust, a shared purpose, and leadership that multiplies (rather than divides) the talents of both teams.

Trust: The Foundation of Teamwork and Alignment

Effective collaboration begins with trust. In Patrick Lencioni’s classic Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the absence of trust is the first and most fundamental pitfall that derails teamwork. When sales and marketing don’t trust each other, team members become reluctant to be open or vulnerable – they avoid sharing concerns or admitting mistakes. This lack of vulnerability leads directly to the next dysfunction: a fear of conflict. Without trust, people tiptoe around tough issues instead of engaging in healthy debate about lead quality, messaging, or strategy. Decisions don’t get fully discussed, and commitment to shared plans falters. From there, it’s a slippery slope: low commitment makes it easy to dodge accountability, and team members retreat to siloed goals – an “inattention to results” that puts personal or departmental wins above collective success.

This toxic cycle is all too familiar in firms where sales and marketing have historically been at odds. The key to breaking it is rebuilding trust through transparency and empathy. Lencioni reminds us that “teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” In practice, this means leaders fostering an environment where salespeople and marketers can air concerns, admit weaknesses, and “air their dirty laundry” without fear of reprisal. For example, marketing can openly share if they’re unsure a campaign will hit its targets, and sales can voice concerns about lead quality – then both sides tackle the issue together rather than in hushed hallway complaints.

Leadership plays a pivotal role here. Liz Wiseman’s research on Multipliers shows that great leaders deliberately empower others by trusting their abilities and judgment. When leaders treat sales and marketing as trusted partners in a joint mission (rather than rival departments), it creates a culture of ownership and initiative instead of finger-pointing. Wiseman found that “Multiplier” leaders get far more discretionary effort from their teams by believing in the intelligence of others – inviting their input and encouraging them to take risks without fear of failure.

In practical terms, a CMO or VP of Sales who acts as a Multiplier will, for instance, include both teams in strategy brainstorms, value their on-the-ground insights, and encourage experiments (even if some fail) in service of learning. This trust-driven empowerment “cultivates a culture of collaboration and creativity” countering the mistrust that often festers between siloed teams.

Enhancing Sales and Marketing Team Collaboration

Even with trust, collaboration can drift if teams lack a unifying purpose. Sales and marketing often have conflicting incentives – one measured on quarterly revenue, the other on lead volume or brand metrics – which can pull them in different directions. The solution is to elevate everyone’s focus to a shared “why” that transcends departmental silos. According to Dave and Wendy Ulrich’s The Why of Work, employees at all levels ultimately seek meaning and purpose, not just money. When both sales and marketing rally around a compelling common purpose – say, delivering an exceptional customer experience or hitting an ambitious revenue target together – it taps into deeper motivation. In fact, Ulrich’s research suggests that leaders who help people see how their work contributes to a broader mission and impact of all stakeholders spark greater commitment and enthusiasm. An aligned sense of purpose turns everyday tasks into a collective crusade.

Practically, this could mean establishing shared goals and KPIs that encourage teamwork. For example, instead of marketing being responsible only for MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and sales only for closed deals, define joint metrics such as pipeline growth, conversion rates, or customer retention that both teams influence and own. As one industry study notes, companies that unify their commercial strategy and engage multiple functions across the customer journey can outperform peers by 50% in revenue growth When everyone’s chasing the same North Star, the old “us vs. them” mindset gives way to an “all of us for the customer” mentality.

Lynda Gratton’s work further reinforces the power of shared purpose and positive energy in cross-functional collaboration. In Glow, Gratton describes how people and teams “ignite latent energy” by formulating exciting, inspiring visions of the future. Leaders should pose big questions that entice both sales and marketing – for instance, “How can we fundamentally change our customer’s experience for the better?”. Co-creating a vision that everyone finds compelling encourages team members to imagine the future together and become excited about being part of it. Gratton also emphasizes crafting meaningful work with others, which in this context could mean collaborative initiatives (like joint account planning sessions or co-created content campaigns) that give both teams a sense of creating value together. When sales and marketing share not only metrics but a meaningful mission, they develop what Gratton calls a “cooperative mindset” – a habit of reaching out to help each other because they genuinely see themselves on the same team. The result is often a virtuous cycle: success shared by one side is celebrated by the other, trust deepens, and the collaborative culture reinforces itself.

Breaking Down Silos: Habits and Structures That Enable Collaboration

Even with trust and a common purpose in place, old habits and structural barriers can still undermine collaboration. One glaring example is information siloing – when each team hoards its insights on customers or market trends. Lynda Gratton warns that organizations where “huge walls” separate groups make it “almost impossible for you to jump over them.” She advocates creating “great pathways between functions” so people can easily tap into colleagues from other departments. In the context of sales and marketing, this means deliberately bridging worlds: encouraging marketers to spend time with sales on customer calls, having sales reps input on marketing content, and sharing data openly. Simple practices like joint weekly meetings or integrated project teams for campaigns can force cross-pollination of ideas. The payoff is fresh perspective – as Gratton notes, when you reach across silos to people with vastly different views, it “dramatically increases your ability to innovate”. A marketer learning from sales’ frontline experience, or a salesperson using insights from marketing’s analytics, can spark solutions neither would develop alone.

Structural alignment is critical as well. Many companies are rethinking org charts to encourage sales-marketing unity – for example, creating a Chief Revenue Officer or Chief Growth Officer role that oversees both functions under one leader. This kind of structural move can formalize shared accountability. It’s telling that 85% of sales and marketing leaders in a LinkedIn/Forrester survey said tighter alignment between their departments represents the greatest opportunity to improve business performance. Some organizations even blend the teams into one “Revenue team” or adopt what’s jokingly dubbed “smarketing,” complete with combined meetings and goal. The specifics will vary, but the principle is clear: remove the barriers (whether separate reporting lines, conflicting dashboards, or even just physical separation) that keep people from working hand-in-glove. As Forrester analysts have observed, what looks like alignment on paper can sometimes be “codependency masquerading as alignment” – one function dominant, the other subservient. True partnership requires an open, ongoing dialogue and clarity on how the teams will work together day to day. Leaders should map out this working dynamic intentionally, defining how leads are handed off, how feedback loops will operate, and how success will be jointly measured.

Data can also be a unifier. When both teams live by the same dashboard of customer-centric KPIs, debates become about facts and impact, not opinions. For instance, if marketing and sales agree on a unified definition of a qualified lead and track it religiously, it eliminates a major source of friction – a Gartner study found 62% of teams define a “qualified lead” differently across sales vs. marketing, underscoring how misalignment can start at the most basic level. By resolving such disconnects and implementing shared definitions and processes, companies set the stage for smoother cooperation.

Leadership that Multiplies Collaboration

Ultimately, cultivating effective sales–marketing collaboration is a leadership challenge. It’s about culture and behavior as much as strategy. Leaders in the C-suite and team leads on the ground must model and reward collaborative behavior. Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers concept is instructive here: Multiplier leaders “thrive on collaboration, recognizing that diverse ideas lead to better solutions”. They purposefully assemble cross-functional teams, blending skills from both sales and marketing, and create an inclusive environment where every voice is valued. Such leaders don’t tolerate the subtle undermining or one-upmanship that sometimes taints sales-marketing interactions; instead, they celebrate joint wins and highlight examples of great teamwork. They also encourage healthy conflict – echoing Lencioni’s point that teams must be “unafraid to air their dirty laundry” in pursuit of the best ideas. A wise leader will, for example, facilitate a candid post-mortem of a failed campaign with both sales and marketing in the room, ensuring lessons are learned collectively rather than finger-pointing in isolation.

Crucially, leaders need to align incentives and rewards to collaboration. If marketers get bonuses only for lead volume and salespeople only for sales, alignment talk will ring hollow. A strategic leader finds ways to tie rewards to shared outcomes (customer acquisition, growth targets, customer satisfaction scores, etc.), sending the signal that winning happens together. They might implement team-based bonuses or at least include some cross-functional metrics in each team’s scorecard. This reduces the “conflicting incentive” trap and encourages peers to help each other succeed.

It’s also important for leaders to check their own assumptions. Research highlighted by Forrester found that 82% of executives believed their sales and marketing were aligned, yet nearly two-thirds of the teams themselves disagreed. This perception gap can be dangerous – leaders might overlook brewing tensions or silo behaviors because on the surface things seem calm. Avoiding open conflict is not the same as true collaboration; in fact, too little friction can indicate that teams have simply given up on working together. Leaders should solicit honest feedback from both sides and be prepared to intervene when misalignment issues emerge. By creating a safe space for open communication and by actively coaching teams to hold each other accountable (another of Lencioni’s pillars), leadership can turn alignment from a buzzword into a daily reality.

Tools That Support Alignment in Practice

Even with strong leadership and a culture of trust, collaboration can falter without the right tools to support day-to-day execution. When teams rely on disconnected systems or manual reporting, insights are delayed, and coordination suffers. Technology, thoughtfully applied, can help bridge these operational gaps. For example, platforms that capture real-time customer interactions—through features like automatic transcription, lead qualification, or shared performance dashboards—can provide both sales and marketing with a clearer picture of what’s happening on the ground. Tools like ZÜMI, designed to make these moments visible across teams, reduce reliance on post-event guesswork and help everyone stay aligned around the same data. In this way, technology reinforces collaboration by turning shared strategy into shared action.

Conclusion: Building the Collaborative Advantage

When sales and marketing genuinely collaborate – grounded in trust, united by purpose, and enabled by deliberate leadership – the results speak for themselves. Higher growth rates, more innovative campaigns, better win rates, and a healthier culture are all attainable. Just as importantly, employees in both functions find greater meaning and less frustration in their work, because they’re no longer pulling against the organizational tide. As Patrick Lencioni famously put it, “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare“. In the context of sales and marketing, this rings especially true. By overcoming structural and behavioral barriers – from conflicting incentives to lack of trust – B2B leaders can unlock that rare advantage.

The path isn’t easy, but it’s clear: build trust, forge shared goals, and lead in a way that multiplies the talents of your sales and marketing teams. Do this, and those teams won’t just align – they’ll thrive together, driving growth that neither could achieve alone.