The animosity between sales and marketing departments is an age-old corporate trope. Marketing complains that sales doesn't close the leads; sales complains the leads are unqualified.
Attempting to solve this through offsites or weekly alignment meetings addresses the symptom, not the disease. The root cause is almost always structural: conflicting KPIs.
The Compensation Conflict
If marketing is bonused on lead volume, and sales is bonused on closed revenue, the departments are operating in parallel realities. Marketing will inherently lower the qualification barrier to hit their targets, flooding sales with poor quality pipeline, which degrades close rates.
Unified Revenue Operations
True alignment is achieved through shared accountability. Both departments must be evaluated against a unified revenue model. When marketing compensation is tied to pipeline that successfully passes specific qualification gates, the friction dissolves. Both teams are finally pulling the same lever.