Stop Blaming Sales & Marketing—It's Your Org Design

You’ve seen the signs before.

• Marketing celebrates hitting MQL goals while sales struggles to close deals.

• Leads come in, but follow-up is slow—or worse, nonexistent.

• Sales, marketing, and customer success each report into different leaders, working toward different incentives.

And yet, leadership keeps asking: Why aren’t we growing faster?

The truth is, most sales and marketing teams aren’t designed for optimal effectiveness. They’re structured around internal priorities, not how buyers actually engage.

That’s why, no matter how many alignment meetings you hold, the same inefficiencies persist.

The problem isn’t execution—it’s org design.

Here are some common org design mistakes that cause sales and marketing misalignment:

• Conflicting KPIs create competing priorities - Marketing focuses on MQLs, while sales is measured on closed deals. Without shared pipeline and revenue goals, misalignment is inevitable.

• SDRs are disconnected from marketing - When SDRs don’t work closely with marketing, leads slip through the cracks or get ignored altogether. That’s lost pipeline.

• No single owner of revenue performance - If sales, marketing, and customer success report into different leaders with different priorities, no one owns the full revenue funnel.

• Silos between strategy and execution - If sales and marketing plan separately, marketing’s messaging won’t align with how sales actually closes deals.

Sound familiar? If your team struggles with alignment, the issue isn’t the people—it’s the structure.

Take a look at your own organization—are your KPIs driving collaboration or competition?

How the Best Revenue Leaders Structure Sales & Marketing

The most effective revenue leaders design their teams around how buyers actually engage, not outdated internal structures.

Here’s what that looks like:

• A high-impact marketing team - Leading marketing teams cross-train specialists in complementary areas, ensuring seamless execution and stronger collaboration with sales.

• SDRs positioned for maximum impact - Whether they report to sales or marketing, SDRs need to be fully integrated into demand generation strategy—not treated as a separate function.

• Revenue Operations (RevOps) to unify the funnel - Bringing sales, marketing, and customer success under one function ensures accountability to the same revenue goals rather than competing priorities.

• Shared go-to-market planning - Sales and marketing must build strategies together from the start—not hand them off after the fact.

When these structural changes are in place, teams stop working against each other and start working as one revenue engine.

If misalignment keeps showing up in your company, it’s time to look beyond individual execution issues and rethink how your teams are structured.

What’s the biggest org design challenge you’ve seen in sales and marketing?