Sales and marketing teams often disagree about what makes a good lead. Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) may not align. Sales may feel the leads they get from marketing aren’t good enough to convert to paying customers. On the other hand, marketing may feel that sales isn’t delivering conversions even though they’re getting perfectly good leads.
In reality, sales and marketing should work together, much like a football team’s offensive line and running backs. As the O-line, marketing clears the way for sales to charge into the end zone. Bar far too often, finger-pointing and tension have them playing the blame game instead of the same game.
Scott Leese, fractional CRO and GTM advisor with 12 $1 billion+ businesses under his belt, says the answer is to shift away from MQLs and SQLs and toward a unified revenue motion. A unified revenue motion refers to using a single, coordinated approach to power growth, as opposed to trying to do so as separate departments. Using this approach, sales and marketing teams build a single system for generating leads and have the same revenue goals and rewards.
Why MQLs and SQLs Create More Problems Than They Solve
In reality, the MQL vs SQL discussion is a moot point, especially because marketing and sales should be driving towards the same goal line. Also, at their core, both MQL and SQL have the same flaw: they’re volume-driven — instead of results-driven — metrics.
Volumetric goals result in lower-quality leads. As Leese explains, many of the “leads that come through — it’s like JohnDoe@yahoo.com is the email address. Get out of here, man. That is not a lead.”
As in Leese’s example, MQLs often get the brunt of the blame. The marketing team drums up hundreds of leads, sending the sales team to the haystack to look for a few needles that are ready to purchase.
In addition to wasted time and effort, chasing leads in this way also damages trust. Sales doesn’t trust marketing’s judgment when it comes to finding high-quality leads. Marketing, feeling their leads are good enough, starts losing trust in the sales team’s ability to close deals. Sales thinks marketing isn’t creating holes in the defensive line big enough for them to run through. Marketing thinks sales aren’t hitting the gap hard enough or from the right angle.
For example, the marketing team may create a gated eBook that yields the email and business phone number of leads. The eBook is a hit, raking in a hundred leads a month.
But when sales reps call each lead, 90% are duds. They were far higher in the funnel than sales had hoped. While smh-ing, sales builds SQL standards to “improve” marketing’s lead gen. The resulting conflict builds tension while eroding morale.
But sales and marketing alignment can keep your team together. By building a unified revenue motion, sales and marketing can work together as a cohesive unit, scoring stronger leads and racking up revenue wins.
What a Unified Revenue Motion Looks Like
A unified revenue motion involves both sales and marketing having the same goals and creating a single strategy to achieve them. It eliminates the hand-off dynamic, where one team “does its job” then passes the responsibility buck to the other. Instead of thinking in terms of MQL vs SQL, both teams share the responsibility of building an effective pipeline and, as a result, revenue.
Securely, a company that provides K-12 student safety solutions, used unified revenue motion to expand into the South American market. Both sales and marketing worked together to build a marketing campaign that combined email and Twitter (X). The campaign surfaced highly qualified leads, motivated account executives ready to make a purchase.
Securely’s unified revenue motion framework achieved a 5% week-over-week growth rate.
Focusing on business outcomes like those Securely experienced lies at the heart of any unified revenue motion initiative. Aligning around these outcomes takes more than a mutual nod of acknowledgement. Communication is key.
Leese uses the process of choosing effective pain points to illustrate the importance of communication. “In my work with clients, I see marketing fixated on pain point number one. But I’m having conversations with the sales team, and they’re like, ‘Pain point number one doesn’t sell. Nobody cares about that. Everyone cares about pain point number two.”
On the other hand, by working together to design a unified revenue motion, teams can avoid such miscommunications. They decide together which pain points their content should address, as well as other strategic details, combining forces to achieve a common goal.
Compensation and Incentives: Aligning Teams Around One Goal
A shared compensation plan eliminates attribution fights and gets everyone working toward the same goals. It also helps avoid petty, internal competition because compensation only comes after the organization earns more revenue.
As Leese puts it, shared compensation and incentives have a unifying effect on the team. “I’m a huge proponent of everyone getting the same goal. Let’s say we’re supposed to do $10 million this year. That’s our goal. And Joanna and Scorr get comped based on whether or not we hit $10 million. That’s it. Period. It doesn’t matter how we do it. It doesn’t matter what the split is.”
Once the sales and marketing teams are united around the same purpose, it’s time to actually build the framework they’ll use to boost revenue.
Building the Framework: How to Implement a Unified Motion
Once sales and marketing are aligned towards the same goal, building a unified revenue framework is relatively straightforward:
Step 1: Establish Shared Definitions and Metrics
Define the ideal customer profile (ICP) and the criteria you’ll use to vet each lead’s qualifications. Then the VPs of sales and marketing can sign off on each metric.
Step 2: Set Up Regular Joint Meetings and Feedback Loops
Sales and marketing team members can hold daily huddles to report on and reflect on the performance of each campaign. Team leaders can have weekly deep dives to review ways to accelerate toward target metrics.
Step 3: Create Content and Campaigns Tied to Revenue Stages, Not Just Lead Gen
You should create content that helps sales development reps (SDRs) close deals faster. For instance, you can build an ROI calculator that leads can use to quantify the benefits of your organization’s solution.
Step 4: Re-Align Reporting Dashboards to Revenue
Build a single, unified dashboard for all team members. The dashboard should display metrics based on common goals, such as the speed at which new leads make purchases or the average amount each new customer spends.
A straightforward framework creation process doesn’t mean there won’t be any bumps along the way. But by identifying hurdles early, you can prepare to overstep them before they impact your progress.
Roadblocks and How to Overcome Them
The biggest hurdle is cultural, not process-oriented.
Leadership Buy-In
If buy-in from department managers may be an issue, you should get the CEO or CRO to mandate the change. If the head of revenue isn’t fully bought in, the teams will revert to old habits when pressure hits.
Cultural Resistance to Change
To sidestep cultural resistance, you can start with a small, successful pod model consisting of a few account executives, sales reps, and marketers. Use this cohort to prove the model works, then scale your success and celebrate the resulting revenue.
Balancing Short-Term Needs vs. Long-Term Transformation
You prioritize quality over size as you design your unified revenue motion. It’s better to generate 10 high-intent leads than 100 low-intent MQLs, even if it feels slower at first. Quality always drives long-term revenue.
Risk of Over-Reliance on AI Tools
See technology as a lever, not a strategy. Use AI tools to handle the busywork, like lead scoring and initial outreach. At the same time, stress that success requires human touches, such as personalized outreach, genuine discovery, and targeted gifting.
Once you step over these obstacles, your team can use its new playbook to score as a unit.
The Business Impact of True Alignment
When the sales and marketing teams align around a revenue-focused motion, the wins are immediate and deep:
- Faster pipeline movement. No hand-off friction means accounts move quickly, shortening the crucial sales cycle.
- More efficient spend. Marketing only spends the budget on initiatives that directly lead to a high-quality pipeline.
- Higher morale across teams. Sales reps stay longer because they’re working on high-quality accounts, which reduces turnover and increases productivity.
- Better hiring and onboarding decisions. The focus on quality leads to hiring reps who are skilled at value-driven selling rather than just cold-call grinding.
One Team, One Goal
The MQL vs SQL dynamic prevents your team from scoring sales. A unified revenue motion, on the other hand, unites all players, leveraging their creativity and energy towards a single goal: more money.
ClearVoice helps your teams align their strategies with revenue through managed content creation and content strategy sessions.
