Sales and marketing misalignment is one of the most common — and costly — problems in B2B businesses. Marketing generates leads that sales ignores. Sales complains that leads are low quality. Marketing argues that sales doesn’t follow up quickly enough. Meanwhile, revenue suffers.
HubSpot is uniquely well-positioned to solve this problem because it gives both teams a shared platform, shared data, and a shared view of the customer journey. Here’s how to use it to get your teams working together.
Start With a Shared Definition of a Lead
The first and most important step is to agree — between sales and marketing — on what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). These definitions should be specific and based on real data: what does a contact look like when they’re genuinely ready for a sales conversation? Use HubSpot’s lifecycle stage properties to document these definitions and make them visible across both teams.
Use HubSpot Lead Scoring to Create Objective Qualification
Once you’ve agreed on what a qualified lead looks like, build a HubSpot lead scoring model that objectively reflects those criteria. Assign positive scores for desirable characteristics — right job title, right company size, high engagement with your content — and negative scores for disqualifying factors. This creates a shared, objective measure that both teams can trust and removes the subjectivity from the MQL/SQL conversation.
Build Visibility Across Teams
One of the most valuable things you can do is give your marketing team visibility of what happens to the leads they generate after they’re passed to sales. HubSpot makes this straightforward — marketing can see which leads converted to deals, which deals closed, and what revenue resulted from their campaigns. This visibility builds accountability on both sides and gives marketing the feedback they need to improve lead quality over time.
Create a Service Level Agreement (SLA)
An SLA between sales and marketing sets out the commitments each team makes to the other. Marketing commits to delivering a certain volume and quality of leads each month. Sales commits to following up on MQLs within a defined timeframe — typically within 24 hours. HubSpot can be configured to track SLA compliance and flag leads that haven’t been followed up within the agreed timeframe.
Regular Joint Reviews
Technology alone won’t solve misalignment — it takes a commitment from both teams to communicate regularly and honestly. Use HubSpot’s shared dashboards as the basis for a weekly or fortnightly sales and marketing review meeting. Look at the numbers together, discuss what’s working and what isn’t, and make decisions collaboratively. When both teams are working from the same data and talking regularly, alignment follows naturally.
Aligning your sales and marketing teams around HubSpot can dramatically improve your pipeline quality and revenue performance. Get in touch with Big Presence to find out how we can help you make it happen.