Why is there so much conflict between marketing and sales personnel? Many start-ups begin with the premise that marketing is tied closely to sales and neither is paramount. Sometimes marketing drives the product. This atmosphere of mutual respect and deference is healthy, but never seems to last last long as the venture grows or envolves.

Eventually sales targets fall short of expectations. The knives and politics begin between those responible for marketing and those selling the product or service.

If you want to drive Sales & Marketing alignment, shared ownership of the desired outcome (revenue) should be a required element of the measurement objectives.

In doing so, one shifts the culture from one of blame & finger-pointing to one of joint-solution discovery when goals are not being reached. The degree to which you tie revenue versus other goals can be managed through the allocation of incentive and/or compensation dollars attached to each goal.

Sales and Marketing managers need to recognize that the traditional separation of sales and marketing is an artificial division of labor. With the growing influence of the web, e-commerce, CRM, and social media more buying decisions are made based on information gathered prior to a sales meeting. According to many C level sales and marketing executives the fact that more companies are combining the functions at the SVP or VP level is evidence things are changing.

Within the information-gathering and decision-making process for buyers and the overall customer experience, there is no room for a wall between Sales & Marketing. If you want the Sales & Marketing functions to be working together to deliver the best product and service, having certain shared goals is strategically mandatory. Yes, each contributor does different things to achieve the best end results, but those different elements must all work together seamlessly to deliver the experience and revenue results the owners and investors desire