Start with the customer journey, not the departments
Marketing says it is creating enquiries. Sales says the enquiries are not good enough. Both teams can produce a report that supports their position. The business still does not know what needs to change.
For an SME, sales and marketing alignment needs to be more practical than a promise to communicate better. It means agreeing which customers matter, what counts as a useful opportunity, who takes the next action and how the business learns from the outcome.
The MD does not need to referee every lead. The leadership team does need to settle the decisions that neither function can make alone.
Leadership owns the commercial priorities
Start with the growth the business actually wants. More revenue from which customers? In which markets? At what margin, and with what capacity to deliver?
Marketing should not be rewarded for generating demand the business does not want. Sales should not have to guess which opportunities deserve scarce attention. The priorities need to be clear enough to guide both.
Write down the priority customer, the problem the business solves, the offer and the evidence behind it. Include meaningful exclusions: customer types, work or markets the business is not pursuing.
This belongs in the commercial marketing plan, not in a separate document that appears only when the teams disagree.
Define an enquiry before debating its quality
A downloaded report, an event conversation and a request for a proposal are different signals. Treating all three as equivalent leads produces an argument before sales has made a call.
Agree a simple description of the stages that matter in your business. For example: an initial enquiry, a relevant prospect, an active opportunity and a won or lost decision. Use language the people doing the work understand.
Then agree what evidence moves a prospect forward. That could include a relevant need, a fit with the offer, a realistic buying process and a mutually agreed next step. Do not demand information at the first contact that a buyer would only share later.
Marketing owns accurate capture of the information available at the enquiry stage. Sales owns testing the opportunity through a proper conversation. Neither should invent certainty to make the report look cleaner.
Make the handover an operating agreement
A handover is incomplete if it only says that an email will be sent to sales.
Agree who receives the enquiry, who covers an absence, how quickly different types of enquiry should be addressed and where the response is recorded. Choose response expectations that match buyer urgency and actual staffing. An arbitrary promise nobody can meet is not a useful standard.
The marketing team should pass on the source, expressed interest and relevant context. The salesperson should record what happened, the next action and who owns it.
For a prospect who is a good fit but not ready, decide whether sales keeps the relationship or marketing supports longer-term communication. Do not let “not ready” mean “nobody owns it”.
Sales owns progression; marketing supports the decision
Once sales accepts an opportunity, a named salesperson should own the next conversation and its progression. Marketing can help with case studies, useful explanations, comparison material and evidence that answers an objection.
Ask sales which questions repeatedly slow a decision. Then prioritise the material that would genuinely help. Producing another brochure is not the answer if the real issue is an unclear proposition, missing technical information or a proposal that does not explain the value.
Equally, content cannot solve every sales problem. Pricing authority, availability, delivery risk and commercial terms need the right people involved.
A shared plan makes these dependencies visible instead of asking one function to carry a result it cannot control.
Review real opportunities together
A short working review is more useful than two polished presentations. Look at a small selection of won, lost and stalled opportunities. Ask what the customer needed, what persuaded them, what created doubt and whether the business was a good fit.
Record the reason for a lost opportunity as honestly as possible. If the buyer did not explain, mark it as unknown. “Price” should not become a convenient category for every decision the business does not understand.
Use the findings to change targeting, the offer, the supporting evidence or the follow-up process. The purpose is to improve the next decision, not to find a department to blame.
Choose a review rhythm that fits the volume and length of the sales cycle. A business with a handful of substantial opportunities needs different detail from one handling a large flow of short-cycle enquiries.
Measure the journey without claiming false precision
Use a shared view of relevant enquiries, accepted opportunities, progression, wins and the time between meaningful stages. Keep the definitions stable enough to compare periods.
Show the limits of the evidence. A customer may have heard of the business through a referral, read an article and then submitted a form. The form source alone does not explain the whole decision.
The leadership report should connect marketing signals with sales outcomes while being clear about what is known. It should not force every sale into a neat channel claim.
Put the agreement on one page
Before buying another tool, agree these six points:
- The priority customer and commercial outcome.
- The definitions of enquiry and opportunity.
- The named owner at each stage.
- The handover, response and absence-cover expectations.
- The information recorded and the shared review rhythm.
- The person who resolves competing priorities.
A CRM can support that agreement. It cannot make the decisions on your behalf.
If there is no senior owner bringing the plan, suppliers and evidence together, that may be a marketing leadership gap. If that is the issue, start with the commercial problem. The organisation chart can follow.