How to Align GTM teams

& proof that alignment is a revenue-driver

I’m coming into March with a clear mind for writing. It’s finally getting warmer here in the Bay Area (I know, I can’t ever complain about “winter”), daylight savings is just 5 days away, and most importantly, White Lotus is back. 🐒

To spotlight my April cohort of Brand for Growth-Stage Leaders (featured in collections by

Emily Kramer from MKT1

and

Kyle Poyar

!), I’m crafting a guest feature for

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged

, which reaches some 65k product and growth leaders across tech. Stay posted!

In today’s post, we get into how brand leaders can drive alignment with their sales and marketing partners. In a similar vein, I’ll be talking with B2B creative agency Shaped By on how to drive alignment with your founder in a talk called Building a Founder-Led Brand. Join us tomorrow, 📅 Wednesday, March 5 (9-10am PT, 12-1pm ET)!

You’re here because you recently subscribed or signed up for one of my resources—my course waitlist on Maven, lightning lesson, or Notion templates.

If someone sent you this post and you’re not subscribed, join those people learning how to tactically advocate for brand at your company. 📬

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The stats don’t lie: misaligned sales and marketing teams are 2x more likely to miss revenue targets, while aligned teams are 2.3x more likely to exceed them. That’s the stark reality revealed in a new study by Mutiny (thanks to the Mutiny team and Rachel Kim, who architected the report, for giving me a preview last week) examining the state of GTM alignment across 500 sales and marketing leaders.

Finally (!), we have hard proof that alignment is a revenue-driver.

But even if you sensed that instinctually, just thinking or assuming you’re aligned is not enough. 70% of the teams Mutiny surveyed believe they’re “mostly or completely aligned” on goals, yet their day-to-day operations tell a totally different story. And this alignment paradox is costing companies actual money and market share.

Having navigated the complex dynamics between brand, marketing, product, and sales teams at companies like Notion, Brex, and Gusto, I’ve seen firsthand how quickly alignment challenges can derail growth strategies (and like every early brand development conversation 🙃). I’ve become weirdly passionate about the critical role alignment plays in your success as a brand leader—it’s why I dedicate an entire module (one out of five) to alignment in my course on Maven.

But I’ve also discovered that brand leaders are uniquely positioned to orchestrate alignment across these functions—serving as the connective tissue between sales, marketing, and product teams.

In this post, I’ll focus specifically on:

• Why GTM misalignment is inevitable during growth (and that’s fine)

• How to diagnose sales and marketing alignment gaps

• Tactical strategies for brand leaders to promote better GTM collaboration

• The role brand strategy plays in alignment & a unified GTM approach

The GTM alignment paradox: Harder than it looks

Despite those 70% of teams believing they’re aligned on goals, a whopping 81% of sales and marketing professionals also admit they fantasize about replacing their counterparts entirely. (Kind of amazing that many people admitted to it.) And 66% report not feeling too positively after cross-functional meetings with their GTM partners. Yeah, things could be better.

It also goes to show that this emotional dimension directly impacts how effectively teams collaborate on revenue-generating activities. It’s not just that teams aren’t aligned—in many cases, they don’t even want to be.

Why growth naturally creates GTM misalignment

Before we get into solutions, here’s my hot take: Some level of misalignment isn’t just inevitable—it’s a byproduct of healthy growth.

When companies are rapidly evolving, launching new products, entering new markets, or responding to a hot competitive landscape (hello, AI), perfect alignment is practically impossible. Every time you ship a new feature, expand to a new audience segment, or refine your positioning based on customer feedback, you create ripples that temporarily disrupt alignment.

Marketing may race ahead with messaging before sales has been fully trained (guilty). Sales might discover objections in the field that marketing hasn't addressed in their materials. Product might launch features that neither team is fully prepared to position or sell. This is normal and healthy during periods of rapid growth when people are working full throttle at all hours and the company doesn’t have a mature process and structure to align fast at scale.

I don’t think we should consider this natural drift evidence of failure at the early stage—it’s a sign that your company is adapting. The problem isn’t temporary misalignment; it’s failing to recognize and address it systematically before it becomes a growth headwind rather than a tailwind.

This is why GTM alignment (let alone brand alignment) isn’t a one-time achievement but an ongoing process. Alignment is never one-and-done. The most successful go-to-market teams don’t aim for perfect alignment. It’s not realistic. It’s nonexistent! Instead, they build mechanisms to regularly recalibrate as they grow, developing organizational muscles that allow them to quickly reorient around shifting priorities.

Diagnosing your GTM alignment gaps

I’ve now worked with dozens of growth-stage companies on brand strategy, and everything (and I mean everything) starts with alignment. In my experience, there are three specific levels of GTM alignment to assess:

1. Strategic alignment

Do your teams agree on fundamental questions like:

• Who are we building for, and who are we selling to?

• What are our key differentiators in sales conversations?

• Which market segments are we prioritizing this quarter?

• What constitutes a qualified lead or opportunity?

According to Mutiny’s research, 82% of both sales and marketing leaders say closing enterprise accounts is a key priority—but only 15% of sellers believe marketing is effective at generating opportunities with these accounts. Very few of those teams, it would seem, have taken the time to ensure they’re on the same page about these questions.

2. Tactical alignment

Even with strategic alignment, tactical disconnects undermine day-to-day execution:

• Are leads being scored and prioritized in the CRM consistently?

• Do content creation priorities match sales enablement needs?

• Is feedback from sales conversations making it back to marketing?

• Are marketing campaigns aligned with sales outreach?

The Mutiny report revealed that “poor communication” ranks as the second biggest challenge for sales teams working with marketing (honestly, I feel like marketing would probably say the same thing). But this isn’t about needing more meetings—it’s about creating structured information flows (sync & sync) that bridge the alignment gap and ensure both teams are working from the same playbook.

3. Cultural alignment

And what I’d guess is the most overlooked dimension—cultural alignment:

• Do GTM teams respect each other’s expertise and contributions?

• Is there psychological safety to voice concerns across departments?

• Are wins celebrated collectively rather than competitively?

• Does leadership reinforce collaboration rather than siloing?

Yap all you want about “building sports teams” and “revenue machines,” but this data proves that the cultural, emotional dimension, just like the strategic, tactical ones, directly impacts how effectively sales and marketing teams collaborate on the activities that are revenue-generating.

How brand leaders can bridge the GTM divide

Brand leaders, as I said, are uniquely positioned to solve these alignment challenges. With visibility across marketing channels, sales narratives, and product positioning, who could be better suited to serve as the orchestrators of a cohesive GTM approach?

That’s why one of the most powerful tools for solving GTM alignment issues is a well-defined brand strategy that sales and marketing teams can jointly feel ownership over, one that clearly answers all of those questions laid out in the strategic alignment section above. When both teams operate from a shared understanding of who you’re for, what you stand for, and why you’re different—and you have actively confirmed your alignment on those pieces—many daily frictions dissolve.

This is why I’m such a proponent of creating a corporate strategy summary or some version of this that serves as a single source of truth for GTM teams. When sales and marketing can reference the same resource to guide their decisions, you eliminate more of the “telephone” effect where messages morph wildly as they move between departments.

And the Mutiny research supports this approach, showing that aligned GTM teams make specific investments in:

• Joint account planning

• Shared intelligence on buyer needs

• Collaborative content development

• Clear lead qualification criteria

• Transparent sales/marketing handoff processes

When brand leaders help implement these practices within a consistent brand framework, they create the conditions for both sales and marketing to succeed together.

Concrete steps toward better alignment

Based on Mutiny’s research and my own experience building cross-functional alignment, here are four even more actionable steps brand leaders can take:

1. Nail your target accounts together

If it’s applicable to your growth motion, start by developing a joint account targeting framework where both sales and marketing contribute criteria and agree on a tiered approach. At Notion, we created a shared persona document that very specifically defined our enterprise ICP and aligned our ABM strategy accordingly. Too many teams just make assumptions here or rely entirely on meetings for alignment—but this is a relatively simple step to eliminate countless arguments about where to focus resources.

2. Create structured communication flows

This isn’t about having more meetings (please no)—it’s about creating efficient ways to exchange info:

• Weekly revenue team syncs (or asyncs) focused on specific accounts

• Shared Slack channels for collaboration and more visibility into prospect feedback, brainstorming objection handling, and hearing feedback on what sales enablement is most effective

• Joint access to customer feedback and conversation intelligence

• Regular ride-alongs where marketers join sales calls or client pitches (my favorite way to get insight)

3. Design collaborative buying experiences

Make your planning sessions more effective by bringing teams together where:

• Sales shares objections they’re hearing in the field

• Marketing brings insights from research and campaigns

• Together, you map content to specific buyer journey stages

• Both teams contribute to your account-based campaigns/ABM strategies

According to the Mutiny report, joint account planning and more relevant content are the two things that would make sellers trust marketing more!

4. Improve lead handoffs

Mutiny’s research also showed that both teams want the same things: better lead quality and better follow-up. So the more transparency, the better:

• Clearly documented qualification criteria

• Scoring methods that both teams understand and agree on

• Regular calibration sessions to review edge cases

• Feedback loops on lead disposition

These tactical GTM alignment issues might seem outside a brand leader’s typical domain, but I’d argue they’re actually central to our role. The #1 job of any brand leader is to drive alignment—and here’s concrete proof that the alignment you drive can have a 2.3x impact on your company’s revenue targets. When executives question the ROI of brand work, this is exactly the kind of data that demonstrates how brand leadership directly contributes to business outcomes.

GTM alignment as a competitive advantage

As GTM motions become increasingly complex and buyer journeys less linear, the companies that solve the alignment paradox upfront gain a significant competitive advantage. The data quantifies what I and so many of us have experienced: misalignment costs real money, while true collaboration drives outsized returns.

We also have to recognize that alignment isn’t a ~destination.~ It’s an ongoing process (forever, sorry) that requires intentional maintenance, especially during periods of growth. Brand leaders can be the driving force behind this alignment, creating not just external consistency through a strong identity and brand governance, but fostering the internal GTM alignment that makes that external consistency possible. 🧘‍♀️

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There’s so much to dive into on the topic of alignment: diagnosing alignment gaps across your org, the (perceived) brand/product gap, techniques for understanding your stakeholders, and templates for creating alignment among your teams. You’ll hear more from me on this—stay tuned!

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Thanks for reading.

If you liked what you read, consider:

• connecting with me on LinkedIn: Kira Klaas 👩🏼‍💻

• commenting with a question or topic you’d like to see next

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