When we started, Marketing and Sales weren't really working together. Sales would send a request by email, the copywriter would draft something, and then she'd have to track down the salesperson for feedback.
Meanwhile, the rest of the marketing team was spread across fractional roles, agencies, and contractors. Work was moving through different people, systems, and conversations.
Nothing was intentionally broken. But there was no shared system for getting work done. The problem wasn't communication—it was the lack of an operating system connecting Marketing and Sales.
We started by making the work visible.
The first problem was simple: nobody had a complete picture of what was happening. Marketing had its projects. Sales had its events, campaigns, and priorities. The two weren't operating from the same view.
We created a shared calendar that brought Marketing and Sales activities into one place. Every campaign, event, webinar, and major activity was connected to a project with the tasks required to execute it.
The calendar stayed current and accessible to Sales, so everyone could see what was happening, what was coming next, and what needed to happen to support it. Instead of Sales asking, ‘Can you get this done?’ Marketing could see work coming, plan around it, and make dependencies visible.
Then we changed where the work happened.
The calendar solved visibility. It didn't solve communication. So we moved the day-to-day work out of email and built a shared communication platform in Teams with dedicated channels for the campaigns and events Marketing supported for Sales.
Each channel became the home for the work. An event no longer lived across an inbox, spreadsheet, shared drive, and separate conversations. It had one place for event and contact information, logistics, hotel details, portal and registration information, presentation materials, marketing assets, and relevant project information.
Instead of asking, ‘Where is that?’ the team had one place to look.
We also fixed the problem before it reached Marketing.
One persistent breakdown was content requests. Salespeople would ask for something without including everything the copywriter needed, creating a cycle of questions, waiting, and follow-up. It wasn't a people problem; the process was asking the copywriter to extract the information needed to do the work.
We built an intake form directly into the Teams workflow. Sales had to answer a defined set of questions before submitting a request.
Marketing received the information needed to begin the work instead of starting a cycle of clarification. The result was better requests, fewer interruptions, and significantly less work falling into the cracks between teams.
Then we created a feedback loop.
Better systems don't eliminate the need for conversation. They make the conversation more useful. We established weekly Sales and Marketing alignment meetings to create a consistent forum for visibility, feedback, and course correction.
Sales could provide feedback on what was and wasn't working in the field. Marketing could surface upcoming priorities, dependencies, and decisions it needed from Sales. Because the conversation happened every week, issues could be addressed while they were still small instead of becoming recurring points of friction.
The goal wasn't another meeting on the calendar. It was a feedback loop between the people creating the work and the people using it.
The takeaway
We didn't ask Marketing and Sales to communicate better. We built an environment where they could actually work together. Alignment is created by designing the systems, processes, visibility, and feedback loops that make collaboration part of how the organization operates.