A disconnect between sales and marketing teams can lead to a significant drain on financial performance and growth potential. This friction manifests as wasted resources on ineffective campaigns, lost sales opportunities due to poor lead handoffs, inconsistent customer experiences, and counterproductive finger-pointing between departments.
A stark indicator of this problem is that a staggering 79% of marketing-generated leads never convert into sales, and only a small fraction of salespeople consider the leads they receive from marketing to be of very high quality.
This points directly to a fundamental breakdown in defining, qualifying, and nurturing potential customers. The antidote to this costly division lies in fostering genuine alignment, built upon a foundation of shared goals, transparent data, mutual accountability, and critically, shared metrics.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are jointly owned and tracked serve as the essential glue holding sales and marketing alignment together. They establish a common language and a unified focus on activities that demonstrably contribute to overall company growth, moving beyond siloed departmental objectives.
There are nine key metrics that demand joint ownership from both sales and marketing:
- MQL-to-SQL Conversion Rate
- Key Funnel Stage Conversion Rates (Lead-to-Opportunity and Opportunity-to-Close)
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Sales Cycle Length/Sales Velocity
- Website Engagement and Key Events
- Pipeline Value
- MQL and SQL Monthly Goals
- Average Deal Size
Embracing these shared measures is a necessary step on the road to building a consistent revenue engine.
1. MQL-to-SQL Conversion Rate
This metric measures the percentage of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) that are accepted by the sales team as Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). An MQL is typically defined by marketing based on demographic fit and engagement signals (e.g., downloading content, attending a webinar), while an SQL is an MQL that sales agrees is ready for direct sales outreach. Achieving a meaningful MQL-to-SQL rate requires both teams to formally agree on the definitions of MQL and SQL, often based on the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and buyer personas.
This rate is a primary indicator of the quality of leads marketing is generating and passing to sales, as well as the effectiveness of the handoff process itself. A consistently low rate often signals a disconnect in definitions, inadequate lead nurturing by marketing, or an inefficient qualification process by sales.
2. Key Funnel Stage Conversion Rates (Lead-to-Opportunity & Opportunity-to-Close/Win Rate)
Lead-to-opportunity rate is the percentage of leads that progress to become formally recognized, qualified sales opportunities. This reflects the effectiveness of initial qualification and nurturing efforts in identifying genuine potential deals. Opportunity-to-close rate (also known as the “win rate”) is the percentage of these qualified sales opportunities that ultimately result in a closed-won deal. This is a core measure of sales execution effectiveness.
Tracking these rates provides visibility into the efficiency of the sales funnel, highlighting where prospects are dropping off. While often viewed sequentially, they are highly interdependent. A low lead-to-opportunity rate might indicate poor lead quality from marketing, making it difficult for sales to achieve a high win rate. Conversely, a low win rate despite a healthy flow of opportunities suggests issues in the sales process, potentially wasting good leads generated by marketing. Joint ownership forces recognition of this dynamic and prevents unproductive blame-shifting.
KPIs establish a common language and a unified focus on activities that demonstrably contribute to overall company growth.
3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
CAC represents the total cost incurred by a company to acquire one new customer, calculated over a specific period. It includes all associated sales and marketing expenses. Expenses should cover salaries, commissions, bonuses, tool subscriptions, advertising spend, content creation costs, travel, overhead, etc.
CAC is a critical metric for assessing the financial viability and efficiency of a company’s growth strategy because it helps evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of combined sales and marketing efforts and informs budgeting decisions. A high CAC isn’t just a cost issue; it often points to friction or inefficiency in the joint sales and marketing process — perhaps marketing spends excessively on low-converting channels, or sales cycles are too long and resource-intensive.
4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
CLV (or LTV) is the total projected revenue or net profit that a business anticipates generating from an average customer over the entire duration of their relationship with the company. Sophisticated CLV models incorporate profit margins, discount rates, and churn rates.
This metric provides insight into the long-term profitability and value of customer relationships. It is essential for making strategic decisions about how much to invest in customer acquisition, prioritizing customer retention efforts, and identifying the most valuable customer segments. Owning CLV jointly encourages both sales and marketing to shift focus from solely acquiring new customers to nurturing valuable, long-term relationships, fostering collaboration on retention and expansion strategies.
5. Sales Cycle Length / Sales Velocity
A sales cycle’s length is the average amount of time it takes to close a deal, typically measured from the point of initial contact or lead creation to the final closed-won status. Sales velocity is a complimentary metric that measures the speed at which deals are moving through the sales pipeline and generating revenue. It considers the number of opportunities, the average deal value, the win rate, and the length of the sales cycle.
A shorter sales cycle and higher sales velocity generally lead to faster revenue recognition, improved cash flow, and more accurate forecasting. Hence, these metrics are useful because they help identify bottlenecks within the sales process where deals might be stalling. Sales velocity, in particular, synthesizes multiple key performance factors into a single measure of revenue momentum, arguably making it the ultimate outcome metric reflecting the combined efficiency of the entire marketing and sales engine. Improving it requires optimizing lead quantity, quality, deal value, win rate, and speed, demanding deep collaboration.
6. Website Engagement and Key Events
This dual metric addresses two critical questions: Is your company driving new visitors to the website monthly? And are those visitors taking the necessary actions (key events) that qualify them and demonstrate interest in your services?
High-quality traffic is characterized by meaningful engagement metrics like increased time on site and multiple pageviews per session. Meanwhile, event conversions—such as content downloads, demo requests, or pricing page visits—indicate higher visitor intent. When marketing and sales jointly own these metrics, they can collaboratively optimize for both traffic quality and conversion-focused user journeys, rather than pursuing vanity metrics or raw visitor counts alone.
7. Pipeline Value
Pipeline value measures the total worth of opportunities currently quoted, providing visibility into whether your organization has enough potential business to achieve revenue and net new business goals based on your actual conversion rates.
This metric forces alignment between sales and marketing by creating shared accountability for not just the quantity of leads, but their collective value. When pipeline value falls short of targets, both teams must respond — marketing by generating higher-value opportunities that match the ideal customer profile, and sales by ensuring effective qualification and deal advancement.
8. MQL and SQL Monthly Goals
While conversion rates between stages are crucial, the absolute quantities of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are equally important to identify and track. Establishing and monitoring monthly goals for both metrics creates a clear framework for accountability.
If MQL targets aren’t being met, marketing needs to evaluate and adjust its lead generation strategies. Similarly, if SQL volumes fall short despite adequate MQLs, sales must examine its qualification process. This creates a balanced scorecard approach where neither team can succeed through volume alone without also delivering on quality.
9. Average Deal Size
Average deal size confirms whether your marketing and sales teams are targeting the right prospects and selling the appropriate solutions to achieve new business goals. This metric reveals whether efforts are aligned with the company’s strategic priorities regarding customer segment and product mix.
When marketing and sales jointly own average deal size, campaign targeting, messaging, and sales approaches naturally align toward the most strategically valuable customer segments, preventing the common disconnect where marketing generates leads that don’t match the deal size sales needs to hit targets.
Breaking Silos to Unlock Growth
The journey towards alignment begins with conversation and commitment. Initiate discussions within your organization about adopting these shared metrics. Start small if necessary, perhaps focusing on one or two key areas like lead qualification definitions or overall acquisition efficiency. Build trust through transparency, establish regular communication, invest in integrated technology, and champion a culture where sales and marketing succeed together.
Hanlon helps growing businesses energize their sales team with smart, efficient, and collaborative marketing support and guidance. Ask us today how we can help your organization.