In this second of three blogs reporting on who sales and marketing executives believe owns the fix for non-alignment issues, I share responses of those who feel sales and marketing groups should collaborate and work out the challenges together.

Following are the comments from this group—21% of total respondents—along with my suggestion of an accompanying song title.

Sales and marketing share ownership of the fix

“Happy Together”—The Turtles

“The leadership of the marketing department and sales department own the fix. If the CEO has cultivated his team effectively, then he should have great confidence that it will get resolved. If the conflict is directly between the two leaders, the CEO should coach them through a process of resolution. The best marketing and sales departments succeed because of their ability to work through issues. A good CEO, in my opinion, will help nurture the process, but not take on the responsibility for a fix.”

“Shared responsibility between marketing and sales. Each party has a vested interest in making lead generation work, so business rules need to be defined collaboratively.”

“At least there must be an attempt to resolve it. There is nothing decent people can't resolve if your give them some space and time.”

“When sales and marketing are not on the same page, it is important for the heads of both teams to examine the entire lead generation to sales process and agree on the role and responsibility of each team.”

“Both... and they need to fix it together.”

“The two groups need to agree on fact-based metrics, and hold each other accountable for performance. A grownup in each department should suffice without a CEO having to get involved.”

“One respondent noted the following is a typical American response - “The CEO… or get the sales / marketing heads in a room and ask which one of them doesn’t get it.” The writer adds, “How about an Obama style ‘beer’ summit? If there is ever a teachable moment, this is it folks!”

I’ll add that, in rare cases, it is possible for the VP's of both groups to collaborate on sales and marketing alignment, but it usually does not work out this way. The situation in most companies is not solved by a group hug. A friend of mine has an expression: "No one ever built a statue to a committee." It is going to take the CEO or a Senior VP over both functions to fix the lack of alignment in most companies.

The series concludes with the next blog that shares comments from those who feel it’s not the CEO or sales and marketing collaboration but rather a single individual or group that owns the non-alignment fix.

By Dan McDade