There’s a silent revenue killer lurking in your GTM org

In the best of times…

Your company's hitting its OKRs. Your CMO is humble-bragging about pipeline growth on LinkedIn. Sales is celebrating closed/won deals with Slack GIFs. Your exec team is nodding along to beautiful dashboards in QBRs.

And it's all a mirage.

Because behind those vanity metrics and carefully curated board decks is a silent revenue killer lurking in your GTM org. 

We're talking about GTM misalignment, and it's a $1 trillion problem that's eating companies alive. That's not hyperbole. That's HBR's number, and if anything, they're being conservative.

Let's Get Uncomfortable for a Minute

Here's what's actually happening in your company right now:

• Marketing is celebrating MQL volume while Sales quietly dumps 70% of those "leads" into the trash folder within 48 hours

• Your SDRs maintain shadow qualification systems (probably in Notion) because Marketing's lead scoring is as trustworthy as a sales rep’s forecast in the last week of the quarter.

• Sales is setting customer expectations that Implementation and CS couldn't possibly deliver (but hey, they hit quota!)

• Product is building features nobody asked for while ignoring the ones customers are screaming for

• Your C-suite is watching their beloved metrics (ARR, NRR, GRR, LTV/CAC) look like the stock market the past few weeks while departments perfect the art of finger-pointing

Sound familiar? I thought so.

What This Misalignment Is Costing You (Spoiler: It's A Lot)

This isn't just organizational drama that requires group therapy. It is a profit killer:

• Pipeline wasteland: You're generating "leads" that sales reps wouldn't touch if you paid them extra (and you've tried)

• Budget black hole: Departments duplicate work and invest in redundant tools because nobody trusts anybody else

• Customer whiplash: Your messaging changes so frequently that prospects need neck braces after interacting with your company

• Churn & burn: What the sales deck promised vs. what the product delivers looks like one of those expectation/reality memes

• Talent exodus: Your A-players are slipping out the door faster than budget approvals at the end of Q4. And they’re not doing it because it’s a great job market. They’re tired of the drama.

Which Orgs Are Most Vulnerable?

Enterprise companies: They throw bodies, processes, and 7-figure Salesforce implementations at the problem. It's brute-force alignment that costs a fortune but kind of works. Cog meet wheel.

Tiny startups: Everyone sits at the same table, arguing over the same Figma file, and eating the same DoorDash order. Communication is painful but unavoidable.

Mid-market companies (probably you): You've grown enough to have departments with their own goals, but not enough to afford the enterprise solution. You're caught in alignment purgatory. You’re too big for startup simplicity but too small for brute-force fixes.

The (Brutally Honest) Self-Assessment

Score yourself from 1 (uh-oh) to 5 (totally zen):

1. ICP Clarity: If you locked your Marketing, Sales, and CS leaders in separate rooms and asked them to describe your ideal customer, would their answers match? Score: /5

2. Lead Quality Trust: When Marketing trumpets a new batch of MQLs, does Sales get excited or roll their eyes? Score: /5

3. Messaging Consistency: Could a prospect talk to Marketing in the morning, Sales at lunch, and CS in the afternoon and think they were dealing with the same company? Score: /5

4. Success Metrics: Are departments optimizing for their own vanity metrics or actual company outcomes? Score: /5

5. Handoff Experience: Are your customer handoffs smooth sailing or bumpy like an off-road adventure? Score: /5

6. Reality Gap: How closely does your customer's post-sale experience match what they were promised? Score: /5

7. Collaboration Culture: Do your teams share information freely or hoard it? Score: /5

TOTAL: __/35

Scoring key:

• 28-35: You're doing something right. Or you’re living in a cloud of blissful delusion.

• 21-27: Not terrible, but significant money is still leaking through your misalignment cracks.

• Under 21: Your GTM function is an expensive, well-intentioned disaster. Keep reading.

What Companies Try But Never Work

Here's what doesn't fix misalignment:

• Quarterly off-sites with trust falls

• Yet another Slack channel nobody reads

• A fancy slide deck about "breaking down silos"

• Renaming your departments to sound more collaborative

• Telling everyone to "just communicate better"

Real alignment isn't about feelings or team-building exercises. It's about shared accountability for revenue outcomes. Full stop.

The highest-performing companies I've worked with don't just throw headcount or another MarTech tool at the problem. They build operational bridges between departments that make misalignment nearly impossible.

The Real-World Cost of Doing Nothing

Aberdeen's research is clear: aligned organizations achieve 38% higher win rates and 36% higher customer retention rates.

Every day you let misalignment fester means:

• Marketing dollars evaporating

• Sales opportunities vanishing

• Customer satisfaction plummeting

• A-players updating their resumes

Coming Next Week: The Framework That Actually Works

Next Thursday, I'm sharing the exact framework that's helped mid-market companies increase pipeline velocity by 27%, boost conversion rates by 32%, and improve customer retention by 36%.

No fluff. No theoretical pontificating. Just the tactical playbook for transforming GTM alignment. 

Hot Take of the Week

 Most companies would be better off cutting their MarTech stack in half and investing those savings in better alignment between the GTM teams they already have. Change my mind.

Which misalignment pain point is eating your organization alive right now? Hit reply and let me know. I read every response.

Bye for now

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