Some CEOs encourage tension between sales and marketing. A more effective model is for the CRO and CMO to build enough trust to handle all disagreements—like lead quality or follow-up—behind closed doors. This prevents a culture of finger-pointing and presents a united front to leadership.

Having a CRO oversee both sales and marketing provides the CEO with a single person accountable for revenue. This structure prevents the common scenario where marketing hits its pipeline goal but sales misses its revenue target. It consolidates ownership of pipeline generation and closing under one leader.

If the board questions a marketing decision you made collaboratively with sales, the most effective response is for the CRO to intervene and publicly defend it. This demonstrates true alignment and shifts the focus from marketing cost to shared business impact.

When a CRO frames business problems as purely top-of-funnel and dominates the CEO's time, the CMO is being set up to fail. The CMO must aggressively seek equal access to the CEO to present a balanced, data-driven view of the entire go-to-market function.

To avoid unproductive, subjective disagreements, the CEO and CRO must center their interactions on shared, objective data. This data-first approach fosters alignment and ensures conversations are focused on performance, not personal opinions.

At Informatica, the CEO made the CMO solely responsible for the company's entire sales pipeline. This shifts marketing's focus from departmental metrics (like MQLs) to the ultimate business outcome, forcing deep alignment with the CRO and sales organization.

To achieve true alignment with sales, product, and finance, marketing leaders should avoid marketing jargon and subjective opinions. Instead, they should ground conversations in objective data about performance, customer experience gaps, or internal capabilities to create a shared, fact-based understanding of challenges.

A controversial but effective organizational structure for B2B firms is to have the Chief Marketing Officer report to the Chief Sales Officer. Since B2B purchasing decisions are primarily sales-led and relationship-based, this hierarchy ensures marketing's activities directly serve sales objectives and contribute meaningfully to closing deals, aligning the entire funnel towards revenue.

The goal isn't just sales and marketing alignment. It's to form a partnership so tight with your CRO that you operate as a single unit, like the journalists Woodward and Bernstein ("Woodstein"). This combined entity can influence the CEO and drive change in a way two separate leaders cannot.