What Happens When Marketing and Sales Optimize for Different Metrics

It is the most common civil war in the corporate world. Marketing is measured on generating "Marketing Qualified Leads" (MQLs), so they optimize for volume. Sales is measured on hitting a revenue quota, so they optimize for deal-closability. When these two metrics are not perfectly aligned, you create a system of competing incentives that results in a leaky funnel, wasted budget, and a culture of finger-pointing.

Two charts side-by-side: one for Marketing (MQLs) going up, and one for Sales (Revenue) going down.

The Vicious Cycle of Misalignment

The cycle is predictable and destructive. To hit their MQL goal, Marketing loosens the definition of "qualified." They run broad campaigns that generate a high volume of low-intent leads. These leads are passed to Sales, who quickly discover they are not ready for a sales conversation. The sales team becomes frustrated, starts ignoring marketing leads, and misses their quota. At the end of the quarter, Sales blames Marketing for bad leads, and Marketing blames Sales for not working them hard enough. Both teams hit their individual goals, but the company fails.

The Root of the Problem: The MQL Itself

The MQL is a fundamentally flawed metric. It is subjective, easily gamed, and creates a perverse incentive for marketing to prioritize quantity over quality. A lead that downloaded a whitepaper is not "qualified." They are "interested." There is a massive difference. By treating MQLs as the primary success metric for marketing, you are asking them to deliver the wrong thing.

Stop measuring your marketing team like a lead-generation factory and start measuring them like a revenue-generation partner.

The Solution: A Single, Shared Metric

The only way to fix this is to align both teams around a single, unified goal: **Qualified Pipeline Sourced**. This means that both Marketing and Sales are jointly responsible for the total dollar value of new, qualified sales opportunities created in a given period. A lead is not considered a success until a salesperson has spoken with them and confirmed that they meet the criteria for a real sales opportunity (e.g., they have a real problem you can solve, they are the right person to talk to, etc.).

How This Changes Everything:

• Marketing's Incentive Shifts to Quality: Marketing is no longer rewarded for generating junk leads. They are forced to focus their efforts on attracting prospects who are likely to convert into real pipeline.
• Sales and Marketing Must Collaborate: For the system to work, Sales must provide fast, clear feedback to Marketing on lead quality. Marketing must listen to this feedback to refine their targeting. They are forced to operate as a single, cohesive revenue team.
• The Blame Game Ends: When both teams share the same goal, there is no one else to blame. They succeed or fail together.

Conclusion

The friction between sales and marketing is not a personality problem; it is a metrics problem. By killing the MQL and aligning both teams around the shared goal of creating qualified pipeline, you can eliminate the systemic conflict of interest. You will generate fewer, better leads, your sales team will be more efficient, and your company will finally have a GTM engine where everyone is rowing in the same direction.