How MarOps bridges the gap between sales and marketing

This article is based on Megan Harr’s brilliant talk at the MarOps Summit.

Sales and marketing alignment is a challenge many organizations struggle with, but it’s also one of the most impactful areas for growth.

I’m Megan Harr, VP of Demand Generation at Roller, and, having worked globally in both B2B and B2C, I’ve seen firsthand how critical alignment is. According to Marketing Profs, companies with aligned teams see 38% higher sales win rates and 36% higher customer retention.

The gap between sales and marketing is often filled with frustration – sales blames marketing for poor leads, while marketing blames sales for slow follow-ups.

This is where marketing operations (a.k.a. MarOps) comes in. It acts as the bridge that ensures both teams are working toward the same goal: growth.

By focusing on shared KPIs, streamlined processes, and data visibility, marketing ops creates the necessary structure for both teams to collaborate effectively and drive sustainable growth, and I’m here to show you how.

In this article, we’ll explore:

How marketing ops drives sales and marketing alignment
The importance of shared KPIs and pipeline contribution
How to streamline workflows and optimize the sales process
Real-world examples of marketing ops improving revenue growth

Let’s dive in.

The role of marketing ops in aligning sales and marketing

Marketing operations plays a pivotal role in aligning sales and marketing, acting as the central hub that connects these two teams and ensures everything functions smoothly and efficiently.

It's not just about managing campaigns or generating reports – though both are important. The real value lies in creating an environment where sales and marketing can collaborate meaningfully toward common goals.

Without marketing ops, marketing might focus on generating leads without having a clear handoff process, while sales could struggle to convert those leads into deals.

Sales teams may chase opportunities without the insights from marketing about customer behavior and intent, making it harder to close deals.

Marketing ops ensures both teams, despite their different roles, work toward the shared objectives of revenue growth, pipeline efficiency, and customer success.

By standardizing data, automating workflows, and measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter to both teams, marketing ops can drive success.

Research from Marketo backs this up – companies with highly aligned sales and marketing teams are 67% more efficient at closing deals. And who doesn’t want their sales team to close more deals, faster?

That’s where marketing ops comes in, acting as a bridge between teams to ensure everyone works toward unified revenue goals.

The key personas for sales and marketing alignment

So you can see what this looks like in practice, let’s take a peek at some personas.

First, we have Wendy Wins, the go-to-market lead. Wendy ensures alignment across sales, marketing, and ops, providing strategic direction. Marketing ops supports her by offering data and insights that help ensure everyone is working toward the same goal.

Next is Ronnie Revenue, the sales leader. Ronnie relies on marketing ops to prioritize the right leads and to understand which are most likely to convert. With these insights, sales can focus on high-quality leads, boosting their chances of closing deals.

Abby Acquisition, the marketing leader, manages the full customer lifecycle. She uses marketing ops to track performance, automate lead handoffs, and refine her campaigns. This ensures the leads sent to sales are high-quality and ready to convert.

Finally, we have Barry Bridge, the marketing ops person. Barry ensures data flows freely between sales and marketing, automates lead handoffs, and tracks pipeline performance. He keeps the machine running smoothly, making sure the sales and marketing processes are aligned to optimize revenue-driving efforts.

Together, this team exemplifies how cross-functional collaboration, supported by marketing ops, drives higher efficiency, better conversion rates, and ultimately more revenue. It’s not just about individual performance – it's about working together to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

How marketing ops can fix your funnel: A case study

Let me give you a real example from one of the companies I’ve worked with. Sales was frustrated with the leads marketing was sending. We had tons of activity at the top of the funnel, but nothing was closing further down.

When marketing ops stepped in, we identified a clear issue in the handoff process: there was no defined lead scoring model.

Why is this a problem? These are just some of the consequences of not scoring your leads:

Misaligned expectations: Sales expects qualified, ready-to-buy leads, but marketing may send leads that are still in the research phase.
Inefficient use of resources: Sales spends time on unqualified leads, taking focus away from higher-value prospects.
Unclear lead prioritization: Without scoring, marketing doesn’t know which leads need nurturing or which are ready to close.
Lower conversion rates: Sales chasing unqualified leads results in wasted effort and missed opportunities.
Focus on quantity over quality: Marketing pushes more leads into the pipeline, but without scoring, these leads may not be the right fit, skewing metrics and making the process less effective.
Breakdown of trust: Sales doesn’t trust the quality of leads, and teams end up blaming each other when deals aren’t closed.

Putting a lead scoring model in place

To solve the issues we were facing, marketing ops stepped in and implemented a lead scoring model.

This lets us assign points based on specific behaviors – things like attending a webinar, downloading a white paper, or visiting key pages on our site.

For example, a visit to the pricing page signals a much higher level of intent than simply reading a blog post. These behavior-based scores helped us more accurately gauge a lead’s readiness to talk to sales.

Once we tightened up the handoff process and only passed leads above a certain threshold to sales, both teams saw the benefit. Marketing could clearly identify which leads needed more nurturing and route them into appropriate automated funnels. Sales, meanwhile, could focus on high-value prospects already in the pipeline.

Crucially, we built this system collaboratively. Sales helped define what makes a high-quality lead, marketing adjusted nurture strategies accordingly, and ops automated the handoff and prioritization process.

This team effort reduced the finger-pointing and friction that often plagues handoffs.

The result? Frustration levels dropped, close rates went up, and the entire system felt more efficient. We saw a 20% increase in lead-to-opportunity conversion rate and shaved eight days off our sales cycle. That translated to faster revenue generation and a more efficient, aligned team.

Why data and technology matter

So what powers all of this? Data and technology. You can’t align teams – or even identify a misalignment – if you're not looking at the same numbers.

According to LinkedIn’s research, companies that use data-driven insights to align sales and marketing generate up to 208% more revenue than those that don’t.

But here's the catch: sales and marketing often operate in silos, with different reporting structures, KPIs, and leadership. Marketing might track campaign performance, while sales focuses on CRM pipeline metrics. If your data isn’t aligned, your goals probably aren’t either.

That’s where marketing ops becomes essential. It’s the function that ensures both teams have shared visibility into metrics that matter – like lead quality, pipeline health, attribution, and revenue impact.

Whether it’s through shared dashboards in Salesforce or tools like HubSpot or Marketo, MarOps helps everyone speak the same language.

Data transparency in practice: Real-world examples

Let me give you an example of how this works in real life.

At my current organization, we use Salesforce as our single source of truth for all pipeline-related data. This means I, in marketing, have full visibility into where each lead is in the funnel, what stage they’re at, and how quickly sales is or isn’t following up.

When sales reps aren’t logging activity or following up as needed, I’m right there asking them about the blocker, whether it’s an admin issue, and how we can provide extra resources to keep everything in Salesforce clean.

I rely on this data to make informed investment decisions, so keeping it accurate is critical. This level of transparency helps keep both marketing and sales on the same page.

By adding automated systems that gave us better visibility into lead progression, we could see exactly where those leads were in the funnel. We found that many of those leads were still in the research phase – some were just starting their business journey and were far from ready for a sales conversation.

With this information, we adjusted our nurturing sequence, refined our content, and ran more targeted campaigns. This allowed us to nurture those leads over a longer period, increase brand relevance, and, when the time was right, have sales follow up at the optimal moment.

The result? Our conversion rate shot up.

The importance of shared KPIs for sales and marketing alignment

For alignment to truly work, sales and marketing need to have shared KPIs. This is critical for ensuring both teams are working toward the same objectives.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but you have to set the right rules in place to guide the behavior you want to see. I apply this approach both at work and at home with my two young kids.

At work, shared KPIs ensure marketing isn’t just focused on lead volume, and sales isn’t only focused on closing deals. Both teams are held accountable for pipeline growth and revenue.

It’s similar to how I set expectations at home. If I want my kids to clean their rooms, I don’t keep repeating the same request. Instead, I tie it to something they care about, like screen time, and reward them for completing the task on time. That way, they care about the goal and their responsibility for achieving it.

The problem with separate metrics

A common issue across many organizations is that marketing focuses on marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) while sales focuses on closed-won deals.

On the surface, that makes sense – marketing isn't making the calls or sending contracts; they’re generating awareness and creating demand. Sales, on the other hand, is responsible for closing business, which directly ties to their compensation.

However, when these two metrics are considered in isolation, they don’t always tell the full story. That’s why, at my current organization, we’ve shifted to pipeline contribution as a shared KPI.

Both teams are now accountable for how much pipeline they contribute, not just the number of leads or deals. This shift enables both teams to work together to nurture leads through the entire sales process.

Setting up shared KPIs

Setting up shared KPIs isn’t as easy as it sounds – it requires collaboration. Sales and marketing must sit down together to agree on what success looks like. KPIs should reflect the entire buyer journey, so we track metrics like conversion rates, pipeline velocity, and sales response times.

These are the metrics both teams influence and are responsible for improving.

One tactic I’ve used to drive accountability is holding joint KPI reviews. During these reviews, we analyze the entire funnel together – what’s working, what isn’t, and where we can optimize. It’s not about finger-pointing; it’s an exercise in continuous improvement.

The impact of shared KPIs

When we first introduced shared KPIs at one organization, I worried it might create tension. However, something incredible happened.

Once both teams saw that their goals were aligned, collaboration increased dramatically. Sales began giving marketing feedback on lead quality, and marketing adjusted campaigns to focus more on prospect pain points, increase urgency, and emphasize competitive differentiation.

Within six months, we saw a 15% improvement in lead-to-opportunity conversion. Both teams ended up celebrating this shared success, proving that when everyone’s goals are aligned, the results speak for themselves.

How to streamline your workflows for better alignment

One of the biggest pain points I see in sales and marketing alignment is inefficient processes. Streamlining lead handoff processes can improve conversion rates by as much as 30%, and marketing ops plays a crucial role in making that happen.

Marketing ops helps streamline processes by automating lead scoring, handoff notifications, and follow-ups. This ensures that nothing falls through the cracks and that sales engages with leads at just the right time.

At the companies I’ve worked with, we use marketing automation to score leads based on behavior. Once a lead reaches a certain score, it’s automatically routed to sales, along with all the relevant context. Sales gets a real-time notification, and marketing can track how and when sales follows up.

This automation cut our lead response time in half and increased conversion rates by 20%. It also saved both teams hours of manual work each week. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into Salesforce or HubSpot to manually review leads in a campaign due to admin errors or missing reports.

We can’t afford to spend our time doing that kind of manual work – we need that time back to focus on high-value activities.

Before we automated our workflow, leads were getting lost in the handoff. Sales was frustrated because they weren’t getting leads fast enough, and marketing was frustrated because they didn’t know what happened to leads after they were handed off.

By agreeing on a clear process and automating it, we made it clear who was responsible for each step, and the results speak for themselves.

The importance of communication

Now, let’s talk about something that’s often overlooked but absolutely critical: communication.

Marketing and sales can have the best tools and most efficient workflows, but if they aren’t communicating regularly, alignment breaks down. In fact, according to McKinsey, improving communication between teams can increase productivity by 20 to 25%.

Open and consistent communication is the foundation for everything else – data sharing, shared KPIs, and streamlined processes. Without it, misunderstandings fester, and opportunities get missed.

One of the best things I’ve seen implemented in my current role is a weekly go-to-market sync. Every week, sales and marketing come together to review pipeline data, lead quality, and campaign performance.

It’s a short meeting, but it’s incredibly powerful for keeping both teams aligned.

Here are a few more tactics that have worked well for me:

Create shared communication channels: Use tools like Slack or Teams where both sales and marketing can ask quick questions and provide real-time feedback. It’s much more efficient than waiting for a formal meeting.
Invite sales to campaign kickoffs: Sales should have a voice in how campaigns are structured. When they feel invested in the outcome, it boosts collaboration.
Invite marketing to sales reviews: Marketing can gain valuable insights into what’s resonating with prospects and use that feedback to adjust campaigns accordingly.
Hold joint QBRs (quarterly business reviews): These reviews bring both teams together to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how to adjust strategies moving forward.

I remember when I first started inviting sales to campaign kickoffs. At first, it felt a bit awkward – kind of like bringing a guest you just met to a family dinner. But soon, sales began providing insights that completely changed the way we ran campaigns. They offered real-time feedback from prospects that I hadn’t even considered.

Even though I speak with customers and use intent tools, the sales team’s input helped me understand what was resonating and what wasn’t. This led to a 30% increase in our engagement rates.

On the flip side, marketing’s presence at sales reviews helped us understand where leads were getting stuck. Armed with this information, we were able to create campaigns that addressed specific bottlenecks, making the entire process smoother and more effective.

Guidelines for fostering collaboration

Let’s run through a few guidelines for fostering collaboration between sales and marketing. I like to think of these as the "rules of engagement."

Lead with empathy, not ego: There’s no room for ego in these conversations. Leave it at the door.

Your gut is good, but data is better: As a mom, I rely on my gut to make decisions for my family, but at work, I lean heavily on data to guide decisions.

Talk to each other more, not less: Especially when it’s difficult. You won’t solve problems by staying in silos.

Celebrate small wins: Find opportunities to come together and celebrate progress, no matter how small.

Share your challenges openly: It doesn’t help anyone if we only talk about what’s working. Sharing challenges is just as important.

Listen to learn: I’ve found I learn the most from people who challenge me, who have different opinions, and who call me out when something isn’t working. It’s a great way to build trust with your counterparts in sales and foster a collaborative environment.

The role of marketing ops in revenue growth

At the end of the day, everything we’ve discussed boils down to one thing: driving revenue. Shared data, shared KPIs, streamlined processes, and open communication – all of these efforts work together to drive revenue growth.

None of this happens by accident; it’s driven by marketing ops, which ensures every part of the sales and marketing engine works seamlessly together.

From the moment a lead enters the funnel to the moment it becomes a closed-won deal, marketing ops plays a critical role in aligning strategy, goals, and execution.

It ensures the right data is tracked, the right processes are followed, and the right KPIs are measured. When these pieces come together, revenue follows.

Marketing ops driving revenue: A real-life example

Before we wrap up, let me share a quick example of the impact that alignment can have on revenue.

At a previous organization, we struggled with long sales cycles. Leads would come in, but it took months to close them. Marketing and sales weren’t working effectively together, and it showed in our revenue numbers.

When marketing ops stepped in, we overhauled our processes. We tightened up handoff workflows and created a joint KPI structure focused on reducing the sales cycle length.

Within six months, we cut our average sales cycle by 25% and increased revenue by 15%. That’s the power of marketing ops in driving revenue. It’s not just about managing processes; it’s about facilitating collaboration that directly impacts the bottom line.

Final thoughts

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on a topic I’m truly passionate about. I wish you and your colleagues all the best as you work together towards your shared goals!

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