“Alexa, play “Final Countdown” by whoever that ‘80s band was.

Today, I wrap up my 4 part series based on our State of Sales and Marketing Alignment report. 

In each blog, I broke down how to tackle 1 of 4 strategies your team can implement to improve sales and marketing collaboration to drive up revenue. If you need a recap, here are the other 3 blogs:

1. How To Nail Your Target Account List

2. Steal Our Marketing & Sales Meeting Format

3. How to Create Revenue Generating Content Sales Actually Wants to Use

In today’s blog, we’ll break down the 4th and final strategy—how to have lead handoffs so no lead goes to waste.

But first, a hard truth: That gap between marketing and sales? It's actually a cliff your leads fall off:

The Current Scenario: Misaligned & Misunderstood

Here’s the situation: 

Marketing thinks Sales ignores their hard-earned leads. Sales thinks Marketing sends them garbage leads that waste their time.

The reason this is happening: 

There is a breakdown in communication. Sales doesn’t understand where the leads came from, and why they’re considered hot. 

Whether they fundamentally disagree on the lead scoring concept, or they just don’t understand your reasoning, it all nets out the same—a lose-lose scenario.

In order to win, everyone needs to be on the same page. And that starts well before the lead handoff stage.

The MVP Solution: Lead Scoring

A solid lead scoring system is your best weapon against the marketing-sales civil war. And no, this isn't just another thing to add to your tech stack– it's about involving sales in the process, and getting both teams to agree on what makes a lead worth pursuing.

The first step is to build a lead scoring process and find a platform to automatically scores. Make sure it’s set up to mirror your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and break it down into three key elements:

1. Demographics

This is all about the person. Their title, seniority level, and decision-making power. A VP of Marketing at a target account should score higher than a Marketing Manager, even if the Manager downloaded more content.

2. Firmographics

This focuses on the company attributes that matter to your business. Headquarters location, employee size, industry, tech stack – whatever signals tell you this company fits your ICP should increase their score.

3. Behavioral Attributes

What are they actually doing to indicate interest? Are they just downloading a single case study, or are they returning to pricing pages, checking out customer stories, and watching product demos? Behavior often reveals true buying intent—and you can see this from the pages they view. For example, viewing playbooks versus product pages.

Don’t Run The Same Plays

A common mistake? The old, “set it and forget it” mentality. Your messaging, ICP, and product evolves. Your lead scoring system needs to evolve too, unless you want to churn and burn what could have been an ideal prospect.

Regular lead scoring check-ins and optimization equate to faster pipeline growth. A good rule of thumb is to review your lead scoring quarterly; or sooner if your ICP changes.

Create Content That Educates and Resonates 

Good content primes your ICP to buy by letting them know you get them—their pain points, their use cases, and how they can grow.

Your nurture sequences should be filled with content that speaks to them directly, and sets them down a path towards conversion. But just know that content is not consumed in a linear fashion. Touch points happen at random times so the most important thing is to have content that connects. 

Nurture Sequence

In an effort to keep things simple, here’s the way most marketers set up with Lead Scoring:

1. Top of Funnel: Educate them about the problem they're facing

2. Middle of Funnel: Show them how your solution solves that problem

3. Bottom of Funnel: Create triggers that notify BDRs when a lead is heating up

Nurture Scoring

Figure out how to attribute a score to each of the elements listed in the section before (e.g. demographics, firmographics, and behavioral). 

We touched on this above for scoring company roles, but the same methodology should apply for behavioral actions. For example—a lead reading a blog will be scored lower than a lead who views a product page.

Here's an example of Mutiny's lead scoring for reference (and a great guide with a full breakdown):

Last note on lead scoring? And we can’t emphasize this one enough—SCORE YOUR LEADS.

Sending thousands of emails without tracking engagement is marketing malpractice and a complete waste of everyone’s time. 

The Organizational Hot Take: BDRs Should Sit Under Marketing

Here's a spicy take that we follow at Mutiny: BDRs report to marketing, not sales.

Why? Because when all pipeline contributors sit under one department, you create alignment by default. Marketing has direct access to the people who can activate reliable channels, and BDRs can hear firsthand what's happening at the top of the funnel.

Most importantly, this structure holds marketing accountable for actual pipeline generation – not vanity metrics like MQLs or meeting counts.

The Future of Marketing Accountability

We're seeing a major shift in how marketing teams are measured. Two years ago, everyone was chasing MQLs. Today, many marketers are being held accountable for pipeline contribution.

Bottom line? Whatever your organizational structure looks like—sales and marketing MUST work together to define and score leads. That way, there are no surprises at handoff time, just a “let’s go get ‘em” attitude.

Your leads aren't just numbers in a system. They're potential customers on a journey. Make sure both your marketing and sales teams are guides on that journey – not obstacles.

Sales + Marketing = 1 : Won

Here’s the deal—sales and marketing (despite the ongoing drama) want to collaborate. They know how crucial it is to success. They just don’t know how to do it effectively. 

The stats don't lie—aligned teams are 2.3x more likely to crush their numbers.

The root cause is not goal alignment, it’s day-to-day execution. Nailing your targets with the above tactics is the first step to righting the ship. In part 3, we’ll share tips on how to jointly account plan to drive relevant content for your prospects.

If you’re ready for a deep dive, we recently launched an incredible report on The State of Sales And Marketing Alignment that highlights the sales and marketing collaboration crisis and how you can overcome it.