Insights

Sales and Marketing, Synced: A Modern Approach to Customer Experience

Sales and marketing are so interrelated that smaller companies often group them into the same department. As the organization scales, though, the divide between the two teams usually grows. Eventually, sales has its own processes and tools, and marketing pursues its own goals in its own ways.

This separation worked in the past — but no longer. As customers increasingly expect a hyperpersonalized experience, departmental silos become a problem. If a prospect shows interest in the company and gets bombarded by discordant communications sent separately from both sales and marketing, they’ll probably look elsewhere.

Here, technology serves as both the challenge and the solution. Disconnected sales and marketing tech stacks hinder true personalization. But finding a way for data to flow between departments opens up a whole new field for realizing wins.

As an added benefit, integrating the technology across marketing and sales brings the people on those teams together, too. This makes it easier to develop both relationships and processes between the departments that better support the customer journey.

Finding the right solution: To centralize or not to centralize

Not so very long ago, thought leaders — particularly in the martech space — almost unanimously advocated for a centralized platform to solve this problem. The Harvard Business Review calls this a digital customer hub, but it can take many forms.

Some companies look to their customer relationship management (CRM) platform — traditionally owned by sales — as the central platform, aiming to push relevant data into marketing systems. Others designate the customer data platform (CDP) — typically owned by marketing — as the central hub, designed to ingest and unify data from across systems before activating it in both sales and marketing channels.

The difference often comes down to where the most complete view of the customer lives and who owns the customer journey. A CRM excels at tracking 1:1 sales interactions, while a CDP is built to aggregate behavioral, transactional, and demographic data for broader segmentation and personalization. Companies need to decide where their priorities lie and which department should spearhead the central platform.

Or they may want to explore a different route altogether. A deep reliance on a single platform can introduce bottlenecks. New tech that could yield wins is off the table if it can’t integrate with that platform. If already integrated solutions don’t deliver the functionality teams need, they might move outside the existing stack architecture. That, in turn, creates even more data disconnection.

In fact, issues like these have led to the rise of headless marketing stacks. This means disconnecting the body (the data) from the head (the presentation layer). Then, APIs enable content to go out from that body to the marketer’s channel of choice.

It doesn’t matter if teams choose a centralized platform or take a more headless approach. In both cases, their goal should be the same: data flow between sales and marketing.

The key to unlocking success: Data flow

In a world where customers expect seamless interaction across any channel, brands need to find what works for them. If identifying a core platform to serve as their digital customer hub won’t interfere with productivity or creativity, their to-do becomes integrating all sales and martech with that platform.

If a single platform can’t meet both the marketing and sales orgs’ needs, the to-do is identifying how data needs to flow back and forth between all of the relevant platforms in both departments’ stacks.

Establishing strong data flow requires buy-in from both sales and marketing. Creating a data committee with stakeholders from both departments can help to identify areas that need attention. Looping in IT, a tech stack consultancy, or other parties with technical prowess then helps to integrate platforms as needed for consistent data flow.

Why integrated customer data matters more than ever

In 2025, customers are willing to hand over personal data in exchange for better experiences from brands. But to turn prospects into customers and retain them, companies need to be good stewards of that data.

Disjointed communications coming from sales and marketing breed distrust and frustration. Today’s customer expects more. By creating data flow between the two departments, organizations set themselves up to meet consumer expectations, winning brand loyalty and driving sales.

And as AI explodes onto the scene, integrated data matters now more than ever. AI tools are only as good as the data on which they’re trained, and poor or disconnected data can lead to generic or inaccurate outputs. Establishing a way for data to flow between tools and departments makes it easier to feed AI the information it needs, giving it a holistic view of the company and its customers.

Of course, all of this is much easier said than done. Breaking down silos and overcoming barriers between marketing and sales takes time and effort. An unbiased third party can help to get everyone to the table and aligned on a path forward.