Shutterstock What is more important to your organization: marketing generating a high volume of sales leads or sales closing a higher percentage of leads? Are they mutually exclusive? I don't think they are, and I don't think they are the right questions to be asking either -- they are putting the cart before the horse. For marketing and sales to be truly effective, they first must be fully aligned on what they need from each other. There are many ways to look at this challenge, but I will focus on one situation that I have seen dozens of times at companies that I have worked for or worked with as a consultant. The biggest and most common challenge is when marketing and sales do not work together. At too many companies, sales and marketing departments simply do not communicate or know what the other team is doing. Why is this a problem? When these two groups are not working in sync, many problems can arise. For example, when these groups are not communicating w...