The silent drift between marketing and sales pipelines

Alignment problems rarely start with conflict.

Marketing and sales often begin perfectly aligned.

The definitions are clear.

Leads move smoothly.

But over time a subtle drift appears.

Marketing optimizes for volume.

Sales optimizes for conversion.

The pipeline grows.

But the quality changes.

Eventually both teams feel something is wrong.

But neither side can clearly see where the shift started.

The system did not break suddenly.

It simply drifted.