For years, companies have tried to bridge the divide between Sales and Marketing. Technology promised to help. Shared dashboards, integrated CRMs, and account-based marketing (ABM) were meant to give everyone the same view of the customer.
Yet the data tells a different story.
According to the 2025 Revenue Technology Survey commissioned by YourICP, fewer than 4 in 10 GTM leaders believe their Sales and Marketing teams are perfectly aligned on contact data. On predictive, behavioral, and company data, alignment is even weaker.
In an era of tech abundance, why are we still struggling with the basics?
Alignment doesn’t start with process, it starts with data
When contact records are inconsistent or incomplete, each team interprets reality differently. One might reach out to a former decision-maker. The other might skip a perfectly good lead because the job title field was blank. It’s no surprise that alignment breaks down when the foundation isn’t reliable.
Here’s what the data shows:
Only 37% of teams say predictive analytics is aligned between sales and marketing. That number drops to 32% for contact data, 28% for company data, and just 27% for behavioral data.
That means two-thirds or more of teams are operating with misaligned views on core GTM data.
Even in companies with ABM programs or shared platforms, misalignment persists. Why? Because no software can create alignment if the contact data itself is inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicated.
Misalignment leads to friction, and missed opportunities
When your CRM has multiple versions of the same person, or records with outdated titles, that confusion filters downstream:
- Reps waste time chasing leads that marketing already marked unqualified
- Marketing builds campaigns around incorrect ICP attributes
- Forecasting and attribution models skew from inconsistent firmographics
The result is inefficiency and lost trust between teams.
The fix isn’t more tools. It’s better data.
Instead of adding another ABM plugin or syncing yet another enrichment tool, many GTM leaders are rethinking the foundation: What if our contact data was simply right?
That’s where CleanICP comes in. It’s not just another enrichment product. CleanICP:
- Verifies contacts before they ever reach your CRM
- Eliminates duplicates and fills in key firmographic gaps
- Creates a single source of truth for Sales and Marketing
By starting with a shared, verified dataset, teams stop arguing over accuracy and start focusing on execution.
How aligned is your data?
If you’re not sure whether your data is helping or hurting alignment, CleanICP offers a free, self-serve data hygiene analysis. Upload a sample file, and within minutes you’ll get a full quality report, including:
- Accuracy of key fields
- Duplicate detection
- Deliverability checks
- Recommendations to improve your CRM health
No commitments, no integrations, just a report on the quality of your data.
Get both teams on the same page
Better alignment doesn’t require a full GTM overhaul. It starts with the basics: clean, consistent contact data that everyone can trust.
Try our free data hygiene analysis and see where your contact data stands. If you want to read the full report, you can download it here.