Smarketing
in 90 days
Smarketing isn't a meeting — it's an operating system. The 90-day playbook to install genuine marketing-sales alignment.
Smarketing — the integration of Marketing and Sales — is the most under-implemented operating discipline in Brazilian B2B mid-market. 78% of companies in the R$30M-R$100M range report chronic misalignment (HubSpot 2026), yet most "smarketing initiatives" are actually just monthly status meetings. Real Smarketing in 90 days: shared definitions in week 1, shared rituals from week 2, shared KPIs by month 2, shared accountability by month 3.
What Smarketing actually means (and what it isn't)
Smarketing is not:
- A monthly meeting where Marketing presents to Sales
- A shared CRM
- A "marketing-qualified lead" handoff document
- A tagline ("we're a smarketing organization")
- A team-building offsite
Smarketing is the operational state in which marketing and sales:
- Share a single definition of what a qualified prospect looks like
- Share single sources of truth for pipeline data
- Run shared rituals (war room, customer wins/losses review, joint planning)
- Are measured against the same revenue numbers, not parallel team metrics
- Have clear accountability when handoffs fail
Most B2B mid-market companies in Brazil hit step 1 (sometimes), and skip 2-5. The result is that the teams have a shared vocabulary but separate operating realities. Pipeline volume looks fine. Pipeline conversion is broken.
---
Why most Smarketing initiatives fail
Three failure patterns I've observed in 40+ engagements:
Failure 1: Smarketing as ceremony. A meeting is added to the calendar. Marketing reports MQLs. Sales reports pipeline. Both teams politely listen. Nothing changes. The handoff is still messy. The meeting becomes optional within 6 weeks. Failure 2: Smarketing as bureaucracy. A 14-page Service Level Agreement is drafted between Marketing and Sales. Definitions get over-specified. Approval processes multiply. Both teams now work slower. The SLA gets ignored within 90 days. Failure 3: Smarketing as politics. The CMO and Head of Sales agree publicly that they're aligned. Behind closed doors, each blames the other. The CEO sees both and gets two narratives. Decisions take 3x longer. Energy drains.The 90-day playbook below is designed to avoid all three.
---
Phase 1: Shared definitions (Week 1)
The single highest-leverage activity in installing Smarketing is to lock down three definitions in the first week.
Definition 1: ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Marketing writes a draft. Sales reviews and revises. The CMO and Head of Sales sign the final in a 30-minute meeting on Friday of week 1. The document is one page maximum, with:
- Industry / sub-industry
- Revenue band
- Buyer roles (typically 2-3 named)
- Trigger events that signal the buyer is in market
- Anti-ICP — what we explicitly don't sell to
If Marketing and Sales can't agree on the ICP in 4 hours of dedicated work, the deeper problem is that the company hasn't decided yet. Surface that to the CEO.
Definition 2: MQL → SQL handoff criteria
What converts a Marketing-Qualified Lead into a Sales-Qualified Lead? The answer must be operationally specific:
- BANT, MEDDIC, or proprietary qualification criteria — pick one and use it
- Specific data points required at handoff (job title, company revenue, declared problem, timeline)
- The mechanism of handoff (CRM stage change, Slack notification, calendar invite)
- The SLA on response (most healthy operations: 24 business hours)
- The kickback policy (when sales rejects an MQL, the criteria for sending it back to nurture)
This document is 1 page. If yours is 5 pages, you've over-engineered it.
Definition 3: Closed-lost categorization
The most under-built Smarketing artifact. When a deal loses, sales codes the loss reason from a fixed list:
- No decision (status quo won)
- Lost to direct competitor
- Lost on price
- Lost on capability gap
- Lost on timing (will revisit)
- Lost on internal politics
- Disqualified mid-cycle (was never really ICP)
Marketing reviews this weekly. The pattern of loss reasons is the most valuable strategic input the CMO has access to. If sales is logging "lost to competitor" 60% of the time, marketing has a positioning problem. If "no decision" is 40%, marketing has a urgency-creation problem.
---
Phase 2: Shared rituals (Weeks 2-4)
Ritual 1: The Smarketing weekly war room
Mechanics covered in detail in The Fractional CMO 90-Day Playbook, so here's the compressed version:
- Day/time: Wednesday 10am, fixed
- Duration: 45 minutes hard cap
- Attendees: CMO + Head of Sales + 1 sales rep on rotation + 1 marketing operations person
- Agenda: 10 min metrics, 15 min funnel diagnosis, 10 min pipeline by stage, 10 min next-week priorities
- Output: 1 written summary in 4 hours, sent to CEO and Head of Sales
The CMO chairs the first 8 weeks. By week 9, the chair rotates to Head of Sales. By week 13, the chair rotates between CMO and Head of Sales each week. This rotation is the test of institutional ownership — if the meeting falls apart when the CMO doesn't chair, the alignment isn't real, just performative.
Ritual 2: Wins/losses review (monthly)
Last Friday of each month, 90 minutes, fixed.
Format:
- 3 won deals, presented by the sales rep who closed them. Marketing listens and asks: what messaging worked, what created urgency, what differentiated us
- 3 lost deals, same format. Marketing listens and asks: where did we lose, what's the gap
- 1 customer who won 6+ months ago and is still happy, brief check-in via the CSM
- Output: themes captured in a running document. Marketing strategy adjusted quarterly based on the patterns
Ritual 3: Quarterly joint planning
Two weeks before each quarter starts:
- Marketing presents next-quarter campaigns and target accounts
- Sales presents next-quarter pipeline build plan
- The two are reconciled in the same document
- CFO co-signs the budget allocation
Output: a single 1-page operating plan owned by both teams, signed by CMO + Head of Sales + CFO.
---
Phase 3: Shared KPIs (Weeks 5-8)
By week 5, the operating cadence is in. Now the metrics need to move from parallel ("Marketing has its KPIs, Sales has theirs") to shared.
The 3 Smarketing KPIs
The minimum viable shared metric set:
- Pipeline-influenced revenue — closed-won deals where marketing touched the pipeline at any stage. Both teams own this.
- MQL→Closed-won conversion rate — end-to-end conversion from marketing's first qualified hand-off to revenue. Joint measurement, joint responsibility.
- Cycle time from MQL to SQL — days from marketing handoff to sales-qualified status. Sales drives speed, marketing drives quality.
These three metrics replace the parallel sets ("Marketing reports MQLs, Sales reports pipeline"). Both teams report all three numbers in their weekly updates.
The kickback rate as cultural barometer
A leading indicator of Smarketing health: the kickback rate — % of MQLs that sales rejects and sends back to marketing.
- Below 10%: marketing is sending high-quality leads, OR sales is too lax
- 10-20%: healthy, both teams using the kickback as a quality control mechanism
- 20-35%: definition mismatch or marketing quality problem
- Above 35%: systemic — the operating definition of MQL is broken
The CMO who reports kickback rate weekly to leadership creates institutional honesty. The CMO who hides it is hiding a problem.
---
Phase 4: Shared accountability (Weeks 9-13)
By week 9, the cadence is running and the metrics are in the open. The final step is to install shared accountability — meaning that when Smarketing fails, both teams own it.
The shared compensation question
In the most aligned operations I've worked with, marketing and sales have at least one shared variable comp metric.
Examples:
- A 10-15% bonus pool for the CMO and Head of Sales tied to the same closed-won revenue target
- A team-wide bonus for both departments tied to MQL→Closed conversion
- A quarterly bonus for the joint operating plan being executed on time
This isn't always feasible — many companies have rigid comp structures. But when feasible, it's the single highest-leverage step in making alignment durable.
The "no separate narrative" rule
Once Smarketing is installed, both leaders agree to a discipline: no separate narratives to the CEO.
If marketing has a complaint about sales, it goes to the Smarketing weekly first. If sales has a complaint about marketing, same. The CEO doesn't hear one-sided narratives between meetings.
This is harder than it sounds. It requires real trust between the CMO and Head of Sales. But once it's in place, the CEO stops being the ad-hoc arbiter — which frees up CEO bandwidth and forces the two teams to actually solve their conflicts.
---
What 90-day Smarketing looks like at the end
By day 90, here's the diagnostic:
✅ Single ICP document signed by CMO and Head of Sales — yes/no ✅ MQL→SQL handoff criteria documented and respected — yes/no ✅ Closed-lost categorization in use — yes/no ✅ Weekly war room running for 12+ weeks — yes/no ✅ Wins/losses review running monthly — yes/no ✅ Quarterly joint planning produced for next quarter — yes/no ✅ 3 shared KPIs reported by both teams — yes/no ✅ Kickback rate visible in weekly metrics — yes/no ✅ No "separate narrative" issues escalated to CEO in last 30 days — yes/no ✅ Marketing and Sales leaders have at least one shared comp metric — yes/no
7 of 10: healthy Smarketing 5-6: in install, on track Below 5: still in failure mode 1, 2, or 3 above---
Why this matters more than any single campaign
In Brazilian B2B mid-market in 2026, the gap between top-quartile and bottom-quartile marketing operations isn't budget, isn't tooling, isn't tactics. It's whether marketing and sales are operating as one revenue function.
A company with installed Smarketing converts 18-30% of MQLs to closed-won revenue. A company without converts 6-12%. Same budget, same team, 2-3x revenue difference.
The CMO who installs Smarketing is creating durable revenue lift. The CMO who runs better campaigns without installing Smarketing is optimizing a leaky bucket.
---
FAQ
What's the difference between Smarketing and a sales-marketing alignment meeting?
Smarketing is the operational state in which marketing and sales share single definitions of qualified prospects, share single sources of truth for pipeline data, run shared rituals, are measured against the same revenue numbers, and have clear accountability when handoffs fail. A monthly status meeting where each team reports its parallel metrics is not Smarketing.
What's the most important first step in installing Smarketing?
Lock down three shared definitions in week 1: ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), MQL→SQL handoff criteria, and closed-lost categorization. Each is a 1-page document signed by both the CMO and Head of Sales. If the two leaders can't agree on these in 4 hours of dedicated work, the deeper problem is that the company hasn't decided yet.
How is the Smarketing weekly war room structured?
Wednesday 10am, 45 minutes hard cap. Attendees: CMO + Head of Sales + 1 sales rep on rotation + 1 marketing operations person. Agenda: 10 min metrics review, 15 min funnel diagnosis, 10 min pipeline by stage, 10 min next-week priorities. The CMO chairs the first 8 weeks, then rotates to the Head of Sales by week 9.
What's a healthy MQL kickback rate?
10-20% is healthy — both teams using kickback as a quality control mechanism. Below 10% means marketing is sending high-quality leads (or sales is too lax). Above 35% means the operating definition of MQL is broken.
Marcelo Russo
Fractional CMO and founder of Meu Departamento de Marketing (MDDM) since 2016. 24+ years in B2B marketing across JWT/WPP, XP Investimentos, BRF, Carrefour, Península Participações, BW8 Martech.
Top 100 Marketing Professionals in Brazil 2024 (Revista Cloudez). Author of Marketing Estratégico de Elite. Writes the bi-weekly newsletter "CMO Marcelo Russo on Marketing" on LinkedIn and Substack.
Get the next essay
in your inbox.
"CMO Marcelo Russo on Marketing" — bi-weekly, alternating Tuesdays. One sharp essay on B2B mid-market marketing, fractional CMO economics, and the LatAm operating reality. No fluff, no recycled US frameworks.
Currently read by 31,500+ B2B operators across Brazil and LatAm.
Related insights.
What is a Fractional CMO?
Definition, cost, engagement model, and when not to hire one. The starting point.
Read article → .02 · COMPARATIVEFractional CMO vs marketing agency
When you need a pilot and when you need an engine. The decision tree, side by side.
Read article → .03 · DECISIONALWhen mid-market needs a fractional CMO
Five signals your company is ready for fractional leadership. And three signals you are not.
Read article →
Considering a
fractional CMO?
Limited slots per month. No commitment, no sales deck. You walk me through the situation, I give you an honest read on whether fractional is the right call for your company.