A common curse of CMOs: "accountability without authority." More often than we care to admit, companies struggle to recognize marketing's value, as they cannot directly link it to direct ROI, or when they do, it is credited to the sales department. This perspective leads to the belief that marketing is just an ad department, and when budget cuts start, it is inevitably irrelevant 💸. If you ask me, the main problem is a lack of marketing and sales alignment. And this misalignment comes from the lack of an attribution system - identifying who should receive credit for a particular sale. I've witnessed how the marketing and sales teams fight over the credits of a sale based on interactions dating back years: "'Ive met this guy at the conference in 2007, so he should be attributed to me" or "I can attribute that sales to an article one of our interns wrote in 2015." 😥 Doesn't it sound a bit crazy? People dive into years of records trying to find who should get credit for what, and most of the time, that defines the budget allocation. Without proper attribution, understanding, and agreement between departments, any efforts to align them is a lost cause. Funnily enough, this subject is rarely approached. While there is no magic formula to create this unisom between departments, there are multiple commitments both teams should undertake: 👉🏽 Establish clear definitions: This would involve defining what constitutes a marketing-generated lead versus a sales-generated lead.  👉🏽 Take a unified approach: It's not about credit-grabbing but about improving overall company performance 👉🏽 Implement a Lead Attribution Software: Some common software in the market are HubSpot, Google Analytics, Bizible, Marketo, Pardot  👉🏽 Regular Reviews and communication channels between departments: The attribution system should be reviewed and updated based on feedback from both teams and the data collected. As a CMO, are you destined for failure, or is there still a chance for us to demonstrate marketing's true value? 🏆