Marketing Isn’t the Problem—Misalignment Is: Align Teams for Scalable Growth

“We’ve invested in marketing. It didn’t work.”

It’s a sentence I hear often, from founders with visionary platforms, CEOs with aggressive growth targets, and product leads working overtime to ship the next feature. The ambition is there. So is the funding, the team, and the urgency. But the results? Underwhelming.

Campaigns launch but don’t convert. Sales teams chase leads that never close. Product enhancements roll out, yet no one seems to notice. Here’s the hard truth: marketing isn’t broken, alignment is.

When product, marketing, and sales aren’t rowing in the same direction, growth stalls. The message gets muddled, trust erodes, and your most important customer, veterinary teams, walks away confused, uninterested, or unconvinced.

And in a category where traction depends on trust, confusion is the fastest way to lose momentum.

This isn’t a tactical issue. It’s a strategic one.

Global Note: For companies expanding from human health into veterinary markets or scaling across regions, misalignment becomes even more pronounced. Teams may interpret messaging, buyer needs, and go-to-market priorities differently, making alignment not just important, but essential to gaining traction in unfamiliar markets.

Let’s break down where misalignment creeps in, how it derails even the best marketing efforts, and what your team can do starting now to build a unified, trust-building growth engine.

Beyond the Blueprint: Featuring Lisa Remoli Lee

In every edition of Thavma Insights, we feature voices from across the industry—leaders who turn insight into action and strategy into growth.

To deepen this conversation, I reached out to someone I’ve long admired and had the privilege of working with, Lisa Remoli Lee. A former mentor and a strategic commercial leader, Lisa has transformed global organizations across human and animal health. With deep expertise in medical devices, pharma, diagnostics, SaaS, and biotech, she’s led integrated teams spanning sales, marketing, customer experience, product, and digital. Her perspective is sharp and grounded in real-world leadership: without strategic alignment across functions, even the most innovative companies struggle to gain traction.

“A strategy is only as effective as its execution, and simplicity in execution is key. Convoluted strategic priorities hinder alignment across commercial functions. Without alignment, programs, processes, and campaigns fall flat, failing to target the right customer segments and losing competitiveness.

Successful commercial teams bring strategy to life by aligning across sales, marketing, and all enabling functions. Effective campaigns consider the voices of both customers and colleagues. Enabling functions provide these perspectives. At Zoetis, for example, we involve critical functions like digital and data solutions, medical technical services, commercial sales operations, and customer support teams. Finance has a seat at the table to ensure net revenue, pricing and harmonize with strategic priorities. Engaging all these functions upstream and throughout the process is essential to ensuring no details are missed.

Global Alignment

For a global strategy to be effective, it must be localized. It’s a concept we call “glocalization.” Considering the legal and regulatory processes and requirements of every country and market is crucial. As a previous manager of a global diagnostic organization, I can say that global-to-local translation is the most challenging aspect—and the most fun. Gathering multiple inputs and watching teams come together is exciting and rewarding. Global strategies highlight the importance of aligning cross-functionally across diverse markets.

Customer Problem Alignment

Effective alignment requires triangulating market research, internal sales and marketing data, and the voice of the customer. Relying on a single information source often leads to misdiagnosis of a business challenge. Collecting multiple datapoints and customer inputs ensures a comprehensive understanding of customer needs and challenges.”

Misalignment Isn't a Departmental Issue—It’s a Strategic One

When a veterinary technology or service company struggles to grow, it’s tempting to isolate the problem: marketing isn’t generating quality leads, sales can’t close them, or the product isn’t hitting the mark. But these are just surface symptoms. The deeper issue? Strategic misalignment.

When marketing, sales, and product operate from different assumptions about the customer, the result is a fractured customer journey. Each team may be doing great work, but if they’re solving different problems, targeting different personas, or speaking in different voices, growth stalls. Confusion creeps in. And the trust you’ve worked hard to earn? It quietly erodes.

In early-stage veterinary companies, this misalignment is especially damaging. The audience, veterinary professionals, is skeptical by default. They don’t have time to decipher mixed messaging or evaluate solutions that feel inconsistent. If the story you tell in your marketing doesn’t match what sales says, or what the product delivers, credibility takes a hit.

For global teams: These alignment challenges are often magnified during international expansion. As veterinary technology companies enter new regions, differences in market maturity, buyer behavior, and local regulatory requirements can cause further disconnect between product, marketing, and sales if they aren’t aligned from the start.

True alignment starts upstream. It’s not about running more meetings or syncing on tactics. It’s about rallying your team around a shared strategy: a unified view of your customer, your value, and the journey they take to trust you.

Beyond the Blueprint - Lisa Lee Perspective: Audit your team’s assumptions about the customer, value proposition, and success metrics. If they’re not shared across marketing, sales, and product, you’re not aligned—you’re siloed.

“You can’t scale what you haven’t aligned. When every team defines the customer differently or interprets success on their own terms, confusion—not growth—is what spreads.”

Successful commercial teams bring strategy to life by aligning across sales, marketing, and all enabling functions. Effective campaigns consider the voices of both customers and colleagues. Enabling functions provide these perspectives. At Zoetis, for example, we involve critical functions like digital and data solutions, medical technical services, commercial sales operations, and customer support teams. Finance has a seat at the table to ensure net revenue, pricing and harmonize with strategic priorities. Engaging all these functions upstream and throughout the process is essential to ensuring no details are missed.

Global Alignment: For a global strategy to be effective, it must be localized. It’s a concept we call “glocalization.” Considering the legal and regulatory processes and requirements of every country and market is crucial. As a previous manager of a global diagnostic organization, I can say that global-to-local translation is the most challenging aspect—and the most fun. Gathering multiple inputs and watching teams come together is exciting and rewarding. Global strategies highlight the importance of aligning cross-functionally across diverse markets.

Customer Problem Alignment: Effective alignment requires triangulating market research, internal sales and marketing data, and the voice of the customer. Relying on a single information source often leads to misdiagnosis of a business challenge. Collecting multiple datapoints and customer inputs ensures a comprehensive understanding of customer needs and challenges.”

Common Mistake: Each Team Solves a Different Problem

One of the most common pitfalls I see in early-stage veterinary technology companies and B2B veterinary service providers is this: each team is solving a different problem, without a unified go-to-market strategy.

• Marketing is focused on brand awareness and lead generation.

• Sales is targeting conversions and quick revenue wins.

• Product is prioritizing features based on scattered feedback or internal timelines.

Individually, these efforts might look productive. But together, they often create a fragmented and customer experience, especially for veterinary professionals who are short on time and long on skepticism.

What does that look like in practice?

A campaign promotes simplicity. The sales pitch emphasizes hands-on support. But once the veterinary team adopts the product, it’s anything but intuitive and support is limited. That disconnect erodes trust before your solution even has a chance to prove itself.

Misalignment like this creates friction, not traction.

Global Market Entry Amplifies the Risk: This challenge becomes even more complex for global teams entering new markets, such as expanding from human to veterinary health, or launching in North America from Europe. Regional sales teams may focus on different personas or buying dynamics. Messaging that resonates in one market may confuse buyers in another. Without a shared strategy rooted in customer journey mapping, buyer persona clarity, and cross-functional alignment, even experienced global teams’ risk inconsistent messaging, low adoption, and stalled growth.

If your company is scaling internationally or launching into a new vertical, ask: Are all teams solving the same problem, for the same customer, at the same stage of the journey?

Beyond the Blueprint - Lisa Lee Perspective: Before launching your next campaign or product feature, align cross-functional teams on the same customer problem, persona, and desired outcome. This shared lens prevents fragmentation.

“Too often, functions operate in parallel but not in partnership. Solving different problems in isolation creates a fractured customer experience. The best teams build shared context first—so every action supports a single, unified journey.”

Implementation: How to Align Teams Around a Unified Go-to-Market Strategy

In early-stage veterinary SaaS companies and B2B veterinary service providers, misalignment between marketing, sales, and product isn’t just a communication issue, it’s a growth blocker. When teams operate without a shared strategy, the customer experience becomes fragmented, and traction stalls.

The solution? Customer journey alignment across all functions, grounded in strategy, not guesswork.

Here’s a proven 3-step process to create strategic alignment and improve go-to-market execution across your organization:

1. Build a Shared Narrative Around Customer Value

Start by developing a unified positioning statement that reflects:

• Who your ideal customer is (based on actual veterinary buyer personas)

• The core problem you're solving for them

• What differentiates your solution in the veterinary market

This step is foundational for go-to-market alignment, especially as your company expands into new regions or verticals.

Global Consideration: If you’re entering new markets, like shifting from human health to veterinary, or expanding from the EU into the U.S., your messaging must reflect local context. Translation is not enough. Global teams must co-create a positioning narrative with market-specific insights to ensure customer relevance and clarity.

2. Map the Veterinary Customer Journey Across Teams

Use a framework like the Marketing Hourglass™ to define each stage of your buyer’s journey from awareness to advocacy and assign clear ownership:

• Marketing leads “Know,” “Like,” and “Trust”

• Sales owns “Try” and “Buy”

• Product and CX teams manage “Repeat” and “Refer”

This shared journey helps eliminate duplication, clarify roles, and ensure every team supports trust-building and customer conversion.

International Tip: For global veterinary SaaS companies, journey mapping is also a localization tool. It helps identify where customer decision-making behaviors differ by market and where brand consistency is non-negotiable.

3. Align Monthly on Strategic Outcomes (Not Just Metrics)

Hold a recurring strategy sync to review progress through the customer journey not just siloed KPIs. Use this time to evaluate:

• Consistency of messaging and customer expectations across touchpoints

• Alignment of marketing, sales, and product efforts to the same journey stage

• Where friction or drop-off is happening, and why

For global veterinary teams, this session should include market-specific insights. Doing so ensures global go-to-market plans reflect real conditions, not assumptions from HQ.

Strategic alignment isn’t just internal housekeeping, it’s a competitive advantage in the veterinary space. When your teams speak the same language, execute with shared intent, and prioritize the full customer journey, you don’t just grow, you build trust that scales across markets.

Beyond the Blueprint - Lisa Lee Perspective: Co-create a customer journey map and assign ownership to each function—ensuring every team knows where they contribute to trust-building and conversion.

“Strategic alignment doesn’t mean uniformity—it means orchestration. From positioning to customer touchpoints, alignment gives every team a role in delivering value. And when that’s done with consistency and local nuance, growth follows.”

Alignment Is Your Growth Engine—Start Building It Today

Strategic alignment isn't just a buzzword, it's the backbone of sustainable growth. When your product, marketing, and sales teams operate from a unified strategy, you create a seamless customer journey that builds trust and drives adoption.

If your organization is experiencing friction, stalled growth, or inconsistent messaging, it's time to reassess your alignment. Whether you're an early-stage veterinary tech startup or a global B2B veterinary service provider, aligning your teams around a shared vision is crucial.

THAVMA INSIGHT: Alignment isn’t an internal exercise—it’s your competitive edge. The most successful companies don’t just build great campaigns or ship solid products, they align every function around a shared strategy, rooted in the customer journey. To drive traction, not just activity, establish a recurring cross-functional strategy review. But don’t just review metrics—evaluate how well each touchpoint builds trust. Ask:

• Who is the customer—really?

• What problem are we solving—together?

• How does every message, feature, and interaction reinforce our value?

When you build upstream alignment across marketing, sales, and product, you unlock more than growth, you build momentum that scales across markets and teams.

“Alignment is a growth multiplier. When strategy, execution, and customer insight move in sync, teams don’t just perform—they accelerate.”— Lisa Lee

Toolkit: Align Teams, Accelerate Growth

To help you put this strategy into action, we’ve created the Thavma Alignment Toolkit, a set of practical, plug-and-play resources to align your marketing, sales, and product teams around a shared strategy. Inside the toolkit:

• Customer Alignment Audit – Identify where assumptions diverge

• Positioning Builder – Craft a unified value narrative

• Veterinary Marketing Hourglass™ – Map the full customer journey

• Monthly Alignment Tracker – Turn strategy into a repeatable rhythm

• Voice of Customer Guide – Triangulate insight from all sides

• BONUS: Alignment Scorecard – Self-assess your strategic cohesion

You can build and manage everything in Google Docs or Notion—whichever your team uses to stay aligned and move fast. Download the Toolkit

Ready to sharpen your strategy? Start here!

Access our free strategy resources and learn more about Thavma Consulting.

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: Fotine A Sotiropoulos | LinkedIn.

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