Let’s break down the real causes behind this issue and how platforms like Bagel’s AI Product Intelligence help companies fix it with minimal effort.
What Is Product–GTM Alignment?
True alignment means your product, marketing, sales, and customer success teams work in sync toward shared customer and revenue goals. When that breaks, the results are messy: confused buyers, stalled deals, and internal blame games.
The “85/85 Alignment Gap”
Here’s a stat that should stop you in your tracks: 85% of teams believe they’re aligned, yet 85% also report misalignment. That’s not just ironic, it’s a silent killer of growth. It’s what we call “Alignment Exhaustion Syndrome” at Bagel: too much effort spent trying to align, not enough spent making decisions.
Why Misalignment Happens
1. Team Silos
- Departments like product, sales, and support work in isolation.
- They use different tools and success metrics, creating inconsistency.
- This results in duplicated work and mixed messages across the buyer journey.
2. Disconnected Insight Loops
- Each team captures feedback differently, leading to fragmented data.
- Critical product gaps go unnoticed or get buried in Slack, Gong, or Zendesk logs.
- Without a single source of truth, decisions rely on hunches.
3. Unclear Decision Ownership
- Lack of role clarity leads to indecision and missed market windows.
- Different teams optimize for different KPIs, causing finger-pointing when goals aren’t met.
The Cost of Misalignment
| Area | Impact |
|---|---|
| Revenue | Lost deals due to ignored customer needs |
| Customer Experience | Confusing handoffs and mixed messaging |
| Employee Morale | Frustration from inefficient workflows |
| Speed to Market | Launch delays and lost competitive advantage |
| Resource Waste | Time wasted on redundant work and wrong priorities |
Misalignment costs the industry $150 billion annually, and 80% of product features go unused.
How to Fix It
1. Break Down Silos
- Form cross-functional pods with shared goals.
- Align around metrics like pipeline velocity instead of function-specific KPIs.
2. Build Connected Insight Loops
- Use AI to surface feedback across your GTM stack.
- Platforms like Bagel’s AI Product Intelligence unify insights from Salesforce, Gong, Jira, and more.
3. Clarify Roles
- Apply frameworks like RACI for product launches and roadmap decisions.
- Ensure teams know who owns what and why.
4. Focus on the Customer Journey
- Center alignment around buyer pain, not internal org charts.
- Co-create customer journey maps that include feedback, feature delivery, and value milestones.
Real-Life Alignment Breakdown
Picture this: Marketing runs a new campaign. Sales isn’t trained on the feature. CS isn’t looped in. The result? Leads bounce. Customers churn. Revenue stalls. This isn’t fiction, it’s happening across GTM teams every day.
What Leaders Can Do Today
- Audit Alignment: Use a quick internal scorecard to find silos.
- Set a North Star Metric: For example, new ARR tied to product launches.
- Consolidate Tools: Adopt a system like Bagel that connects feedback to roadmap decisions automatically.
- Encourage Collaboration: Celebrate cross-functional wins, not just departmental KPIs.
- Review & Iterate: Make realignment a quarterly habit, not a one-off.
The Bagel AI Fix
Bagel’s AI Product Intelligence eliminates the guesswork. It connects GTM insights to the product roadmap in real time directly inside the tools your teams already use. No new dashboards. No extra training. Just actionable context and quantifiable impact.
