Sales Alignment
Joint Calendaring as the Secret SLA
Most marketing-sales SLAs are paper documents that get ignored. The one SLA that always works is a shared calendar.
Most B2B companies have an SLA between marketing and sales. It is documented. It is signed. It is ignored within 90 days because no one operates from it. The SLA that never gets ignored is a shared weekly operational rhythm: a joint calendar of recurring meetings that happen no matter what.
The minimum joint calendar: weekly pipeline review (CMO, CRO, RevOps, SDR lead, 30 minutes), monthly account list review (marketing leads, sales priorities, 60 minutes), quarterly planning (joint goal-setting, budget alignment, 2 hours), and a daily Slack check-in channel where SDRs and demand gen managers triage live.
When these meetings happen consistently, the formal SLA becomes redundant because the operational rhythm carries it. When the meetings get skipped, the formal SLA has no enforcement mechanism and dies. The calendar is the SLA. Everything else is paperwork.
If you are a CMO or CRO trying to fix marketing-sales alignment, do not start with a new SLA document. Start with a four-meeting weekly cadence. Run it for 90 days without fail. The relationship will fix itself. Then write the SLA if you still need it. Most teams discover they do not.