How to Get Your CFO & CMO to Finally Align

The biggest irony in modern business?

SaaS made data easier to track but harder to unify.

The success of SaaS gave every team better tools,
But it also created one of the biggest growth blockers today:

Data silos.

Every team now has they’re own dashboards, its own KPIs, and its own version of the truth.

🚀 Marketing sees a winning campaign.
💰 Finance sees a broken P&L.
🧠 CEO just wants a straight answer.

I’ve heard this conversation too many times:

CMO: Our growth channels are scaling efficiently.
CFO: Then why doesn’t the P&L reflect that?
CEO: Are we going to hit our goals?

This disconnect is one of the biggest blockers to sustainable growth.

Here’s why it keeps happening:

1. No Strategic Alignment
   → Not aligned on the real levers of growth
   → Unclear on short-term vs. long-term targets
   → CMOs often unaware of financial constraints
2. Same KPIs, Different Language
   → ROI means one thing to marketing, another to finance
   → CFO looks at Transactional vs. CMO cares about cohort views
   → Different definitions = different conclusions
3. Different Systems, Different Numbers
   → Each team pulls from their own source of truth
   → Same KPI, different value
   → No one trusts what they didn’t build

It’s not easy to fix the language barrier between CFO & CMO,

But it’s doable.

Start with alignment, not attribution:

✔ Sync Growth & P&L
→ Team data sources need to be 98% aligned across Investment, New Customers, and Revenue.
→ Stick to blended and marginal costs. Don’t break it down by channel.

✔ Standardize Key Metrics
→ Agree on the definitions of the KPIs you both want to look at
→ Use one source of truth across both teams

✔ Spend 90% of Meetings on Strategy, 10% on Data
→ Focus on growth levers, goals, and constraints
→ Data should support the conversation - not derail it

📌 Check out the cheat sheet for a deeper breakdown on how to align both teams.

Follow David Manela on LinkedIn for more posts about real mechanics of growth, data, and execution.