You Can’t Reach Product Market Fit If Your Teams Aren’t Aligned

Most people think product market fit is something you find by testing product features or chasing growth signals. But in my experience what actually gets you there is alignment. Internal clarity, shared ownership, and a company that behaves like it understands the buyer at every stage. Think about it, to achieve product market fit - that stage at which your buyers care about your product because you've shown you get them - how can you get there if your teams are working in silos?

Product market fit isn’t just a feature checklist, it’s a company-wide signal that your team gets it and your buyer can tell. And nothing disrupts that more than internal misalignment.

I see it all the time: a team that says they’re ready to grow or scale, but the messaging is inconsistent, leaders are running different plays, and every department’s solving for their own version of success. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s that they’re not rowing in the same direction. Everyone's working hard, just on their version of what success looks like. That’s not just frustrating. It’s expensive. And it erodes trust fast.

What You’ll Get From This Post

This isn’t a blog about what to build. It’s about how to build alignment before you scale, so the growth you’re chasing sticks.

You’ll learn:

• What product market fit really means (and how to tell if you're close)

• Where internal misalignment hides, and how it shows up for your buyer

• 6 things you can do right now to start closing the gaps between teams

• Why alignment is your best growth lever (even if you think you just need more pipeline)

  
  

Product Market Fit Starts With the Buyer

Here’s how I explain it: product market fit means your buyer gets your solution, and your solution gets them. They can see the impact. They trust that you understand their world. And they believe you’re building with them in mind.

And Tandeep Sangra said it well in a recent podcast:

“Sales don’t know exactly who we’re targeting. Marketing’s on the same page. Product’s building their own roadmap. Between all of that, we forget the actual goal.”

Exactly.

Product market fit isn’t just about what your product does. It’s about how your whole company shows up for the buyer. The fastest way to lose that buyer’s trust? Disjointed messaging. Different things said through different channels. Features presented without context. Value promised but not delivered. That’s how you end up selling something you love, without getting the traction you need.

The Cost of Misalignment (Even When Sales Are Strong)

There’s a company I worked with that had strong GTM alignment. Sales, marketing, partnerships, customer success, they were all in sync and performing. But product and operations were on their own track. It didn’t look like a problem, until it was. Sales were record-breaking for a few consecutive years, and then the churn caught up.

It started with declining net promoter scores, customers disengaging from newsletters and emails, increased complaints, or conversely fewer customer complaints. All those standard customer health signals that are leading indicators of churn.

And then churn increased, referrals decreased, sales slowed, and morale on the GTM teams dropped too. In short, everything was now headed in the other direction.

Those leaders could have noticed this sooner and course corrected sooner if they hadn't been operating in silos, but that's a story for another day.

It wasn't just internal misalignment, it was the customer-facing communication. The system’s UX confused new users, and what was said on the website didn’t match what clients saw in the product. Even though the sales team hit their goals, the company didn’t grow. Revenue and profit flatlined. Because the product team built what the service team wanted, not what the market wanted. Which is what happens when internal teams aren't sharing information and collaborating.

Worse, the sales team got blamed. Higher quotas, more outbound, and still no change to what mattered most - revenue and profit growth.

When your GTM team sees the potential, but other departments aren’t accountable for growth, it’s not just a misalignment, it’s a morale problem. And good people don’t stick around when they’re set up to lose.

So How Do You Prep for Product-Market Fit?

Here’s how I think about it: you don’t get to scale just because you want to grow. You earn it by building alignment across your company, starting with your buyer.

Here are six ways to start doing that now:

1. Talk to your best clients (not just your biggest)

Start simple: talk to the people who’ve been with you the longest. Who complain the least. Who seem to “get it.”

Ask:

• Why do you keep working with us?

• What do you actually get from the service or system?

• What’s the real-world impact?

You might even uncover clever use cases, ways clients are using the product that you didn’t design for, but that are clearly valuable. That’s a great signal.

And don’t forget your team. Ask them what feedback they’re hearing. What compliments come up most or which clients they love working with and why. You can do all of this in a couple of weeks. No need for a full-blown research project.

If you could clone your favorite client, who would it be? Start there.

2. Have the same conversation with everyone (and compare)

When I’m brought in to assess alignment, I start with the CEO or founder. Then I talk to department leaders and long-tenured, key team members. Not just managers, but anyone who’s influential inside the culture.

I ask the same questions:

• What’s working?

• What’s not?

• What are your goals?

• Where are the friction points?

Then I look for the gaps. And I intentionally use plain language so I can have the same conversation with product, marketing, and support without switching gears. Now I run those notes (anonymized) through an AI model trained on my work to find patterns faster. But even without that, you can do it. Listen closely and you’ll start to hear where alignment is breaking down, where the roadblocks are, and what barriers stand between where you are now and where you want to be.

3. Watch your leadership meetings. Behavior tells the story.

You can learn a lot by watching a meeting from the back of the room.

Who allies with who? Who throws subtle shade? Who brings solutions vs. who brings blame? Misalignment shows up most clearly when things aren’t going well. If a team misses a number and the first reaction is finger-pointing, that’s a bad sign.

One-upsmanship, side conversations, and “that’s not my department” energy are all signs that people aren’t aligned. And they don’t trust the process or each other. You don’t need a new org chart. You need a conversation.

Where I start is simple. If there's a challenge to report, bring 1-2 possible solutions that you can control. In other words, not complaining for the sake of complaining. And not assigning the fix to another team.

4. Build cross-team empathy through shadowing

Most people want to be part of a strong team. No one wants to be the star player on an NFL team that’s going 2–15. One of the most effective things I’ve ever done was walk the customer service team through what it takes to close a deal. They had no idea. They honestly thought people Googled our solution, clicked the website and bought it. And why would they think differently? Without working in sales, most people have no clue what a B2B buying process looks like.

I put together a deck to show people a peek behind the curtain - a day in the life of a salesperson. What I had intended was just to give them an understanding of what the team did. But what came out was much more powerful. After seeing the grind: 40-50 outbound calls daily, multiple system demos, follow-ups, traveling monthly for events, lengthy contract reviews. They had way more empathy for the sales team.

T

his is why every new hire on my GTM teams shadows every other function. And why I recommend doing it again quarterly in high-growth environments. Not a whole training process or program, simply sit on a few calls. Learn what your coworkers deal with. It changes everything.

5. Audit your onboarding like your revenue depends on it

Because it does.

Onboarding is the handoff that proves (or breaks) trust. One of, if not the most critical parts of your process. It's naturally a point of friction in the customer journey - the person they've built the relationship with passes them on to someone else. Onboarding is also the critical step right before you actualize the revenue your team has been working toward - sometimes for months. You can't afford a fumble here.

If a customer hears one thing during the sales process and experiences something totally different after they sign, you’ve got a problem. It spooks them. And it’s hard to recover from that. To be very blunt, they don't assume that the implementation team misspoke or uses different lingo, they assume the salesperson lied to them.

Sales needs to understand what delivery looks like. Delivery needs to know what was promised. And if your CRM notes aren’t capturing that, you’re leaving money on the table.

6. Ask your team if they believe in the growth plan. Then really listen.

Here’s a founder litmus test:

• Do you have a clear goal with a timeline?

• Does your leadership team know it?

• Do they believe it’s realistic?

• And do they know what they’re doing this quarter to get there?

If they’re hemming and hawing, or just nodding but not engaging, that’s misalignment.

You don’t want yes-men. You want honest partners, so give them permission to be real. Have the conversation 1:1. Ask for their truth.

Because if you’re scaling without alignment, you’re building on a cracked foundation.

Sneak Peek:

Recent Revenue Remix guest, Tandeep Sangra, founder of SalesOps 360, explains her take in this sneak peek clip.

Tune in to her episode here, she brings her unique perspectives on product market fit, and why all teams need a sales operations function - whether it's a team or a strategy.

Final Thought: Trust Is the Traction Multiplier

Product market fit isn’t just about what you’ve built. It’s about whether your buyer feels like it was built for them. That kind of trust only happens when your teams are aligned—around your customer, your message, and your mission. If that’s not happening, you’re not broken. But you’re not ready to grow.

Let’s fix that first. Book 15 minutes and I'll give you one actionable tip.

Or start with something smaller:

• Sales and marketing alignment tips here.

• 6 hacks to better organization alignment here.

  
  

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Rise of Us is a practice run by Summer Poletti, specializing in revenue growth: sales, strategic partnerships, customer success, marketing alignment. We generally work with financial services and SaaS companies from $2MM - $20MM ARR and help them plan and execute for their next stage of revenue growth. We concentrate on strategy, coaching, and organizational alignment.