How to Build Fintech Sales and Marketing Teams That Drive Revenue

Rapid growth is the norm for most fintechs, but that pace leaves little room for avoidable setbacks. While product gaps and funding delays are part of the territory, misalignment between sales and marketing is both preventable and costly. It leads to missed opportunities, inconsistent messaging, and barriers to revenue growth. 

Whether you’re building a go-to-market engine for an emerging fintech company, exploring fintech investment, or asking how to start a fintech company, alignment is critical. Getting it right starts with hiring. Often, it means partnering with a fintech recruitment agency that understands what good looks like.

This blog breaks down what’s going wrong and, more importantly, how to fix it. We’ll cover common blockers to alignment and what smart hiring looks like if you want to compete with top fintech companies.

Why Do Sales and Marketing Teams Struggle to Align in Fintech?

Misalignment between sales and marketing is costly in emerging fintech companies. It can fragment the customer experience and slow decision-making at critical stages of the buyer journey. But most importantly, it can slow business growth.

Three major issues drive this:

• Different KPIs and reporting lines: Sales teams are often measured on short-term revenue targets, while marketing is tasked with long-term brand growth and lead volume. This disconnect leads to siloed priorities and limited collaboration.
• Tool and data silos: When CRM systems don’t talk to marketing automation tools, teams end up working from different data sets. This makes it harder to track attribution and improve conversion rates, two fundamentals of successful fintech marketing strategies.
• Product innovation outpacing messaging: Many top fintech companies launch new features quickly, but marketing teams often struggle to keep pace. When go-to-market messaging lags behind, it leaves sales teams underprepared and prospects underinformed.

These challenges aren’t unique to fintech, but the complexity and competitive pressure of the sector amplify them. Building alignment early is essential, particularly if you’re exploring how to start a fintech company or scale fast in response to fresh fintech investment.

A shared revenue model, connected systems, and regular feedback loops between teams are the foundation. But it all starts with the right hires. People who can work cross-functionally and bring clarity to both performance and purpose.

When Sales and Marketing Disconnect, Growth Slows

Fintech growth is unforgiving. One quarter of missed targets can put pressure on funding, product timelines, and market position. When sales and marketing are out of sync, that pressure turns into lost deals, weaker pipelines, and a brand that’s harder to trust. The problem is rarely a lack of talent or ambition. More often, it comes from a lack of shared focus and process.

Lost revenue and slower deal cycles

Without an agreed definition of the ideal customer and the stages of the funnel, lead quality drops. Marketing may pass prospects who are not ready to buy, while sales spends time chasing accounts that will never convert. This drags out deal cycles and makes pipeline results harder to predict.

Inconsistent messaging and weaker trust

If sales and marketing are not aligned, the story changes depending on who is telling it. In fintech, where every conversation is built on credibility, that inconsistency is costly. Mixed messages across campaigns, sales calls and digital channels erode customer confidence.

The measurable impact on performance

The data is clear. Companies with strong sales and marketing alignment see 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher win rates. Wheelhouse Advisors reports that marketing-generated revenue can increase by more than 200% when the two functions work as one.

Why it matters now

Fintech companies aiming to lead their market cannot afford the drag caused by misalignment. Building credibility takes time, but it is easily undone when internal teams are not coordinated. Alignment is not a one-off plan. It is a daily discipline led by people who understand both the commercial pressures and the culture of the business.

Roles That Close the Sales–Marketing Gap

Achieving alignment starts with having the right people in place. When the roles are clear and the talent fits, those people build the workflows, shared targets and feedback loops that turn alignment from an idea into measurable revenue.

Here are five critical roles that help emerging fintech companies break silos and accelerate growth:

• Growth Marketing Manager: Owns the top of the funnel and performance metrics. Knows how to test, iterate, and align demand gen with the sales pipeline.
• Content Strategist: Turns product features into buyer-centric messaging. Collaborates with product and sales to ensure every asset serves a commercial goal. Essential in shaping strong fintech marketing strategies.
• Sales Development Representative (SDR): Qualifies leads, books meetings, and feeds insights back into marketing. A well-trained SDR is often the first signal that sales-marketing collaboration is working.
• Business Development Manager (BDM): Closes the loop between relationship-building and revenue. Great BDMs don’t just close deals — they help refine messaging, identify new segments, and inform campaign targeting.
• Revenue Operations (RevOps) Manager: Integrates tools, data, and reporting across functions. Builds the dashboards and automation needed to scale.

Each of these roles supports alignment in a unique way and each needs different traits, incentives, and onboarding processes. A generalist hire with no fintech experience will slow your progress.

If you’re serious about growth, partner with a dedicated fintech recruitment agency that understands the talent profile for commercial success. Our Fintech Recruitment solutions are built around functional expertise and proven outcomes.

Whether you’re expanding GTM capabilities, entering new markets, or hiring for the first time, structure matters. So does speed. That’s why working with a specialist hiring partner is critical.

How Do You Hire the Right People to Unite Sales and Marketing?

Once you’ve defined the roles that drive alignment, the next step is hiring the right people, and knowing what to look for makes all the difference when it comes to fintech recruitment.

1. Traits to hire for:

• Growth Marketing Managers need analytical mindset and channel fluency.
• SDRs should be resilient, curious, and coachable.
• BDMs must combine product knowledge with commercial drive.
• Content Strategists should translate complex fintech concepts into plain, compelling messaging.
• RevOps Managers must think systems-first and simplify what others overcomplicate.

2. Mistakes to avoid:

• Hiring generalists with no sector experience: Fintech has its own language.
• Misaligned compensation: Bonus models must support shared success.
• Poor onboarding: Early missteps can set teams back quarters.

3. How to avoid them:

• Define clear scope and KPIs for each role.
• Use a fintech recruitment agency that understands commercial hiring.
• Prioritise candidates who’ve worked across GTM functions.

If you’re not sure where to start, we help companies like yours define, scope, and hire for growth-critical roles every day.

Want to stand out as a destination employer for hiring for fintech marketing and sales? Make sure your job specs reflect your mission, your team structure, and how you support cross-functional success.

And if you're looking to grow your team with speed and confidence, submit your brief or explore our candidate network via Submit CV.

How a Fintech Recruitment Partner Adds Value

When your go-to-market plan depends on the right people landing quickly, choosing the right fintech recruitment agency is a strategic decision.

Here’s what a sector-specialist partner brings to the table:

1. Access to pre-vetted talent

• We’ve spent years building networks of commercial specialists across emerging fintech companies and top fintech companies alike.
• That means faster shortlists, better matches, and higher retention.

2. Deep sector knowledge

• From performance metrics to compensation benchmarks, we understand what makes a high-performing GTM hire.
• Whether you’re focused on inbound funnels, outbound strategy, or integrated fintech marketing strategies, we’ll align talent to task.

3. Strategic hiring support

• At Harrington Starr, we work with clients to define scope, shape team structures, and design competitive salary packages that support long-term growth.
• For scale-ups seeking guidance on starting a fintech company or developing new GTM functions from scratch, this strategic input offers significant time and cost savings.

When hiring gets critical, speed matters. But so does fit. That’s where a fintech-specialist recruiter can make the difference between short-term hires and long-term performance.

Start Building Your Marketing Function Today

Sales and marketing alignment is an essential growth. With the right structure, roles and relationships in place, teams remove friction, accelerate revenue and deliver on strategy.

Whether you are hiring your first SDR or scaling a multi-market GTM team, the commercial talent you bring in now will shape your trajectory for years. This is why high-growth fintech companies partner with recruiters who understand the sector and the stakes.

If you want better performance across the funnel, alignment must be part of every hiring decision. That starts with knowing where to find the right people.

Talk to us about how we help fintech firms hire sales and marketing talent that performs from day one. Explore our Sales and Marketing Services or speak to our team about how we support fintech recruitment across the commercial space.