You talk about yourself for an hour, show off some fancy slides, and then act surprised when the sales team never want to speak to you again.
If we’re ever going to end this whole marketing/sales synergy conversation, we need to do something about it and set the standard.
But what’s causing this divide?
Well, a lot of it comes down to not singing from the same hymn sheet (and assuming the other doesn’t have a clue either).
Marketing drives demand and builds the brand, but their most visible handoff to sales is usually leads. Sales, meanwhile, is targeted against revenue. And when those leads are low quality or fail to convert, you know who gets the blame...
Sales also work in quarters, when marketing is often planning for the full year, or even years in the future. So, when marketing start talking about 2027 campaign plans, sales think they’ve lost sight of the very real target quickly approaching.
And there’s nothing that will cause a salesperson to roll their eyes more than another marketer getting excited by “impressions”.
In my career, I’ve worked with some absolute legends in the sales team (and a few total bellends), and I wanted to share a few things you can do to make life easier and get the respect you deserve:
Marketing should lead sales more. It is our job to understand the tech market and find the real opportunities. Too often, we let sales decide "where to fish" and then we just help them hold the rod. That is backwards. We should be the ones setting the strategy. If not, we are just an expensive support act.
2. Kill the shiny things.
Marketers are like magpies. We chase every new "shiny thing" that lands in our inbox. We also get bombarded with random requests from the rest of the business. Stop it. You need a long-term strategy with specific aims. Every short-term project must point toward that goal. Communicate this clearly to the business so sales doesn't distract you with fluff. They might get less help with their random requests, but they will respect you a lot more when the big revenue wins land.
3. Break the silo.
Don't be the weird department in the corner. Go sit with the sales team. Mingle at drinks. Most importantly, go on sales calls. Hear how your team sell and the real-time challenges your audience face. People are just people. You need to be on the same team. If you actually talk to them, you can stop guessing what they need. You will understand the actual objections they face so you can answer them with your content before the prospect even asks.
4. Create a feedback loop that doesn't suck.
Want to really get sales on side? Create a mechanism to share feedback that really works. I’m talking monthly sales and marketing reviews where both can share insights, discuss why deals were lost, the quality of leads, and what content actually gets used. You can identify gaps together, review customer feedback, and start to work as a coherent team. Not two very different sides of the same coin.
An MQL doesn’t need to be static. You should sit down every quarter and redefine it together. Marketing and sales should be a high-performance engine. If sales is drowning in work, pump the MQL criteria up to give them only the absolute elite leads. If they have got more time, bring the criteria down and give them more to chase. It is about managing the resource, not just hitting a spreadsheet target.
Going back to the singing from the same hymn sheet comment above. If sales and marketing really are going to work in synergy, then they need to have the same goals and objectives. Marketing need to leave the vanity metrics behind. Focus on what actually matters to the business: pipeline, revenue and ROI.
Marketing is a high-level skill. It is the primary driver of revenue growth. We need to respect our own training and experience. Make sure the business understands that we are serious players. We aren't here to make things "look pretty" or stay in the "B2B Bland" lane. We are a credible, proven partner focused on outcomes.
If sales think marketing are plonkers, it's rarely because they hate marketing. It's because they don't see enough evidence that marketing is helping them win.
Respect isn't earned through brand guidelines, campaign dashboards or another fancy PowerPoint deck.
It's earned when marketing helps create revenue.
Fixing the marketing and sales rift is not about fancy software; it is about strategy and human connection. When marketing takes the lead and stops being distracted by every wanker with a "quick request," the whole business wins. Stop colouring in and start engineering outcomes.
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