Of all the challenges I’ve seen across my career in B2B marketing, by far the most common – and the least helpful – is misalignment between marketing and sales teams.
Both teams should be working towards the same overall goal, yet they often fall out of sync. Gaps appear.
Sometimes the gaps can be small and might show up as ‘healthy’ debate about ideal customer profiles, or creative, or lead handoffs. Other times they grow into a real divide that causes wasted effort, frustration, even all-out war.
This misalignment is not something that leaders should accept or ignore. It stops good work from making the impact it deserves. It creates hiding places and accountability gaps. And it saps energy from all involved.
In today’s world, the need to close the gap between marketing and sales is even more critical. We know that B2B buying groups are now larger and more complex than ever before. We know that the buying journey has become almost completely digitised, with GenAI reshaping how research, evaluation and decision‑making processes happen. We know that a multi-channel presence is required throughout the journey. And we know that marketing and sales teams are often operating with tighter resources than ever before.
With buyer behaviour shifting and with budgets squeezed, misalignment between marketing and sales isn’t just unhelpful: it becomes a direct barrier to growth. But to fix it, we need to understand what lies beneath the tensions, not just the symptoms on the surface.
In Part One of this article, I list the common complaints I’ve seen and heard from both sides of the fence, and the signs that there may be deeper, foundational issues that need addressing. Then, in Part Two I look at the real causes behind these gaps, and how organisations can address them, and so build a more united and effective approach to marketing and sales execution.
Common sales critiques about marketing
“The leads are all s***!”
By far the most common complaint: sales teams often feel that the leads being handed over by marketing aren’t good enough. That means either too many MQLs that don’t match the ideal customer profile, or too few that do, or both. On top of that, leads might be handed over long before buyers are actively in market and ready to talk to sales, which leaves reps questioning their value and their timing.
I’ve also seen issues when the volume of MQLs handed off becomes the main measure of success. Here, it can look as if marketing is chasing quantity – ‘stat-padding’, as they might say in football circles – rather than focusing on quality, and creating meaningful opportunities.
TLDR: Marketing optimises for activity, not pipeline.
“Marketing doesn’t understand real buyers!”
Sales often feel that marketing is too far removed from the real world of clients, buyers and live deals. This can show up in the form of content that uses internal product language rather than the actual problems buyers talk about. Or, it could be messaging that sounds polished and well crafted, but which doesn’t reflect the conversations sales teams are having every day with prospects, who are under pressure, sceptical or unclear about their options.
Because of this, sales sometimes view marketing as operating outside the real commercial environment. They see a gap between what customers say in meetings and what appears in campaigns, which creates friction and disconnection.
TLDR: Marketing lives too far from clients and deals.
“These marketing assets are pretty, but they don’t help me sell!”
A common frustration from sales: marketing assets look impressive but don’t help them move deals forward. PowerPoint decks can be beautifully designed but light on commercial substance, leaving reps without the hard proof points that buyers ask for. Case studies are often either completely absent, or too soft, with little data or real world outcomes that build confidence. Thought leadership pieces may read well, but they rarely give sales anything they can use in a live conversation.
Because of this, many reps end up putting marketing materials to one side. They struggle to use them in meetings, so they create their own versions that feel more practical.
TLDR: Marketing creates content that isn’t built for selling.
“Marketing’s too slow! Marketing’s too procedural!”
Sales often feel that marketing moves too slowly. Long approval cycles can hold up seemingly-simple requests, and strict brand rules add extra steps, or even prevent sales from acting entrepreneurially. Campaigns also take months to build, which means they rarely match the urgency sales faces to deliver this quarter.
When timing and speed matters to win deals, any delay becomes a point of frustration. To sales teams, marketing can seem focused on getting everything perfect, even when a good enough version would help them far more.
TLDR: Marketing prioritises perfection over speed.
“Marketing isn’t accountable for revenue in the way we are!”
Sales teams often point to the fact that marketing isn’t held to the same revenue standard they are. The metrics marketing uses often don’t clearly show how activity turns into commercial impact, which makes it hard to appraise or trust the numbers. Attribution can also feel stretched; early touches counted as meaningful influence even when they played little role in creating or progressing a deal. This can create a sense that marketing is claiming credit for revenue that sales believes it carried over the line.
There’s also frustration that marketing focuses heavily on awareness or engagement, while sales lives in a world where closed-won targets define success – or, to quote a senior commercial leader I’ve worked with, “all this upper funnel stuff you guys do is great, but I’m a lower funnel guy.”
Even worse, marketing even might be seen as ‘banners and balloons’ and ‘the colouring in department’ within your organisation, rather than a strategic, commercially focussed function.
TLDR: Marketing isn’t accountable for revenue and/or overstates its impact.
Common marketing critiques about sales
“Sales lets good leads go cold!”
Marketing often feels that sales teams let too many good leads slip through the cracks. Reps might tend to focus on the hottest prospects and overlook other valid leads that might convert with a timely follow up. And when leads aren’t contacted quickly enough, the momentum can fade and the opportunity weakens.
CRM updates – or lack thereof – is also a common cause of frustration. CRM and process adoption can be mixed across sales organisations, and written updates often incomplete or inconsistent. This makes it hard for marketing to understand what’s happening, or to accurately chart and understand the buying groups involved in a given opportunity. From marketing’s perspective, this creates a frustrating loop: sales continue to ask for more leads yet isn’t optimally handling those that they have.
TLDR: Sales wastes demand.
“Sales only cares about this quarter!”
Marketing often feels that sales is too focused on what can close right now, rather than what will build a healthier pipeline over time. Reps might concentrate heavily on deals that might land this quarter, which can lead to quick win tactics like discounting instead of taking the time to nurture value.
Related, customer discovery might be rushed or inconsistent, or not documented, which makes it harder to understand real needs and for marketing to support longer sales cycle opportunities. This short-term mindset also means that pre-funnel prospecting activity can be deprioritised. And when everything leans toward immediate outcomes, the long term growth engine struggles to gain traction.
TLDR: Sales sacrifices long term value for quick deals.
“Sales keeps going off-message!”
Marketing teams can sometimes feel that sales drift away from agreed positioning and messaging when they engage with a prospect. Further, instead of leading with value and a clear solution narrative, reps might slip into ‘product dumping’, which makes the conversation feel more tactical and product-out than strategic and customer-in.
Inconsistent messaging can also show up across regions and teams, diluting the brand and making it harder for marketing to build a coherent presence in the market. And when sales teams create their own materials to fill gaps, the problem only grows. These assets often deviate from the agreed messaging and undercut the positioning marketing has worked to establish.
TLDR: Sales breaks the story marketing is trying to build.
“Sales give us vague or unhelpful feedback!”
Marketing often feels that feedback they receive from sales is too vague to be useful: comments like “these leads are rubbish” offer no detail on what went wrong or what could be improved. Customer objections are also rarely captured in a consistent, systematic way, meaning marketing often has no reliable view of what prospects are pushing back on or why.
When little insight is shared about why deals stall or fail, important learning is lost, and it becomes more difficult to refine targeting, improve campaigns or fix the root issues behind weak performance.
TLDR: Marketing cannot improve without quality feedback loops
“Sales doesn’t use what we create!”
Marketing often feels that the materials they create never quite make it into the hands of clients or prospects. Enablement content is skimmed or ignored, which means the guidance, messaging and examples built to help reps land the story don’t get used. Sometimes, sales reps recreate their own slides or documents, even when stronger, approved versions already exist. This creates inconsistency and adds extra work for everyone.
Campaigns and content also fail to show up in outreach as intended. Strong assets sit untouched simply because teams can’t find them, or don’t look for them, or don’t want to adopt them into their workflows.
TLDR: Marketing work goes to waste.