B2B sales + marketing teams aren't on the same page.
Businesses underperform, finger pointing happens + confusion around the path forward results.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb here by saying that 85%+ of B2B companies face this challenge.
A lot of this revolves around a myth that sales people are the problem. Sales are good. Salespeople are good. Just like Marketing / Demand Generation + the people that do it are good.
What's not good is their collective collaboration.
There are some things you just learn by doing + sales most definitely falls in that category.
To be clear, it's VERY hard.
Not to suggest Marketing / Demand Generation isn't hard but when you come up as a salesperson, the scar tissue you have to develop as a result of all of the rejection is significant.
To make matters worse, there's this odd culture in sales that's all about the "Throw them in the deep end + let them figure it out" aka there isn't a whole lot of structured training...if you don't figure it out, you get clipped.
Sales people bring a unique culture to organizations.
In part because of what they had to overcome, they're quite proud of the fact that they learned how to carry a bag as they should be but that sales led culture tends to encourage them to believe that their contributions are more important than others.
This is where the tension between Sales + Marketing becomes very real as sales lacks marketing experience, marketing lacks sales experience.
Maybe this is where the solution lives?
January 4, 2021 (Tweet Link)