When Sales and Marketing don’t align, businesses lose deals, waste budget and miss opportunities.

If you’re looking to move towards a more aligned approach, talk with one of our Marketing and Business Development experts.

 

Sales and marketing differences through a typical prospect journey, from awareness to closing the deal and maximising retention:

Sales vs marketing

1. Awareness & Attraction

  • Marketing: “We need to build brand awareness and generate leads through content, social media, and SEO.”
  • Sales: “We need more high-quality leads, not just website visitors or social media followers!”

Recommendation: A collaborative lead generation strategy ensures marketing attracts the right audience, while sales helps refine targeting based on real customer insights.

Sales vs marketing2

2. Lead Generation & Qualification

  • Marketing: “We’ve generated hundreds of leads through campaigns—sales should follow up!”
  • Sales: “Most of these leads aren’t sales-ready; we waste time chasing unqualified prospects.”

Recommendation: A lead scoring system (jointly developed) ensures sales gets leads that are actually ready to buy, saving time and improving conversion rates.

Sales vs marketing3

3. Engagement & Nurturing

  • Marketing: “We need more automated nurture emails and valuable content to keep prospects engaged.”
  • Sales: “Customers don’t want more emails; they want real conversations and tailored solutions.”

Recommendation: Align marketing and sales messaging so prospects get the right mix of digital engagement and personal outreach at the right time.

Sales vs marketing4

4. Sales Conversion & Closing Deals 

  • Marketing: “Why isn’t sales using our case studies and materials? They help close deals!”
  • Sales: “Marketing materials are too generic; we need custom content for real customer pain points.”

Recommendation: Co-create sales enablement content (e.g. case studies, ROI calculators) that marketing produces with sales input to directly support closing conversations.

Sales vs marketing5

5. Customer Experience & Retention

  • Marketing: “We should focus on customer success stories and retention strategies.”
  • Sales: “Our job is done once the deal is closed—customer success should handle retention.”

Recommendation: A feedback loop between sales, marketing and customer success ensures better ongoing engagement and cross-sell/upsell opportunities.

Align sales and marketing, watch revenue grow!

The team are available to discuss your future goals and help grow your business. Contact Kathryn or give us a call on 0161 696 3459.