Sales and marketing - where does one end and the other begin?

Sales and marketing are often talked about together. But inside many businesses, they operate as two very separate functions.

Marketing generates the leads. Sales converts them.

At least, that's the theory.

In reality, the line between the two is rarely that neat - and when they aren't working together, it can become very easy for each side to blame the other when growth isn't happening.

“We need more leads”

It's one of the most common things I hear.

But before investing more money in generating them, I want to know what is happening to the leads you already have.

Are they the right sort of leads? How many become genuine opportunities? How quickly does somebody follow them up? What happens next? Where are prospects dropping out? And what does sales tell marketing about the conversations they're having?

Generating twice as many leads won't solve a problem further down the process.

It may simply make the problem more expensive.

What does a good lead actually look like?

This is another conversation sales and marketing need to have.

Marketing can hit a lead-generation target while sales complains that the leads are poor quality. Sales can dismiss leads that aren't immediately ready to buy, even though the buying cycle might take months.

Both teams can believe they're doing their job well - while the business still isn't getting the result it needs.

That's why agreeing what a valuable opportunity looks like matters.

Who are you trying to attract? What makes them a good fit? What problem are they trying to solve? Where are they in the buying process? And what needs to happen before they're ready for a sales conversation?

Sales has information marketing needs

Your sales team is talking to prospective customers every day.

They hear the objections. They know which questions keep coming up. They know which competitors are being considered, what causes hesitation and why apparently promising opportunities disappear.

That information is enormously valuable to marketing.

Likewise, marketing should be helping sales understand what prospects have already seen, what attracted them in the first place and what messages or content are influencing their decisions.

If that information stays within departmental silos, both teams are working with only part of the picture.

Your customer doesn't care who owns what

From inside the business, it might matter enormously whether something belongs to sales or marketing.

Your customer doesn't care.

They experience one business.

They don't care who owns the website, who generated the lead, who sent the proposal or which department is responsible for following up.

They simply know whether the experience makes sense, whether you understand what they need and whether they feel confident buying from you.

And if there's a disconnect between marketing and sales, they're often the first people to notice it.

Before you ask marketing for more leads...

Look at what is already happening across the whole sales and marketing process.

Where are your best customers coming from? What happens to enquiries? How well are leads followed up? Where are opportunities being lost? What does the data tell you? And, importantly, are sales and marketing actually sharing what they know?

Sometimes you genuinely do need more leads.

But sometimes the bigger opportunity is fixing what happens to the ones you've already got.

If growth has stalled and you're not sure whether the problem sits with marketing, sales or somewhere in between, let’s have a conversation.