What is the secret to truly connecting Marketing and Sales? Keys to closing the gap

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At the beginning of my career in Marketing , I saw the Sales team as the enemy. I started working in a call center, an environment where reps idolized Gordon Gekko and their favorite movie was “The Price of Ambition.”

They were seasoned reps who saw me as the marketing lady , too what is gcash inexperienced to spot a potential customer even if she bumped into me. I was in my twenties, blogging since 1998 and building websites on GeoCities since the mid-nineties.

It was 2005 and I thought I had my place, even though I was still a junior marketing professional. I was arrogant and they were right. I didn’t know anything about lead generation or what it meant to capture a high-quality lead.

At the time, my definition of a good lead was getting a first name, last name, and phone number. Then, salespeople had to call them and close the sale. That's how I saw it.

My job was to get numbers for them to try to close sales. It didn't matter whether these people needed what was being sold or not.

"Convert the leads I'm giving you" or, as the sales team's favorite movie says: " If you can't convert the leads you've received, you can't convert anything ."

The marketing team was not strategic. We weren't even working on getting leads.

I would come in early every morning to find an email with 100 leads to distribute. I would download them, print them out, and assign them, writing the sales reps’ names in the top left corner of the paper. I would then hand the contacts over to them and go about my day.

As they were calling the leads, I was receiving feedback from the salespeople. Many of them sent me back papers with notes, telling me what I had done wrong.

"They thought they were competing to win a free car."
"There is no one with that name who has this number."
"This person's first name says Batman."
The sales executives were right, the leads were terrible and the worst thing was that our communication had serious problems.

The relationship between Marketing and Sales was broken and the teams saw each other as enemies. We were not aligned on our goals and we did not discuss what we could do to improve.

But that was in another time, I was another marketing professional.

Fast forward 15 years and I see things completely differently. Sales is not the enemy. We need each other to be successful .

As I developed my career and became more humble, I began to see the direct impact a unified team can have on overall Marketing and Sales performance.

Working with a more unified Sales and Marketing team means Marketing leaders must take a deep look at processes, goals, and strategies to find the best way to align these two groups.

And this is no easy task, but avoiding it and working in isolation will only cause friction and limit the potential of both teams to thrive and achieve their goals.

"Thinking of marketing and sales as two parts of a healthy, communicative relationship leads to more effective problem solving."

Anna Talerico

Common challenges teams face when they are not aligned
When the relationship between marketing and sales is not at its best, challenges often arise that can affect not only the teams, but also the business as a whole.

Without communication , marketing teams may not have a clear understanding of what the sales team is hearing from potential customers. This can impact the messaging that marketing uses when promoting the company's core product.

Furthermore, when there is a gap between Marketing and Sales and both teams have misaligned objectives, each may feel that their goals are unattainable and, consequently, become demotivated.

Another challenge often faced when this lack of alignment occurs is that no team is held accountable for specific goals .

Looking back at the beginning of my career, I rarely saw a marketing team take responsibility when the sales team complained about lead quality.

Instead, it was common to blame salespeople, saying they were not managing the lead list effectively.


How content bridges the gap between Marketing and Sales and aligns teams
Sales enablement strategies became more common in 1999. At that time, a brand manager at Miller Brewing Company noticed several flaws in the company's sales operations and brand messaging.

Today, most organizations focus on optimizing the sales process using content, software , and collaboration tools .

More specifically, writing content for your ideal customer profile is an essential part of sales enablement .

These are the materials that are generally most useful to a sales team:

success stories;
informative blog posts;
customer testimonials;
interactive content (calculators, solution finders, etc.);
email marketing campaigns.

Success stories
Success stories that show how an existing customer has benefited from your product or service can positively impact the sales dialogue with your target audience.

Showing the challenges current customers face and how your solution helped solve them will demonstrate the value your company offers. This makes leads feel more confident and make a positive purchasing decision .

Blog Posts
Informative, lengthy, and even differentiated blog posts are often used to educate leads . They help identify their challenges and show how a product like yours can solve them.

Sales and marketing teams should collaborate on blog post topics . This way, articles can create audience identification and educate potential customers on how to solve their challenges.

Getting to the root of a prospect’s challenge is a necessary part of discovery, typically handled by the sales team during the first few calls.

Many teams face challenges in getting the right information from leads and then aligning it with the solutions offered.

Interactive content
Interactive content , such as surveys and quizzes , is a great solution as it puts the customer in control of sharing their information, not the sales rep.

Another type of interactive content that impacts this stage of the purchasing cycle are calculators , mainly those that aim to show the potential return on investment .



The data they capture is not only valuable to the sales team. As marketers, we can use this information to create a content calendar that directly meets customer needs.

Interactive content can help marketers identify trends based on audience input and tailor messaging and content based on this learning.


This will also be a win for sales – more content that meets customer demands means a shorter buying cycle.

By bridging the gap between Marketing and Sales you will help both teams achieve their goals and positively impact the organization.

I recently spoke with Anna Talerico , an experienced SaaS sales leader and co-founder of Ion Interactive. We discussed some of the ways you can align teams using content.

Watch the conversation here !

And if you want to learn more content ideas to help you bridge the gap between Marketing and Sales, let's talk !