Marketing vs Sales: Whose Problem is it?
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:52 am
In the discussion about the lack of leads, it is very common for the sales area to attribute the problem to marketing, and vice versa.
The truth is that the problem is everyone's problem. If marketing and sales do not work together to solve it, the solution will always be partial and ineffective.
There is a direct relationship (a cascading effect) between marketing and sales funnels. That's why it's worth considering everything with an integrated view:
A healthy demand generation system should have 70% of the leads it handles “on the grid”. For example, if I have 30 SQL leads in the sales pipeline, I should have another 70 leads in the MQL to SQL qualification phase.
Thus, the system compensates for lost Leads with new incoming Leads every Q.
For example: if I close 10 of the 30 opportunities in my pipeline and lose 20, I must have a flow of 20 new SQL leads each quarter. To have that number of SQLs, I must manage twice as many MQL leads, and I must do the same with the IQLs.
Reasons why you lack LEADS
By now you will have realized the direct relationship between the lack of leads and the general manager email list coordinated actions between marketing and sales. And also the temporal effect between the two: the actions I do (or don't do) this quarter will have an impact on the next.
To summarize, let us list the main reasons:
1. Lack of an early-stage recruitment strategy
B2B companies generally do not invest in early-stage lead generation campaigns (known as ToFu: Top Of The Funnel) because they consider it an expense with little return or difficult to measure.
For many, it is an expense that the “vendors” or the brands they represent must bear…
Companies that do so find a major advantage:
By the time these leads reach their intermediate or advanced phase, as a result of having managed to cultivate a relationship between the lead and the brand, they can gain positioning and preference that other brands cannot achieve.
The truth is that the problem is everyone's problem. If marketing and sales do not work together to solve it, the solution will always be partial and ineffective.
There is a direct relationship (a cascading effect) between marketing and sales funnels. That's why it's worth considering everything with an integrated view:
A healthy demand generation system should have 70% of the leads it handles “on the grid”. For example, if I have 30 SQL leads in the sales pipeline, I should have another 70 leads in the MQL to SQL qualification phase.
Thus, the system compensates for lost Leads with new incoming Leads every Q.
For example: if I close 10 of the 30 opportunities in my pipeline and lose 20, I must have a flow of 20 new SQL leads each quarter. To have that number of SQLs, I must manage twice as many MQL leads, and I must do the same with the IQLs.
Reasons why you lack LEADS
By now you will have realized the direct relationship between the lack of leads and the general manager email list coordinated actions between marketing and sales. And also the temporal effect between the two: the actions I do (or don't do) this quarter will have an impact on the next.
To summarize, let us list the main reasons:
1. Lack of an early-stage recruitment strategy
B2B companies generally do not invest in early-stage lead generation campaigns (known as ToFu: Top Of The Funnel) because they consider it an expense with little return or difficult to measure.
For many, it is an expense that the “vendors” or the brands they represent must bear…
Companies that do so find a major advantage:
By the time these leads reach their intermediate or advanced phase, as a result of having managed to cultivate a relationship between the lead and the brand, they can gain positioning and preference that other brands cannot achieve.