Marketing can look remarkably productive.
Campaigns are running, content is going out, and the monthly report is packed with cheerful little upward arrows. Then Sales asks, “Are these even the kinds of leads we want?”
Suddenly, those arrows have a little less to say.
Some of the most useful marketing conversations we have start with a pretty basic question: which customers does the business actually want to win?
Once everyone is talking about the same thing, it gets a lot easier to decide what Marketing should be doing to help.
We saw that play out with a local sign company we worked with. Sales and Marketing had been operating around scattered tactics with minimal results. Once the conversation shifted to which leads were more valuable, which companies leadership wanted to get in front of, and what prospects were actually asking during sales calls, the marketing changed too.
That led to more targeted Google Ads, more focused LinkedIn content and advertising, and website content that Sales could actually use in conversations. Over the following year, the company saw more than 70% revenue growth.
The channels themselves weren’t unusual. The difference was that everyone had a much clearer idea of what those channels were supposed to accomplish.
There’s no award for running the most campaigns, after all.
Start by Agreeing on What a Good Lead Actually Is
Marketing may be trying to bring more people to the website while Sales is focused on getting in front of a relatively small group of companies.
Both teams can be busy, hit the numbers they’ve been watching, and still wonder why the other side isn’t more impressed.
Sometimes one good conversation about what a “good lead” actually means clears up a lot.
Sales knows which opportunities tend to go somewhere. They know what buyers ask about, where conversations stall, and what tends to separate a promising lead from one that was never going to be a fit.
Marketing needs that information.
It matters even more now because buyers are doing so much research before they ever talk to Sales. They’re checking websites, searching for answers, looking at LinkedIn, and increasingly using AI tools to help narrow their options.
We talk more about that shift in Rethinking Sales and Marketing Alignment in an AI World.
Your Sales Team Knows Things a Dashboard Doesn’t
Marketing data can tell you plenty about clicks, visits, conversions, and where leads came from.
What it usually can’t tell you is why someone wasn’t a good fit once Sales talked to them.
That’s where the conversation between Sales and Marketing starts to get useful.
Last month, one of our attorney clients mentioned that she’d been getting more uncontested-divorce consultations, while the more complex cases she wanted to grow had slowed down.
That gave us something specific to investigate.
We went back into the Google Ads data, looked at where those leads were coming from, and made adjustments around the type of work the firm wanted more of.
Without that conversation, the campaign data by itself wouldn’t have told us there was a problem worth looking into.
The same principle applies well beyond paid media. Sales feedback can shape content topics, website messaging, targeting, follow-up, and how different channels work together.
That’s part of what we mean when we talk about running a connected multi-channel marketing program.
Sometimes the Website Missed the Memo
Another situation we see pretty often is a company that has evolved while its marketing is still describing the old version of the business.
You can drive more traffic to that website, but visitors are still going to learn about the company as it used to be.
A recent prospect came to us because they were struggling to attract the right kinds of new clients.
Historically, they had been a software sales and implementation firm. The business was now moving further into consulting, helping companies figure out how to use the technology they already had, get rid of what they didn’t need, and create a more streamlined approach around how the organization actually worked.
The problem was that none of that showed up on the website.
The message they wanted the market to hear wasn’t even on the page yet.
We could have started with ads or more content. Instead, the bigger issue was getting the positioning and website caught up with the business.
That’s one reason Marketing Refresh often recommends starting with an audit or a Marketing Strategy & Blueprint. Sometimes a company already has a strong foundation and needs help with a specific channel. Other times, the first job is making sure the marketing reflects the company people are actually running today.
And About Those Reports…
A report full of clicks, impressions, and website visits can look impressive.
But if leadership still can’t tell whether Marketing is bringing in worthwhile opportunities, everyone has another meeting ahead of them.
We’d much rather talk about the quality of the leads coming in, what Sales is hearing, and whether something in the program needs to change.
Marketing attribution will never be perfectly tidy. A buyer may see an ad, read three articles, visit the website a few times, talk with someone at an event, and then reach out months later.
That doesn’t mean reporting is useless. It means the report needs enough context to help leadership understand what the marketing is doing for the business.
And sometimes the answer is simply that something didn’t work the way we expected.
Markets change. Competitors make moves. Sometimes the timing is lousy.
When that happens, we’d rather talk about it, figure out what we learned, and decide what to do next than spend another month hunting for the most flattering chart.
We go deeper into that in How to Explain Marketing’s Impact on Pipeline and Revenue.
Better Information Changes the Work
The common thread in these examples is pretty simple: Marketing had better information about what the business actually needed.
That changed the work.
The sign company got clearer about which opportunities were worth pursuing. The attorney gave us context the ad platform couldn’t provide. The software company needed its message to catch up with where the business was heading.
The day-to-day tools were still familiar. Google Ads, LinkedIn, websites, content, and reporting were all part of the mix.
What improved was the thinking behind them.
That’s what sales-aligned marketing looks like in practice. Sales doesn’t simply receive whatever Marketing produces at the end of the process. The information flows both ways, and the marketing gets better because of it.
If you’d like to see more examples of how this works with actual clients, explore the Marketing Refresh case studies.
