#1 – Your Sales Team Hates Your Marketing Team (Here’s Why)

How integrated sales & marketing organizations fix the disconnect that’s killing your revenue

Chip Royce, Flywheel Advisors

Here’s a gut question: When did your sales team last thank your marketing team for a qualified lead?

If you can’t remember, you’re not alone. Most B2B companies have a sales and marketing problem. They just don’t know it yet.

The Internet Broke B2B Sales (But Nobody Talks About It)

The internet changed everything for B2B buyers. But most companies still operate like it’s 1995.

Here’s what happened:
Buyers research vendors online before they ever talk to a salesperson. They read reviews, compare features, and check references. For consumer products, this works well. For B2B? It’s a mess.

Why B2B online research fails buyers:

• Review volumes are too small to be statistically significant
• Competitors plant fake negative reviews
• Vendors pay for glowing testimonials
• One angry customer can destroy your online reputation

Your buyers think they’re informed. They’re just confused.

Younger Buyers Made Everything Worse

Millennials and Gen Z buyers approach B2B purchases differently than their predecessors. They expect instant information with zero human interaction.

What this looks like at trade shows:

• Attendees under 35 treat your booth like a Google form
• They fire 3-5 rapid questions at you
• Once they get answers, they vanish
• Follow-up emails go unanswered
• Voice messages pile up in full mailboxes

Your sales team calls this “ghosting.” Your prospects call it “avoiding pushy salespeople.”

The real problem: Your marketing creates awareness. Your sales team tries to convert. But there’s no bridge between them.

The Solution: Integrated Sales & Marketing That Works

Stop treating sales and marketing as separate departments. They should be one revenue-generating machine.

Here’s how to build an integrated sales & marketing organization that drives real results:

1. Fix Your Organizational Chart

Create a General Manager role accountable for total revenue success. Under this GM, place both your sales leader and marketing leader as equals.

This eliminates the classic conflict:

• Marketing focuses on “art” and brand awareness
• Sales focuses on “paying the bills” and closing deals
• Neither talks to the other

Dell Technologies has used this structure since the mid-1990s. It works for Fortune 100 companies. It will work for you.

2. Demand Complete Transparency

Your marketing and sales teams must share information systems. Everything from ad spend to CRM data should be visible to both teams.

What transparency looks like:

• Marketing sees which campaigns generate closed deals
• Sales sees which content moves prospects through the funnel
• Both teams track the same metrics
• No more finger-pointing about “bad leads” or “poor follow-up”

The result: Teams work together to close deals instead of blaming each other for missed targets.

3. Align Compensation with Revenue Goals

Tie both teams’ variable compensation to the same revenue goals. Nothing motivates collaboration like shared financial outcomes.

Start with quarterly objectives:

• Total revenue generated
• Sales cycle length
• Customer retention rates
• Lead-to-close conversion rates

As your teams learn to work together, you can introduce longer-term strategic goals.

Why Most B2B Companies Resist Integrated Sales & Marketing

Fear of change. Sales teams worry that marketing will interfere with their process. Marketing teams fear sales will demand only bottom-funnel activities.

Turf protection. Department heads don’t want to share power or budgets.

Measurement challenges. It’s easier to measure marketing impressions and sales calls than integrated revenue results.

Legacy systems. Most companies have separate tools for marketing automation and sales management.

Here’s the truth: The disconnect between sales and marketing is the one constant problem we see in every B2B organization.

The Bottom Line on Integrated Sales & Marketing

Your buyers have changed how they research and purchase B2B solutions. Your competition adapts to these changes faster than you do.

Integrated sales & marketing gives you three competitive advantages:

1. Faster revenue cycles – No handoff delays between marketing and sales
2. Higher conversion rates – Both teams optimize for the same outcome
3. Better customer experience – Consistent messaging from first touch to closed deal

The companies that figure this out first will dominate their markets. The companies that don’t will struggle to explain why their competitors grow faster with smaller teams.

One final gut question: Can you afford to keep sales and marketing separate while your competitors integrate theirs?

The choice is yours. The results are predictable.

Chip Royce spent decades watching B2B companies lose deals because sales and marketing worked in silos.

At Flywheel Advisors, he builds integrated revenue teams modeled on the structure that drove Dell Technologies’ success since the 1990s.