We recently spoke with Cory Bruscia, a fractional sales leader who works with small and medium-size companies. His take? Most teams fumble the handoff between marketing and sales—and it’s costing them deals.
Here’s what Cory sees often:
- Sales teams don’t have a process. They rely on luck instead of a clear path.
- Marketing creates great content, but sales doesn’t use it.
- Buyers self-educate, but sales still assumes they’re starting from scratch.
- Sales focuses on transactions, not long-term relationships.
Firms that win have both sides working from the same strategy. Here’s how:
1. Build a Sales Process: Map out every step from first contact to signed contract. One client created a six-stage process that included touchpoints for proposal follow-ups, and they reduced the average sales cycle by 25%.
2. Warm Up Prospects with Marketing: Give them a reason to care before sales calls. A software company created a short video series addressing common objections and embedded it into email outreach—conversion rates doubled.
3. Use Data to Time Your Outreach: Watch behaviors and reach out when it counts. If a prospect visits your pricing page three times in one week, that’s your window. One manufacturing firm used this tactic and increased scheduled demos by 40%.
4. Train Sales to Advise, Not Just Sell: Help them guide, not pitch. Equip them with talking points and insights from recent marketing content. A professional services firm ran monthly lunch-and-learns for the sales team using the latest marketing pieces—they saw better prospect engagement almost immediately.
5. Share What’s Working: Feedback goes both ways—marketing improves when sales shares insights. If a certain white paper keeps coming up in client calls, marketing can double down on that topic.
It’s not complicated—but it does take effort. Get your marketing and sales teams talking, and you’ll start closing better deals with less wasted time.
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Don’t miss these previous articles:
From Awareness to Action: How Marketing Fuels the Sales Pipeline
Marketing vs. Business Development: Why the Divide is Costing You Clients
Author Bios Part 3: The Perfect Place(s) for Your Perfect Bio
