Closing the gap between marketing and sales to drive growth

Katie Bramschreiber

Guest Columnist

June 1, 2026

The modern B2B buyer journey is no longer linear.

Today’s buyer journey involves multiple stakeholders and an abundance of options, information and data that can influence the purchase decision – all readily available without even talking to a company.

Buyers are also influenced by external forces beyond any company’s control.

Economic shifts, global conflicts, supply chain disruptions and policy changes introduce new levels of uncertainty, forcing businesses to rethink priorities in real time.

Additionally, the demographics of buyers themselves continue to shift from someone who may have been in the industry for decades to someone who is starting their career in procurement and still learning the ropes.

Despite this increasingly dynamic environment, many organizations still operate with their marketing and sales in silos, creating disjointed experiences that don’t reflect how buyers are evaluating who they partner with.

Aligning sales and marketing can help organizations instill buyer confidence and ultimately drive growth.

Defining the disconnect

Marketing and sales typically have the same business objective they’re trying to achieve, but they have different paths to get there and are measured in different ways.

Marketing is responsible for building awareness and educating prospects, long before they’re ready to talk with a salesperson.

Sales then continues that journey by building relationships, addressing objections and ultimately securing revenue.

If marketing and sales aren’t aligned, the overall customer experience suffers.

You will see this come to life in messaging alignment, or lack thereof.

A key collaboration point is the mutual understanding of the ideal customer and ensuring that is where marketing messaging is targeted.

From there, well-defined execution across all touchpoints ensures potential customers are seeing and hearing the right thing before they talk to a sales rep and those same key messages remain part of the conversation with the sales team.

Marketing should define the value of your brand before sales work to close the deal.

Taking down the silos, building a bridge

Aligning sales and marketing can help strengthen your connection with prospects at every interaction.

To get started, you should gather all stakeholders and break down overall company goals into a measurement strategy or KPIs throughout the marketing and sales funnel.

This likely ladders up to a revenue target, but assessing the funnel as a whole allows both teams to track progress along the way and share insights into buyer behavior.

Ongoing collaboration is critical.

As an integrated marketing strategy is rolled out and sales conversations happen, teams need to commit to sharing feedback.

Sales can report on what they’re hearing, feeling and seeing on the front lines.

Marketing can share performance data and what content and campaigns are resonating.

This alignment comes to life with relevant messages at every point in the funnel, better-timed engagement during key moments and greater conversions because everything is in tune with the buyers’ journey.

The tactics themselves will vary depending on your customers and what influences their decisions, but a connected strategy helps ensure everything – from media coverage and LinkedIn presence to digital advertising and website experience – accurately reflects your brand and value proposition.

Alignment in action

Alignment and a strong feedback loop produce real results.

For example, Element partnered with a Wisconsin-based company that was working to expand beyond its regional footprint to a national audience.

Marketing focused on a strategic plan grounded in competitive insights, audience targeting and market prioritization, which increased visibility and lead volume.

However, more leads didn’t immediately translate to more conversions.

With marketing and sales aligned, the team analyzed real sales conversations to identify where prospects were stalling.

These insights informed refined messaging and campaign optimizations that addressed customer concerns, and also included a change to the sales approach, ultimately improving close rates.

If targets are being missed, before assuming a marketing strategy is not working, or sales are underperforming, organizations should look at the data (from their already established measurement strategy) and evaluate both functions together.

Often, the strongest results come from optimizing alignment rather than starting over.

A unified approach to growth

Today’s B2B buyer demands a seamless and connected experience across all touchpoints with a brand.

Once your outward-facing departments are aligned, a fully integrated marketing strategy can help ensure you’re getting the most across all activation channels, without reinventing the wheel for each tactic – ultimately creating a more efficient use of your marketing budget.

Organizations that can align marketing and sales around an integrated strategy create a more consistent and credible experience from first impression to final conversation.

The companies with the strongest growth are helping buyers gain confidence faster, understand their value better and move through the decision-making process with greater clarity.