At last year’s Pavilion conference, a CMO summed up what many GTM leaders are quietly frustrated by:
“Marketing hit our MQL goal. Sales missed their number. Again.”
A few heads nodded. Everyone had seen the same movie: marketing hits its numbers, sales misses theirs, and no one can explain why the gap keeps showing up—despite the usual fixes like shared KPIs, cleaner handoffs, and account-based marketing.
This disconnect is rooted in legacy incentives baked into the org chart.
Marketing is rewarded for generating leads or building awareness—regardless of whether any of it leads to a qualified sales conversation.
Sales is tasked with setting appointments and closing deals.
And because most marketers have never been trained in consultative sales, they default to what they see from bigger players—campaigns filled with phrases like: “AI-powered.” “All-in-one platform.” “Streamline your workflows.”
None of it speaks to pain, so buyers ignore it.
And when someone lands on your website, you’re betting they’ll dig around long enough to figure out what problem you solve.
That’s a bad bet.
Meanwhile, sales is handed leads that aren’t really leads, so they fall back on templated sequences—generic, impersonal, and easy to ignore.
They rely on those templates because they’ve never been taught how to write a message that earns a real response.
But the problem isn’t collaboration. It’s that neither side is focused on creating problem agreement with the buyer. And without that, there’s no path to a meaningful sales conversation.
But before we talk about how to fix it, we need to understand why this misalignment persists—especially in larger organizations.
When sales and marketing aren’t producing results, the default response is always the same: try to “align” them.
But these fixes rarely solve the real issue—because at the end of the day, sales and marketing are incentivized (and compensated) to do very different jobs.
They’ve evolved as separate functions with separate goals. Marketing is responsible for awareness, leads, and MQLs. Sales is responsible for qualification, pipeline, and revenue. Their KPIs—and comp plans—reinforce that separation.
So when each side optimizes for their own outcomes, you get exactly what we keep seeing: 📈 Marketing hits their MQL quota. 📉 Sales misses their number.
But the system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly how it was designed to function.
In fact, the Predictable Revenue model from the early 2010s only made it worse. It carved the go-to-market process into distinct roles:
It worked well for awhile--back when buyers weren’t flooded with content and getting a call from an SDR right after clicking a blog post felt like magic.
Today, buyers are numb to outreach. They’ve developed a sixth sense for sales messaging—and they delete it without a second thought.
So now, reps have to send more emails and make more calls just to get the same results they did a year ago.
That’s not just inefficient. It’s a fast track to burnout.
And it creates a terrible experience for the buyer—which is why they avoid it entirely.
In response, many companies have moved back to full-cycle sales or rolled BDRs under marketing, where they’re measured on engagement, not just meetings booked.
The smarter orgs have realized that sales motions need to be more consultative and less assembly-line.
But here’s the catch: there’s only so much either team can do within the constraints of hierarchical thinking.
The good news? You don’t need to tear down your org chart to fix this.
You just need both teams focused on what actually creates sales conversations. And that starts by aligning around one thing neither side is owning today: the buyer’s problem.
f your advertising, content, and sales messaging aren’t rooted in a clear, specific buyer problem—and a differentiated point of view on how to solve it—it will get ignored (even by buyers who are technically in-market).
Because attention doesn't come from clever copy. It comes from resonance. And resonance starts with problem agreement.
That’s the shift: get everyone—marketing, sales, leadership—aligned around attracting the right people by naming the right problem.
Great sellers already do this in conversation.
· They don’t open with “AI-powered” or “streamline your workflows.”
· They ask smart questions that surface pain.
· They challenge the buyer’s current approach.
· They reframe the status quo and offer a more effective path forward.
Marketing needs to do the same. Not with taglines or positioning exercises—but with messaging that mirrors how real sales conversations unfold.
· Ads should probe for pain, not push product features, function and benefit.
· Websites should qualify intent in the hero, getting them nodding their heads and digging further.
· Content should reflect the language buyers use when they’re frustrated—not the language vendors use when they’re trying to impress.
When you build your message around the buyer’s problem—not internal incentives—you stop creating content that just checks boxes and start generating demand that opens real sales conversations.
Sure, report the MQLs if that’s how you’re compensated.
But if they’re not rooted in buyer pain—if they don’t actually want to talk to sales—maybe don’t toss them over the fence just to make the number.
The most important lever you have for driving efficiency across your GTM motion—from ads, to outreach, to getting a prospect to say “yes”—is this:
1. Understand why your buyers buy.
2. Then make sure every message they see reflects that.
That’s what turns marketing into qualified and meaningful sales conversations.
When sales and marketing operate from the same buyer insight, everything changes.
→ Ads don’t just get clicks—they start conversations. → Sales doesn’t rewrite messaging—they run with it. → Content qualifies, not just educates. → And your funnel stops leaking leads that never should’ve been there in the first place.
Because when everyone’s focused on the same outcome—creating more meaningful, qualified sales conversations—your GTM motion starts to feel less like a disjointed relay race and more like a shared strategy.
This is how you move from lead gen to revenue architecture where every touchpoint—ads, emails, landing pages, sequences—is designed to surface a problem, create urgency, and move the buyer one step closer to “Let’s talk.”
And no, the answer isn’t hiring yet another agency to tweak headlines or churn out more campaigns.
It’s working with a partner who understands how sales conversations actually start—and knows how to build messaging that creates friction in the right places and flow in the right direction.
Not more alignment meetings. Not another dashboard. Just clear, compelling communication rooted in how your buyers think, feel, and decide.
That’s the unlock.
Because if your messaging isn’t doing that, all the MQLs in the world won’t move the needle.
Let’s be honest—this won’t fix the hierarchy. It won’t collapse silos. And it won’t magically unify sales and marketing into one seamless team.
But here’s the truth: silos aren’t the core problem. They’re symptoms of a system built to optimize internal performance, not buyer outcomes.
And when everyone’s chasing different goals, the result is predictable: 📈 MQLs get celebrated. 📉 Pipeline stays flat. 💸 Efficiency goes out the window.
That’s not just frustrating—it’s expensive.
But there’s a better way. And it doesn’t require tearing down your org chart or reengineering your GTM model.
It starts with one shared focus: Creating problem agreement at the top of the funnel.
When sales and marketing operate from the same understanding of why buyers buy: → Ads probe for pain instead of pushing features. → Websites qualify real intent—not bounce traffic with slogans. → Content arms sellers with language that actually lands. → Sales no longer has to fix the narrative. Marketing finally fuels it.
Because when both teams sell the problem, buyers start leaning in. Messaging becomes the connective tissue between awareness and action.
And when you prove that this works—when better conversations lead to better pipeline— you earn the credibility to challenge the incentives that caused the disconnect in the first place.
That’s what our Advertising & Messaging Review is built to do. It won’t fix your org chart. But it will surface the gaps in your message before your pipeline pays the price.
Because the fastest way to fix sales and marketing isn’t another alignment initiative. It’s giving both teams a message that moves deals forward—instead of just filling dashboards.