June 9, 2026

“Marketing doesn’t send us good leads.” “Sales doesn’t work the leads we send them.”

Sound familiar? It doesn’t happen everywhere — but when the relationship between Sales and Marketing breaks down, the impact is huge.

I heard this a few weeks ago in a meeting with a client. Two teams, two different stories, and a company losing money while both sides were right… and both were wrong.

This is not a new problem. It’s old, it repeats itself, and it’s expensive. And the solution is right in front of everyone — but nobody wants to see it.

What actually happens

Marketing often becomes an internal agency. Reactive. Just responding to whatever Sales asks for. No real strategy.

And Sales does its own thing. Posts what it wants, talks about its favorite products, and when the quarter goes bad — blames Marketing.

Both teams work hard. But they work in parallel, not together. And that has a concrete cost: lost opportunities, longer sales cycles, and customers that go to the competition.

My experiment at Intel

When I was running channel sales and marketing at Intel, I reached a breaking point. Marketing was not helping the team sell more.

I made a decision that not everyone liked: I added sales commissions to the marketing team.

If Marketing helps close deals, they share the reward. They feel the result — just like Sales.

Did it work? Very well. Within 30 days, Marketing was joining sales calls without anyone asking them to. They stopped caring about clicks and started caring about revenue.

Do I say this is always the right move? No. But in some cases, it’s exactly what is needed to break the dynamic.

The real problem: nobody owns the funnel

The most common mistake is that each team manages their part of the funnel — and considers everything else someone else’s problem.

Marketing generates leads → hands them over → stops caring. Sales receives them → works them (or not) → blames Marketing when they don’t close.

And nobody talks about the customers who didn’t buy.

|Getting a customer into the funnel is the most expensive thing your company does. Campaigns, events, team time. Everything has a real cost. When that customer doesn’t buy today — because the timing was off or the price wasn’t right — most companies let them go. That’s a serious mistake. That customer needs to stay in your CRM, be nurtured with relevant content, and kept close. So when they are ready, your company is the first one they think of.

The loop almost nobody closes

When a salesperson talks to a customer, do they use the messages that Marketing created? And if they realize the message isn’t working — do they send that feedback back to Marketing?

That loop is gold. Every sales conversation is market research in real time. If that information never goes back to Marketing, it’s lost. And Marketing keeps producing content that doesn’t connect, while Sales keeps complaining that the materials don’t work.

The moment everything changes

A while ago I was with a client. Both teams in the same room — Sales and Marketing. Each one convinced the problem was the other.

I showed them the shared funnel. What it looks like when both teams own the same process, from start to finish.

The faces in the room changed.

Not a “wow, what a great solution.” It was relief. The relief of understanding that the problem wasn’t the people — it was the structure. That there were no villains in the story.

And then something interesting happened: without anyone asking, they started talking about what meetings they should have together.

That’s what happens when the problem is correctly diagnosed. The solution shows up on its own.

What comes first — Sales or Marketing?

Neither. Both come together, with a shared plan and shared accountability for the result.

If your teams are still blaming each other, the problem is not the people. It’s how your company is structured.

The question is not who is right. The question is: how much is this conflict costing you?

Has this happened in your company? Are you on the Sales side or the Marketing side? I’d love to read your experience in the comments.

And if you want to see how to fix it — let’s talk.