The Great Sales & Marketing Delusion: Why Your ‘Revenue Machine’ is Broken

Another sales and marketing meeting. Another pointless war.

The usual grievances fill the room.

Sales insists they don’t have enough leads.

Marketing insists sales isn’t working the leads they’ve already provided.

Leadership watches the volley of complaints like a dull game of corporate tennis, eyes glazed over, desperate for a truce.

The same conversation. The same tensions. The same refusal to admit the obvious: this entire system is built on a flawed premise.

Sales and marketing are supposedly the twin engines of revenue. Yet, in most organisations, they function as rival factions –?misaligned, mistrustful and fundamentally detached from what actually drives business.

Marketing is drowning in meaningless lead quotas that prioritise volume over value. Sales is suffocating under pipeline metrics that reward activity over actual conversion. Leadership, meanwhile, mistakes participation in alignment meetings for actual alignment.

Few dare to state the obvious: the traditional sales and marketing model is obsolete.

?“Another sales and marketing meeting. Another pointless war. Leadership watches the volley of complaints like a dull game of corporate tennis.”

The ‘Lead Generation’ Fallacy

Marketing, for its part, has long been wedded to the fallacy that lead volume equates to business growth.

For years, teams have been judged on the sheer number of leads they generate rather than their quality. The machine runs accordingly –?gated content, automated email sequences, paid campaigns, and the inevitable flood of LinkedIn connection requests.

Sales, meanwhile, logs into the CRM to find a sea of ‘leads’ –?most of whom have no intent to buy.

The consequence is a well-oiled but entirely misdirected operation. Marketers celebrate ‘MQLs’ (Marketing Qualified Leads) as if they were revenue in the bank. Sales knows better –?most will never convert.

The result is a corporate blame cycle that benefits no one.

Marketing accuses sales of failing to follow up.

Sales accuses marketing of flooding the pipeline with irrelevance.

Leadership wonders why revenue projections never quite materialise.

The buyer, the only party with a genuine stake in the matter, is lost in the noise.?

“Pipeline isn’t the problem. The way it is measured –?the way it is fetishised –?is.”

The Pipeline Obsession That’s Killing Sales

Sales, for its part, operates under a different but equally flawed assumption – that pipeline volume is the single greatest determinant of success.

Traditional sales leaders continue to champion ‘more activity, more deals’ as the golden rule, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. The modern buyer is savvier, less susceptible to generic pitches and increasingly resistant to outdated tactics.

And yet, sales teams persist with approaches that should have been abandoned years ago:

·?????? Spray & pray?– blindly contacting as many people as possible in the hope that something sticks.

·?????? Over-promise, under-deliver?– rushing prospects through the funnel before they are ready, driving sky-high churn rates.

·?????? Sell the product, not the problem?– focusing on feature sets rather than solving genuine business challenges.

Pipeline is not the problem. The way it is measured – the way it is fetishised – is.??

"Marketing chases MQLs. Sales chases activity metrics. Meanwhile, the buyer –?the only person who actually matters –?is lost in the noise.”

The Revenue Alignment Lie

Every so often, leadership attempts to address this dysfunction with a ‘revenue alignment’ initiative. Consultants like me are summoned, workshops convened and – without fail – a glossy presentation is produced.

Most such efforts fail. The reason is simple: they treat the symptoms, not the cause.

True alignment is not achieved through joint meetings or shared dashboards. It requires dismantling the artificial wall between sales and marketing entirely.

That means:

·?????? Abandoning the MQL obsession?– measuring impact rather than mere engagement.

·?????? Holding sales accountable for nurturing, not just closing?– relationships do not begin and end with a transaction.

·?????? Aligning incentives?– when sales bonuses and marketing KPIs are at odds, everyone loses.

·?????? And, above all, recognising that these are not separate functions.

Sales is marketing. Marketing is sales. Both exist to generate revenue, engage buyers and solve business problems.

Until companies stop treating them as adversaries, the dysfunction will persist – and buyers, the only audience that truly matters, will continue to tune out the noise.?

A Call to Arms: Burn the Playbook

The remedy is as simple as it is radical: abandon the failing model.

·?????? Marketing must discard vanity metrics and own revenue outcomes.

·?????? Sales must stop fixating on activity and start prioritising genuine buyer engagement.

·?????? Leadership must stop managing alignment through meetings and instead reimagine it as a structural necessity.

The companies that understand this – the ones that dismantle the artificial divide – will not merely survive.

?They will dominate.

?Now, who is ready to have this conversation in the next meeting??

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What’s Next?

The industry needs a reset. But change starts with?us.

?What’s your take – have you seen a company successfully align sales and marketing? Or is this still just a pipe dream?

?Let’s discuss.

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