If you are in marketing, you are used to handing off your leads to the sales team and hearing two complaints back: First, the leads are no good. Second, there aren’t enough of them. It has always reminded me of the old joke where two guys are complaining about the restaurant they are eating in. “The food at this restaurant is lousy,” said the first. The rejoinder from the second? “Yes. And such small portions!”
Such is the relationship between sales and marketing. Every sale is due to the brilliance of the salesperson and every missed quote is due to marketing’s failure to produce qualified leads. Or produce enough of them. Or both. As sales has become more dependent on marketing each year, their frustration with the lack of control basically sends them down the path that marketing is useless.
