Why Your B2B Pipeline Looks Like a Graveyard: Getting Sales and Marketing Aligned
For most B2B companies, growth grinds down the same way: leads pile up, conversions disappoint, and sales and marketing stop speaking the same language.
These aren’t isolated problems. They’re patterns we at Orange Marketing have seen again and again working with more than 250 organizations as a HubSpot Diamond Partner. From scaling B2Bs to nonprofits and enterprises, the same breakdowns appear. But these things are fixable. And you can create processes that will let you confidently forecast for stakeholders and investors.
That’s the premise behind two of our most-downloaded resources: The Truth About B2B Sales and The Truth About B2B Marketing. They pull back the curtain on where sales and marketing derail, and how to build revenue operations you can actually count on.
Why Sales Feels Like Pushing a Boulder Uphill
Most sales teams operate on hustle and hope. Reps cherry-pick “easy” leads. Managers demand forecasts they know won’t hold up. Everyone crosses their fingers that deals close on time.
But the truth is, sales doesn’t collapse because you hired the wrong reps. It collapses because there’s no system under them. No structure for deal stages. No consistent rules for handling leads. No shared definition of what a qualified opportunity really looks like.
Orange Marketing has a name for the bad habits reps adopt when structure is missing: the “I Hate Money Club.” The club has a few telltale behaviours you'll probably recognize:
- Refusing to call Gmail or Yahoo addresses
- Ignoring follow-ups after one attempt
- Treating CRM notifications like background noise
- Tossing leads back into the pool if they don’t convert quickly
These habits lead to expensive outcomes.
The solution is discipline:
- Tie deal stages to buyer actions (not wishful sales milestones).
- Require every deal to have a close date, an amount, a company, and real contacts.
- Set a follow-up cadence that doesn’t let good prospects slip through the cracks.
The sales guide recommends nine touches: five emails, three calls, one social.
When you enforce this rigor, forecasts stop feeling like fiction. Pipeline becomes predictable. And sales reps spend less time making excuses and more time closing business.
Why Marketing Feels Like Shouting Into the Void
Marketing has its own identity crisis. Too often it’s reduced to one job: fill the funnel. Put up landing pages, buy ads, gate a whitepaper, count leads.
But if those leads don’t match what sales can actually close, they’re just noise. The Marketing guide puts it bluntly: more leads aren’t always better. Filtering, segmentation, and alignment with sales matter more than raw volume.
Marketing also can’t stop at the handoff. Leads that don’t close right away aren’t trash. They’re tomorrow’s pipeline. Without nurture, you’re just burning demand you worked hard to generate.
Done right, marketing isn’t a megaphone. It’s identity work. Every campaign should answer one core buyer question: Do these people understand my problems? Every page, email, and ad is a chance to prove expertise and credibility, not just capture an email address.
Measurement is the other non-negotiable. Forget vanity metrics like clicks and downloads. The only marketing that counts is what contributes to pipeline and revenue. Anything else is window dressing.
Sales vs. Marketing: Lots of Finger Pointing
Put sales and marketing in the same room, and you’ll often get the corporate version of a family feud. Sales complains about lead quality. Marketing insists sales doesn’t follow up. Leadership plays referee.
Here’s the kicker: both sides are usually right. Sales is ignoring leads. Marketing is generating inconsistent ones. Without shared definitions, shared metrics, and shared accountability, the cycle repeats quarter after quarter.
That’s why the truth guides resonate: they don’t just blame one side or the other. They lay out how to unify the teams under one system. Sales follows up on everything with structure. Marketing generates leads that match sales’ definitions and nurtures the rest. And leadership finally gets forecasts they can defend in a boardroom.
The Good News: This Is Fixable
Do you recognize your own teams here? The good news is these patterns aren’t hardwired. They’re solvable with the right structure.
- For sales, the answer is process: clear deal stages, disciplined follow-up, consistent data entry.
- For marketing, the answer is alignment: campaigns tied to real pipeline outcomes, not just top-of-funnel activity.
- For leadership, the answer is visibility: a single system of record where both teams are accountable.
Once those pieces click together, sales and marketing stop fighting each other and start fighting for the same thing: growth.
Why You Should Read the Guides
If you’re nodding (or wincing) as you read this, the deeper playbooks are worth your time.
- The Truth About B2B Sales shows how to build a sales machine that doesn’t rely on hero reps or lucky quarters. It’s structure over superstition.
- The Truth About B2B Marketing shows how to stop chasing vanity leads and start generating pipeline that converts. It’s alignment over activity.
Together, they’ll help you turn finger-pointing into measurable progress.