Is Sales Complaining About Getting Shitty Leads?

Why Marketing and Sales Misalignment Costs You Pipeline

Does this sound familiar?

Marketing works hard to generate leads, only to hear from sales, “These leads aren’t good enough.” Meanwhile, sales teams complain about too many unqualified prospects clogging up their workflows. And while these two teams are debating, your pipeline stalls, and leads grow cold.

This tension between marketing and sales is one of the most common challenges demand generation teams face—and it’s a problem that’s costing you more than just time.

The Root of the Problem: Misalignment and Manual Processes

At the heart of the issue is a fundamental disconnect:

• Marketing’s Challenge: Passing off high-quality leads while ensuring they get timely follow-ups.

• Sales’ Challenge: Prioritizing the right leads while managing their other responsibilities.

On top of this, manual processes—like qualifying leads, routing them to the right reps, and crafting personalized follow-ups—slow everything down. By the time sales actually connects with a lead, their interest has likely faded.

Here’s the harsh truth: speed and quality are the two biggest drivers of conversions. If you’re struggling with either, you’re leaving pipeline on the table.

Why Traditional Fixes Fall Short

Most organizations try to solve this problem by:

• Investing in CRM tools: While helpful, these tools often require manual effort to update, qualify, and route leads.

• Adding more workflows: Marketing teams implement complex nurture flows, but these don’t address follow-up delays from sales.

• More meetings: Alignment sessions between marketing and sales are valuable but don’t solve the underlying inefficiencies in the process.

While these strategies can help, they don’t address the core issue: bridging the gap between generating leads and following up on them effectively.

What Marketing Teams Should Be Empowered to Do

The key to fixing misalignment isn’t just about speeding up processes or automating handoffs. It’s about giving marketing teams the power to own more of the lead lifecycle and enabling them to experiment, iterate, and improve the quality of leads before they’re handed off to sales.

1. Determine the Quality of Leads in Real-Time

Marketing teams need tools that allow them to automatically qualify, score, and segment leads based on enriched, real-time data. This ensures that only high-quality leads make it to sales and prevents unnecessary clutter in their workflows.

2. Personalize Assets at a Contact- or Account-Level

Marketers should have the ability to create hyper-personalized content for leads, such as tailored emails, landing pages, or follow-ups. This level of detail ensures sales receives leads that are more likely to convert because the groundwork for trust and engagement has already been laid.

3. Run Experiments to Optimize Inbound Lead Sources

Empowering marketing teams to experiment—whether by A/B testing ad creatives, exploring new lead magnets, or testing funnel variations—gives them the data to optimize lead quality according to downstream pipeline performance. By aligning top-of-funnel experimentation with bottom-of-funnel outcomes, marketing can fine-tune strategies that deliver results.

4. Act Quickly on Anonymous Visitors

With website de-anonymization tools, marketing teams can identify high-value visitors before they fill out a form. Proactive outreach to these accounts can drive engagement and pipeline generation.

A Smarter Way to Align Marketing and Sales

What if marketing could take control of lead follow-ups, ensuring no prospect is left waiting? With tools like Surface Labs, demand gen teams can:

• Automate lead engagement: AI-powered follow-ups via email, SMS, or chat engage leads instantly, keeping their interest alive.

• Qualify and score leads automatically: Leads are enriched with real-time data, ensuring only high-quality prospects are passed to sales.

• Segment and personalize leads at scale: Marketing can run granular campaigns and build account-specific strategies before handing leads to sales.

• Streamline handoffs to sales: Leads are routed to the right reps with all the context they need to take action.

The Impact of a Unified, Empowered Process

When marketing teams have the tools and autonomy to determine lead quality, segment audiences, and personalize assets, the results are transformative. Teams using automated engagement and lead optimization solutions report:

• Faster response times to inbound leads, reducing the chance of churn.

• Improved sales and marketing alignment, fostering collaboration instead of conflict.

• Higher conversion rates from timely, personalized follow-ups.

• Better ad ROI, driven by experimentation and optimization around pipeline quality.

At the end of the day, it’s not about replacing sales—it’s about empowering marketing to complement and enhance sales efforts.

The Bottom Line

Sales and marketing don’t have to work in silos. By giving marketing teams more control over lead quality, segmentation, and experimentation, you can bridge the gap between the two teams, improve collaboration, and create a smoother, more effective pipeline.

If misalignment or manual processes are holding your team back, we’d love to help. Let’s talk about how Surface Labs can simplify your workflows and empower your marketing team to drive better alignment with sales. Book a time to chat with our founders here!