Sales and marketing often have a "first film of a buddy cop franchise" dynamic ... only they rarely go on to develop mutual respect, have zany banter, and solve mysteries.
Aligning the departments often feels friction-filled and doomed to fail, but getting there can help a business fire on all cylinders.
We surveyed over 300 sales leaders on the topic.
Here's what our study says about getting these departments to make nice.
Reps trust each other more than marketing when the deck fails.
Our survey found:
24%
of sales leaders say most reps pull a top rep's proven version first when marketing's material doesn't fit — the #1 move
15%
say marketing builds its material from real deals and rep feedback in the first place
Not to sound like a therapist helping an angsty teenager work through their daddy issues, but it can be tough when it feels like no one listens to you.
Our survey indicates that many reps feel that way about marketing.
That's why they turn to each other when their marketing team's material fails.
They're more likely to pull what's already worked for a top rep when marketing collateral doesn't fit — versus adapting assets or flagging gaps upstream.
That's a rational read on where usable material actually lives, but it can be unproductive when departments don't communicate.
Peer knowledge can serve as a useful shadow enablement system, but some back-and-forth with marketing can amplify those expert insights org-wide.
The intel reaches managers, then stalls before it ever hits marketing.
Our survey found:
34%
of sales leaders say their reps raise field intel at a sync or pass it to a manager — the #1 thing they do with it
29%
say a structured channel, not a meeting, is what actually routes intel onward.
Field intel isn't vanishing at the rep level. It's making it one hop and then stopping.
Reps will learn something useful on a call and pass it to their manager or raise it in a team sync, but it dies in the next handoff.
Our survey indicates that managers get more mileage from structured channels for reps to flag channels — not from more hand-raising in meetings.
That can be uncomfortable for many managers. It indicates that the bottleneck falls squarely on them.
Reps are doing their part by passing it up, but several managers haven't built a solid conduit to send that insight along — or they're just absorbing signals that go nowhere.
What can you do with this next-level insight?
For reps:
When an asset doesn't fit, notice where you go first. If it's a colleague's version over marketing's library, that's a signal worth acting on — build a personal file of what's actually converted, not what's officially published.
For managers:
A team sync surfaces intel but doesn't route it. The managers who close the loop replace the meeting with a structured channel that captures patterns as they happen, so signal doesn't depend on who remembered to speak up.
For leadership:
Peer-sourced material outperforms the official library because it's built from real deals — the exact input most teams skip. The durable fix isn't more assets. It's a pipeline that feeds field-tested versions back into what marketing produces.
If you like this newsletter, please tell your friends and colleagues about it. Honestly, tell everyone — your grandparents, strangers on the bus, your kids' preschool classmates. I pour my heart and soul into this, and I want the world to know.
If you don't like it ... whatever. I'm working on so much other cool stuff, and I'm a rouge maverick/lone wolf/renegade badass who doesn't care about anything or anyone anyway.
Jay Fuchs. Managing Editor, The Science of Scaling Newsletter
Wasting time reconciling data?
46% of revenue leaders say that their teams spend 6-10 hours a month just reconciling data across tools. Not selling. Not strategizing. Reconciling.
That's a full workday every month gone to something that shouldn't need to happen at all.
If that number sounds familiar, HubSpot's State of B2B Revenue Trends report was built for you.
Inside, you’ll see data from 317 global revenue leaders on the disconnects slowing teams down, and what the best organizations are doing to get ahead. Get a free copy to get ahead of the trends.
The data in question
As always, we sourced our data through Panoplai: It's by far the best panoramic research platform on the market. If you can find one better, you're either wrong or delusional.
Side note: I know I ran this exact Panoplai promo last week. Please complain to me if you noticed. I'm genuinely curious if anyone reads these.
When a rep hits a deal where the marketing material doesn't fit, what's the best thing they do?
- 24% — Pull what's worked in similar deals from a top rep
- 22% — Adapt a proven asset on the spot instead of starting cold
- 22% — Flag the gap to marketing so the next rep isn't stuck
- 16% — Lean on the discovery they've already done to fill it
- 12% — Build something quick and reusable, not one-off
- 4% — Most reps just wing it
What does marketing do that makes enablement material reps actually use?
- 30% — Ties each asset to a specific moment in the sales process
- 25% — Keeps it simple enough to use live, not a 30-page deck
- 15% — Builds it from real deals and rep feedback, not in a vacuum
- 15% — Updates it often enough to stay current
- 9% — Trains reps on it, doesn't just publish it
- 6% — Honestly, reps mostly don't use what marketing produces
When a rep learns something on a call that marketing could use, what do they usually do with it?
- 34% — Raise it at a team sync or pass it to a manager
- 29% — Drop it somewhere the whole team and marketing can see
- 16% — Log it in the CRM as a habit
- 12% — Mention it if it happens to come up
- 7% — Keep it in their head — there's nowhere for it to go
- 3% — It doesn't occur to them to share it
What's the most effective way a manager gets field intel flowing back to marketing?
- 29% — A structured channel for reps to flag patterns
- 21% — Making it a rep habit to log what they hear
- 18% — A standing sync with a real agenda, not a status update
- 16% — Sharing call recordings marketing can mine directly
- 13% — Looping marketing into live deals and calls
- 4% — We haven't found a way that sticks