Picture this: Your marketing team launches a new campaign. Emails are sent. Digital ads start running. Social posts go live. Then a customer calls your sales team and mentions the promotion… and your rep has no idea what they’re talking about.
Or flip it: Your sales team is hearing the same objection from prospects every day. But marketing keeps creating content that doesn’t address it because they’ve never been told it’s an issue.
Sound familiar? You’re not alone. And according to sales trainer Marvin Montgomery, who has spent over 35 years training sales teams, communication is the number one problem killing conversion rates across industries.
The Hatfields and McCoys of B2B
When describing the typical sales-marketing dynamic, Montgomery said: “If you’re not working hand-in-hand, it’s like the Hatfields, McCoys, and Nobody. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”
Sales and marketing are supposed to be on the same team, working toward the same goals. Instead, they operate like rival clans, barely speaking, each convinced the other doesn’t understand their challenges.
Why does this happen? Often, it’s as simple as physical separation. Different floors. Different buildings. Different Zoom calls. But the deeper issue is assumption.
“I think that [sales] thinks marketing is a whole separate animal that has nothing to do with me. And marketing thinks salespeople, all they’re supposed to do is follow our lead with whatever we put out there,” Montgomery explained.
That mindset creates a dangerous void. Marketing creates content that sales never uses. Sales makes promises that marketing can’t support. Customers get inconsistent messages. And when results fall short, each team blames the other.
Montgomery is currently working with a company where the relationship between sales and marketing is dysfunctional. “It’s really two separate silos,” he said. His diagnosis? “We need to come together in a meeting and talk about strategy. Talk about what’s working and what’s not working.”
Five Warning Signs Your Organization Is “Sick”
Warning Sign #1: Sales Gets Blindsided by Marketing Campaigns
When sales reps learn about promotions from customers instead of from their own marketing team, you have a problem. Montgomery contrasted this with his experience at J.B. Robinson Jewelers, where owner Larry Robinson did it right.
“He would actually play the radio commercials; he would show us the ad, so we’d see and know the promotion we were doing,” Montgomery recalled. “He didn’t want us to get blindsided.”
That’s preparation, respect, and the first step toward building a unified go-to-market approach.
Warning Sign #2: Sales Can’t Explain Marketing’s Strategy
“Right now, salespeople are complaining that the promotion that they’re doing is not working,” Montgomery said of one of his clients. “And: ‘I don’t know why they came up with that.’”
If your sales team is questioning your marketing strategy instead of executing it confidently, you haven’t brought them along for the ride.
Warning Sign #3: Marketing Doesn’t Know What Sales Is Hearing
Are your salespeople hearing the same objection every day? Does marketing know about it? Are they creating content to address it? If not, you’re creating content in a bubble.
Warning Sign #4: Nobody Celebrates Together
Here’s a telling question Montgomery posed: “Wouldn’t it be nice at the end of the month, when salespeople are celebrating their goal, wouldn’t it be nice if you celebrated the goal with the marketing team?”
When was the last time both departments celebrated a win together? If you can’t remember, that’s your answer.
Warning Sign #5: Each Side Blames the Other
When deals don’t close, does sales say the leads are bad? Does marketing say the sales team can’t close? That blame game is a symptom of a deeper disease: no shared accountability.
The Prescription: Six Ways to Fix It
1. Institute Weekly Huddles
Start with one simple commitment: weekly meetings between sales and marketing leadership.
“Marketing and sales [need to] meet at least once a week,” Montgomery said. They need to share things like, “How were the numbers last week? Do we need to change anything?”
These should be strategic conversations. What’s working? What’s not? What are customers asking? What objections keep coming up? What content gaps exist?
2. Cross-Pollinate Your Meetings
Marketing should attend sales meetings. Sales should attend marketing meetings. Period.
“Now that I know you, you’re not this strange person in another room somewhere that I never get a chance to see,” Montgomery said. “Now I call you and go, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about…'”
Personal relationships drive collaboration. You can’t build those through email threads.
3. Involve Sales Before Content Is Finalized
Don’t create marketing materials in isolation and then drop them on your sales team. Get their input during development.
Montgomery praised the collaborative approach he learned early in his career: “Anything that was created from a collaboration standpoint — they didn’t come in and say, ‘This is what you’re using.’ They came in and said, ‘This is what we’re thinking about doing, and we want your input before we put it together.’”
That creates ownership. When sales has a say, they’ll use what you’ve put together.
4. Make Metrics Visible to Both Teams
“I think the marketing team needs to be aware of what my dashboard is,” Montgomery said. “What are my metrics? How am I being judged as far as my performance?”
Marketing can’t optimize campaigns if they don’t understand how sales is measured. And sales can’t appreciate marketing’s efforts if they don’t see which campaigns are actually driving leads.
Create transparency. Share dashboards. Build joint accountability for the full funnel.
5. Celebrate Wins Together
“Wouldn’t it be great for marketing and sales to go out to a restaurant and celebrate?” Montgomery asked. “20% over goal.”
Even virtually, celebration matters. It builds culture. It reinforces the shared mission. When marketing sees the direct result of their work in sales success, and when sales acknowledges marketing’s role in that success, you build a team mentality.
6. Question the Physical Separation
Montgomery asked a provocative question: “Why is marketing on the other side of the building?”
In remote environments, the same principle applies. Are you creating virtual proximity? Regular video calls? Easy ways to have spontaneous conversations?
Proximity drives communication. Communication drives collaboration.
What This Looks Like in Practice
When Montgomery begins working with a new client, one of his first questions exposes the problem immediately: “‘How come marketing is not in this meeting?’ It’s like, come on, they gotta be in this meeting.”
When the two teams find a way to come together, marketing creates better materials, and sales teams actually know how to use them. Campaigns are informed by real customer objections. Content addresses actual pain points instead of assumed ones.
“Why do you think it’s called sales and marketing? It’s not sales-marketing. It’s sales and marketing, which means they’re connected. The and, A-N-D, connects both together.”
The Fix Isn’t Complex, It’s a Meeting
Every day these teams work in silos is a day of lost opportunities. Leads that could have converted, but didn’t because the handoff was clumsy. Content could have closed deals, but didn’t because it wasn’t addressing real objections. Prospects could have become customers, but went to a competitor with a tighter message.
When was the last time your sales and marketing managers had a real conversation? Not an email thread. Not a Slack message. An actual conversation about strategy, performance, and how to win together?
If the answer is “I don’t know” or “more than a week ago,” there’s your problem.
“We have to work together,” Montgomery said.
Schedule the first huddle this week. Make it recurring. Get both teams in the same room (virtually or physically). Share the metrics, wins, and challenges.
And then watch what happens when the silos finally come down.
About Marvin Montgomery
Marvin Montgomery, known as “The Sales Doctor,” has over 35 years of experience training sales teams across industries. He specializes in helping organizations close the gap between marketing strategy and sales execution through his program, Mastering the Sales Essentials.