No More Excuses: Ending the Sales vs. Marketing Blame Game

Long before Coke vs Pepsi, cats vs dogs – or even good vs evil – one rivalry has stood the test of time: sales vs marketing.

Whichever side you’re on, the tension between these teams can be one of the most costly and damaging challenges a business faces. It can lead to missed deals, poor customer retention and loss of critical revenue.

But instead of rehashing old advice or assigning blame, we’re looking at the issue from a different angle.

If your sales and marketing teams are constantly clashing, it’s worth asking – could your CRM be the one to blame?

How poor CRM fuels sales and marketing conflict

CRM should be a source of clarity and stability for businesses, but this isn’t always the case.

Whether it’s outdated software, capped functionality or complex, sluggish interfaces, the wrong CRM can do more harm than good. And because CRM is the central hub where sales and marketing interact, collaborate, and pass over their respective work, when things go wrong, it impacts both sides of the aisle.

That’s when the finger-pointing begins, while the real culprit (your CRM) gets ignored.

Here are several issues created by poor CRM that are stirring conflict between your sales and marketing departments:

Inaccurate data

Bad data – whether it’s incomplete, inconsistent, or just plain wrong – can create major discrepancies in lead quality and undermine trust between teams.

The question of what makes a lead “qualified” is often a point of contention between sales and marketing, and it’s one that a poor CRM can exacerbate.

If your platform can’t handle the volume or complexity of the data it’s being asked to process, expect disorganized records, duplicate entries, and even lost leads.

There are other ways poor CRM can impact data accuracy, including:

• A lack of integration with marketing automation tools leading to fragmented data
• Non-intuitive and poorly designed interfaces resulting in data entry mistakes

While CRM is clearly the issue in these scenarios, sales teams will often believe marketing is to blame when leads are unqualified or become missed opportunities.

Ineffective tracking

When the game of lead generation is afoot, each player needs to know when it’s their turn to step in.

Good CRM makes this process seamless, while an outdated, complex or buggy tool can totally ruin the sequence.

Without clear lead ownership, marketing and sales can end up in a shouting match over who deserves the credit – or a blame game when opportunities are missed.

And while they’re arguing, leads that are primed and ready for conversion could be lost or dismissed outright by sales. This often happens if your CRM can’t effectively capture their information, behavior and intent levels.

No shared goals or metrics

It’s difficult to get sales and marketing on the same page when their goals aren’t aligned.

Even though they’re working for the same organization, a CRM that doesn’t track shared metrics from their joint efforts can drive a wedge between these teams, turning tension into rivalry.

Instead of focusing on the overall objectives of the business, each department becomes more concerned with their own KPIs.

Low adoption

One major gripe marketers have with sales is their unwillingness to embrace CRM tools. However, there can be valid reasons for this:

• They might feel like they’re being micromanaged
• The platform could be too complex
• It may not have been designed with their workflows in mind

A common argument for why sales teams reject CRM is that their time would be better spent securing revenue than using slow, clunky software. And it’s hard to argue with that.

Yet poor adoption of CRM can jeopardize the integrity of the entire lead generation process, from unreliable revenue forecasts to difficulties in marketing attribution. This will only fan the flames of any feud between these teams.

Onboarding the right CRM can bring your teams together

There’s a very clear case for CRM being the reason sales and marketing teams are so often divided – but there’s an important distinction to make.

The wrong CRM will undoubtedly drive your teams apart. However, the right CRM won’t just keep them from fighting – it will actually bring them closer together. Here’s how:

Real-time insights

Maintaining a shared understanding of lead status will eliminate confusion over where they are in the buyer’s journey and what actions are required. This will ensure alignment, and with Workbooks, this information is available via dashboards and reporting in a single click.

Clear lead tracking

Improving the handoff process between marketing and sales by clearly establishing ownership is another way to reduce friction, increase accountability and stop the finger pointing.

While big providers make these essential practices convoluted and expensive, Workbooks CRM prioritizes simplicity and efficiency, so you get the visibility you need into leads without unnecessary cost or complexity.

Customization

Engaging both sales and marketing to identify the criteria and customizations they need – both individually and collaboratively – helps reinforce that they’re on the same side.

To help with this, we’ve made Workbooks CRM purposefully user-friendly, and can support you directly in customizing it for your specific workflows and requirements.

Marketing automation

If you really want your sales and marketing departments to work towards the same goals, your CRM needs to deliver a unified view of the customer journey.

Workbooks CRM does this through seamless integration with marketing automation – and with our direct, people-first approach to implementation and support, you get expert help from actual humans, not robots.

It’s time to end the sales vs marketing blame game

The sales and marketing feud has gone on long enough.

CRM presents the perfect opportunity to help these teams find common ground and unlock the full potential of their collaboration.

But selecting the right tool – one that’s easy to adopt, offers clear visibility, and aligns with their specific needs – is crucial to making this a reality.

With Workbooks, you can implement a CRM that meets the needs of both teams while helping them realize the benefits of working together.