Why your B2B marketing plan should start with your sales team

It’s a common gap across B2B marketing plans. Marketing plans are made in meeting rooms, while customer truths live in the conversations sales teams are having. The problem is, without those insights, even the smartest marketing strategies can miss the mark.

The best B2B marketing doesn’t start with “What should we say?” It starts with “What are we hearing?”

Why do most B2B marketing plans fail to align with sales?

The divide between marketing and sales usually isn’t intentional; unfortunately, it’s cultural within most businesses. Marketers speak in impressions, engagement and brand awareness. Sales speak in conversations, objections, and deals closed.

When those languages don’t meet, problems follow:

• Campaigns target the wrong pain points. Messaging sounds polished, but fails to reflect what customers actually care about.
• Leads that don’t convert. Marketing that focuses on volume rather than quality.
• Budgets are wasted. Channels and content are chosen based on assumptions, not evidence.

The truth is, sales teams already have most of the insight marketing needs. They just rarely get asked for it.

Understanding what sales teams actually hear from customers

Every call, demo and proposal contains valuable intelligence. Salespeople hear:

• The exact language customers use when describing their problems
• The objections that stop deals from moving forward
• The emotional triggers that make prospects act

These details are gold for marketers. They turn vague personas into real people with real frustrations.

Imagine how much sharper your B2B campaigns would be if they started with that level of understanding. If marketing knew that customers don’t say “streamline operational inefficiencies”, they say “we’re drowning in manual work”, your messaging would instantly sound more human and relatable.

How shared insights strengthen campaign messaging

When marketing and sales collaborate, the difference shows immediately. Campaigns stop guessing and start resonating.

Sales insights can:

• Help to sharpen messaging using real customer language to build credibility.
• Refine targeting so you can prioritise audiences that actually convert.
• Inform content such as blog posts, emails and ads, answering genuine buyer questions and not what marketers think buyers want.
• Improve lead scoring by ensuring qualifying criteria reflect what sales truly values, not just form-fill data.

This alignment also changes tone. Instead of pushing features, marketing starts speaking to outcomes, the same outcomes sales uses to close deals.

When that happens, every piece of content becomes an extension of the sales conversation.

Should marketing lead or follow sales?

Neither. They should move together.

Sales has a much closer relationship with the customer, whilst marketing has a different perspective, which is the market itself. Should you combine both of these strategies, your overall strategy becomes both informed and scalable.

If you had marketing always being led by sales, it would naturally lose its creativity and long-term vision. Irrelevance would creep into the strategy, which may not be what we’re looking for. So it’s all about finding that sweet spot. The sweet spot is collaboration, where the aspect of marketing uses sales insights to help inform its creative creation and sales uses marketing assets and capabilities to enrich every customer experience and conversation.

In practice, that means:

• Regular alignment meetings, not just quarterly handovers.
• Shared dashboards tracking leads from first touch to closed deal.
• Joint workshops to refine messaging, pitch decks and campaign ideas.

When sales and marketing move in sync, the customer journey feels seamless, not segmented.

Building a feedback loop that drives continuous improvement

Alignment isn’t a one-off exercise; it’s an ongoing loop that requires continuance.

Here’s how to build one:

1. Start every planning cycle with sales input. Ask what they’re hearing most often and where deals are getting stuck.
2. Translate insights into strategy. Turn real objections into blog topics, campaign angles or ad headlines.
3. Share results. Let sales see which campaigns generate leads that actually close.
4. Refine together. Meet regularly to review what’s working and what isn’t, and adapt fast.

This creates a living marketing plan, one that evolves with customer behaviour, not in isolation from it.

Sales-led strategy in action

We’ve seen firsthand how involving sales early can transform B2B marketing performance.

When working with several of our clients, the most successful campaigns were the ones built around sales feedback. Sales teams shared common objections they faced, things like cost concerns, unclear differentiation, or fear of implementation complexity. Marketing turned those insights into content that addressed those issues head-on, from FAQs and case studies to social proof and explainer videos.

The result? Fewer objections, shorter sales cycles and a stronger brand connection built on understanding rather than assumption.

This collaboration doesn’t just improve performance, it changes culture. Sales feels heard. Marketing feels informed. And customers feel understood.

Conclusion: The best marketing starts with listening to sales

If your next marketing plan starts with a spreadsheet, pause. Start with a conversation instead.

Talk to your sales team. Ask them what prospects are really saying, where deals slow down, and which questions come up again and again. Those answers are the foundation of a marketing strategy that works because it’s rooted in reality.

The most effective B2B campaigns aren’t born in isolation. They’re built on shared understanding between two teams working toward the same goal, helping customers make confident decisions.

When marketing starts with sales, your campaigns stop sounding like campaigns and start sounding like conversations that matter.

Tiga UK is a B2B creative agency based in Kent, helping companies bridge the gap between marketing and sales through smarter strategy, creative storytelling, and campaigns that convert.

If you’re ready to align your marketing with the people who know your customers best, let’s talk.