Why Can’t Our Salespeople Sell?
According to an article in Harvard Business Review, the lack of alignment in sales and marketing hurts performance. When the two efforts are out of sync, the entire organization can suffer. 
“There is no question that, when sales and marketing work well together, companies see substantial improvement on important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorter, market-entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower,” said the article, “Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing.”
In a recent study of sales leaders, “better messaging” was listed as the top assist to the sales process. It outranked “more qualified leads.” Of the top six areas that would win more sales, salespeople wanted better materials, better messaging, better websites and more testimonials/case studies. 
We often talk about content marketing in a general sense, but salespeople are clamoring for more of all forms. Only a minority of executives believe the “quality or quantity of content provided to salespeople meets or exceeds expectations.”
So why can’t salespeople sell? It could be your content. So the war may continue to wage on and on, but it sounds like more and better content will soothe all the wounds of the war for good.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.