The “95:5 rule” has been everywhere in B2B marketing conversations in recent years. Forrester even updated it to the “85:15 Variable.” But here’s the truth: debating ratios misses the real point. Whether you’re chasing the small slice of buyers who are in-market today or building brand trust with the rest, sales and marketing only win when they’re aligned.
The challenge? Pipeline360 research shows only about half of U.S. B2B teams are truly aligned. That disconnect creates a bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) crisis, and both functions lose out. To fix it, companies need to tear down silos and rebuild shared ownership of the entire customer journey.
How bad is the BOFU challenge?
Our research highlights where the funnel is breaking down: closing deals, retaining customers, and generating, nurturing, and qualifying leads. Two of those top three problem areas sit squarely in the BOFU—right where sales and marketing overlap most.
Why the breakdown? Silos. Poor feedback loops. Disjointed technology. Misaligned metrics.
Marketing rarely gets candid input on lead quality, while sales often lacks visibility into how prospects engage with content. Disconnected systems make collaboration harder, and even the best CRM or automation tools can’t fix a broken process. If marketing is chasing engagement while sales is chasing revenue, they’re running in opposite directions.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Stephanie Berner, Chief Customer Officer at Smartsheet
A new model for alignment
Today’s buyers don’t move through a clean, linear funnel. Their journey is messy, long, and full of back-and-forth. They may research for months, involve 10–20 stakeholders, disappear, then resurface. By the time they talk to sales, much of their decision-making is already done, and competitors may have influenced them.
This means the old “handoff” model is obsolete. Sales and marketing need joint ownership of the funnel. High-performing teams get this: 75% report strong alignment, compared with just 25% of low performers.
So, what actually works? First, sales and marketing need to rally around shared BOFU goals and KPIs, with revenue as the unifying metric. When both teams are measured by the same outcomes, alignment becomes less of a buzzword and more of a daily practice.
Just as important is building collaborative lead processes. Qualification and nurturing can’t live in silos, especially with today’s long, complex buying cycles. Nearly half (48%) of U.S. marketers say stronger alignment would directly improve lead nurturing, and that’s a signal worth acting on. Finally, true alignment extends to account-level collaboration. Targeting and penetration efforts become far more effective when sales and marketing co-own the strategy rather than treating it as a handoff.
Alignment isn’t only about setting goals—it’s also about how teams operate day to day. High-performing organizations keep things simple by streamlining their technology. In fact, they’re six times more likely to consolidate onto fewer, shared platforms, making it far easier for sales and marketing to collaborate.
But tools alone aren’t the answer. The best teams go a step further, favoring delivered services and insights over simply adding more software. That’s where Demand-as-a-Service (DaaS) comes in. By providing expert strategy, high-impact creative, targeted multichannel activation, and real-time performance insights, DaaS lifts the burden of demand generation. The result: sales and marketing teams gain the bandwidth to focus on what they do best—engaging prospects, closing deals, and growing customer relationships.
Because at the end of the day, whether you’re chasing the 5% or building trust with the 95%, success comes down to sales and marketing moving in lockstep.
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