Marketing and sales alignment is one of those topics everyone agrees is important...
...and almost no one actually fixes.
For this episode, I sat down with Antonis Askianakis, Head of Sales at LearnWorlds, and a former colleague of seven years. We worked together at LearnWorlds, had real disagreements, and came out of it as friends. That’s the only kind of relationship where this honest conversation is even possible.
P.S.: We have been having these discussions with Antonis for years, and I feel it very valuable to share one with marketers, to better understand their counterparts in sales.
It’s what the conversation actually sounds like between two revenue people who trust each other enough to be honest.
In this episode, you will hear us discuss:
What sales actually wants from marketing (and why “more leads” is never the full answer)
Why misalignment is almost always a leadership failure before it’s a team failure
The MQL/SQL debate — and why shared definitions matter more than the labels
Why marketing’s responsibility doesn’t end when the lead is handed off
The dual-pipeline target fix that forces both teams into accountability
When and why reducing marketing touches mid-deal is the right call
The Real Ask: Alignment, Not Just Leads
We started where most of these conversations should start — what does sales actually need from marketing?
Both teams share the same goal, even if they sit at different parts of the funnel. What sales is asking by “more leads”, “better quality” might be better alignment.
The funnel feels linear, but it isn’t. And when marketing’s North Star metric diverges from sales’, you’ve already lost.
The fix sounds simple:
agree on definitions,
set common goals,
write it down.
Alignment is a Leadership Problem
We spent a lot of time here, and it’s worth spending time on.
When two teams are fighting over lead quality, pipeline ownership, or CRM hygiene, the instinct is to fix the process. The problem is around accountability and leadership.
When leadership doesn’t take a clear position on who owns what it creates a blaming circle.
Marketing blames sales for not following up.
Sales blames marketing for bad leads.
Nobody fixes anything because nobody has to.
The only sustainable fix is a shared revenue goal with clear ownership of each stage. Whether that comes from a CRO, a combined commercial team, or two directors who decide to align themselves, somebody has to draw the line.
Author’s note: At Cyberbit, the first thing I did was sit down with sales and agree on definitions. Not to be bureaucratic about it, just to have something written that both sides owned. It didn’t solve everything. But it removed the most common arguments.
The ICP and Lead Quality Problem
Experienced AEs have a warm network, a preferred industry vertical, and leads they can close with high certainty. When marketing brings in leads from a different profile, the easiest thing to do is ignore them.
That’s not a sales problem — it’s a trust and data problem. If an AE consistently ignores a lead type, there’s a reason. Either the leads genuinely aren’t converting, or the AE hasn’t been given a reason to trust the process.
The right response isn’t to complain about it in a marketing meeting. It’s to ask:
“Can you walk me through why these three leads didn’t go anywhere?”
That conversation usually reveals more about your ICP than six months of analytics.
The Pipeline Target Fix
The most practical takeaway from the episode.
Marketing tracks pipeline. Sales tracks pipeline and revenue. When the only metric marketing owns is top-of-funnel, the incentive to stay involved after handoff disappears.
Antonis’ suggestion: give marketing a pipeline target that extends deeper into the funnel. When marketing has a stake in whether those leads convert, not just whether they arrived. Then, the dynamic changes.
Marketing starts asking why BDRs aren’t converting the leads.
Sales starts explaining what’s actually happening in the conversations.
Both teams start working on the same problem instead of arguing about whose fault it is.
When Marketing Should Pull Back
Not everything calls for more marketing involvement.
In complex enterprise deals — where buying committees are large, relationships are fragile, and timing is everything — an unsolicited marketing email to the wrong stakeholder can derail a deal in progress.
Antonis’ approach: reduce direct touches at the deal level, but don’t disappear.
Brand awareness,
retargeting, and
content still run in the background.
The distinction matters.
Marketing that stays visible at the brand level creates the familiarity that makes future deals easier to close.
Marketing that steps on an active deal creates friction.
Wrapping Up
The closing line from Adonis landed the clearest:
“Help me come closer to our TAM.”
That’s it. That’s the whole job.
Not leads for the sake of leads. Not MQLs to hit a target. Bring marketing and sales close enough to their total addressable market that the right conversations happen with the right people at the right time.
Everything else — the definitions, the targets, the processes — is just scaffolding around that one idea.
